Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 January 2024

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media

Non-court-based Conflict Resolution Mechanisms for Media-related Complaints: Discussion

Mr. Rory Montgomery:

I would like to provide a footnote to that. As mentioned, most of our complainants are ordinary people. The press council acts as a kind of court of appeal, which further strengthens the system. There are not that many appeals against Ms McKay's decisions but there are some - ten or 12 a year. I go back to the political point that we have noticed a growing trend of people connected with the far right using our procedures to object to specific articles. There was a taster of this during the Covid period when there was a flood of complaints about what was found, in every case, to be legitimate newspaper coverage of the pandemic. I would not say this is a huge phenomenon but it is one we have noticed. In the latter part of last year, we had two or three applications that came from that particular angle.

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