A new press freedom controversy has broken out involving Denis O’Brien, Ireland’s most powerful media magnate.
A former editor at one of the newspapers owned by a company in which O’Brien is the largest shareholder, Independent News & Media (INM), has accused some of its executives of stifling coverage of O’Brien.
Anne Harris, who edited the Sunday Independent for almost three years until December 2014, claimed in an article published in the Sunday Times’s Irish edition, “Fear of O’Brien casts long shadow over press”, that she was subject to internal censorship.
She told of an incident in November 2012 following the paper’s publication of a story revealing a complaint to a UN special rapporteur about O’Brien’s legal threats against several journalists.
According to Harris, she was called to a meeting with two senior INM managers in which she was told that O’Brien was “not to be written about in certain ways”.
She received a directive that any story referencing O’Brien in a negative way was to be referred to INM’s managing editor because there needed to be “sensitivity” towards a major shareholder.
Harris, having contended that a managing editor did not outrank an editor, was then informed that a post of editor-in-chief would be created.
In June 2013, Stephen Rae was appointed as editor-in-chief. “From then on”, wrote Harris, “I never again held a meeting with my own staff that was not attended by persons with strange new titles taking notes furiously”.
She also wrote about an incident in July 2014 involving an article written by Harris that referred to O’Brien and his alleged control of INM.
She claimed that, without reference to her, the editor-in-chief “stopped the page and removed a crucial sentence. I rang him to protest. The paper was delayed while we argued... several minor changes were negotiated. But I had no part in the removal of the crucial sentence”.
Harris believed that freedom of speech was the victim of a “war of attrition” but that “the main weapon” was an “insidious fear” of “living under a regime, all-powerful and capricious, not knowing where the next blow will fall”.
She wrote: “It freezes us. It induces inaction. And where there is action, it consists merely of trying to anticipate the capricious desires of those who control our lives”.
O’Brien holds a 29.9% stake in INM, Ireland’s largest newspaper group, which is chaired by Leslie Buckley, O’Brien’s long-time associate. Through a different company, O’Brien also controls two national talk radio stations. He has always denied using his media ownership to influence coverage of himself.
Earlier this month, O’Brien was embroiled in a legal battle with the media over claims made in the Irish parliament about his banking arangements.
A separate Sunday Times news story about Harris’s article contained an INM statement about her allegations over the July 2014 incident.
It said her article at the time “was legally and factually inaccurate” and continued:
“When the editor-in-chief pointed out the legal and factual inaccuracies, Ms Harris corrected the article in later editions of the paper...
Legal correspondence was subsequently received in relation to the article in the first edition, and as a result the Sunday Independent had to publish an apology to Denis O’Brien the following Sunday.
In terms of any meetings, the importance of factual and legal accuracy and journalistic balance and objectivity was the sole emphasis”.
INM further stated that “there has been no editorial interference in any of our titles” by O’Brien.