Mr. Tim Vaughan:

The vast majority of our journalists are members of the NUJ and they are signed up to operate under the code of conduct of the NUJ. The Irish Examineris a member of the Press Council. Principle 8 of the NUJ's Code of Conduct states that a journalist "[r]esists threats or any other inducements to influence, distort or suppress information and takes no unfair personal advantage of information gained in the course of her/his duties...". We do not have a written policy, but it is there. There is the ethos of the newspaper, which goes back as long as I have been with it. A journalist might get a bottle of wine or something like that at Christmas, or perhaps it might include lunch. I was once taken to lunch by the Irish Bankers' Federation to persuade me to stop me eating at the banks, but I do not think the lunch was very successful from that point of view. There is no such thing as taking gifts apart from what I would say is normal corporate-type Christmas stuff.