Gemma O’Doherty goes wayof Centre for Public Inquiry



rights and democracy”.

The Irish secretary of the NUJ Seamus

Dooley said that the NUJ believed Ms

O’Doherty had been badly treated and

had a case for unfair dismissal. In a state-

ment, Transparency Ireland (TI) said that

Ms O’Doherty’s dismissal could deter other

journalist from investigating abuses of

power, and called for her re-instatement.

TI also called for “the introduction of edi-

torial policies that protect the independence

of investigative journalists and editorial staﬀ

at all newspaper groups in Ireland”.

Would Ireland instead be better oﬀ fol-

lowing a non-newspaper model? Outside

Ireland, investigative journalism has moved

out of traditional

media organisations

and into non-proﬁt

organisations

funded by philan-

thropists (such as

the Center for Public

Integrity in the USA)

and publicly-funded

organisations such as

Mediapart in France.

Attempts to establish

one of these models

in Ireland, the Centre

for Public Inquiry

(where I worked dur-

ing its short existence), caused outrage even

among other news organisations, and con-

certed pressure by the then-government to

close the CPI suggested that the Irish estab-

lishment was quite happy with the status quo.

Moreover, academic and journalist Harry

Browne has argued that the philanthropic

model leaves public-interest journalist

organisations dangerously dependent on

one source of funding.

New models of organisation and fund-

ing will be among the topics of discussion

at upcoming conferences on investiga-

tive journalism in Dublin and London. On

October , the London Press Club will host

a conference with Alan Rusbridger, Andrew

Gilligan, Tom Harper, Heather Brooke and

Tom Bower, chaired by Andrew Neil. It is

being supported by polling company YouGov,

which will conduct a poll ahead of the

event.

The Dublin event, ‘The Future of Investigative

Journalism in Ireland’ will take place at Liberty

Hall on November 23 and the panel will feature

journalist Frank Connolly, RTÉ Prime Time

journalist Rita O’Reilly, barrister Shelley Horan

and NUJ secretary Seamus Dooley, among

others. More information at www.ccrj.org,

www.SIPTU.ie.

T has been a mixed year for investi-

gative journalism. There are some

hopeful signs such as the imminent

introduction of legislation in Ireland

to protect whistleblowers. Internationally,

the US whistleblower Edward Snowden pro-

vided perhaps the story of the year, leaving

the public justiﬁably paranoid about their

personal data, and leav-

ing Snowden holed up in

Russia. With print revenues

continuing to collapse and

newspapers scrambling to

keep up with around-the-

clock digital media, the future

of print journalism in general

is precarious.

The dismissal of journalist

Gemma O’Doherty from the

Irish Independent during the

summer and the subsequent

non-scandal generated in

Ireland’s mainstream press is

instructive. The story of Ms

O’Doherty’s sacking was initially reported in

the September  issue of Phoenix magazine,

which reported that her investigation into

the wiping of penalty points from the record

of Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan,

which allegedly involved hassling him, (a

practice not unknown elsewhere in the

Independent group), had appalled executives

at the paper. The Phoenix reported that Ms

O’Doherty had been called a “rogue reporter”,

and had subsequently been oﬀered voluntary

redundancy. When she refused, she was then

made redundant, it said. Later broadsheet.ie

reported, though subsequently mysteriously

removed, news that penalty points had been

wiped after they were accrued by Stephen

Rae, Editor-in-Chief of the Irish Independent,

the Herald, and the Sunday Independent,

and former editor of the Garda Review. In

late September, the UK Irish Post more pre-

cisely reported that a car registered to Rae

allegedly accrued the points at .am on

November ,  at the N, Belﬁeld,

Dublin, and the points were terminated.

The ethical diﬃculty for Stephen Rae

is that he was involved in the decision to

render Gemma O’Doherty redundant.

Roy Greenslade, Professor of Journalism

at City College London, wrote in the

Guardian that the dismissal of

Ms O’Doherty had been widely

ignored by the Irish mainstream

media. Greenslade’s story raised

a great hue among print jour-

nalists – outside Ireland. When

contacted by thejournal.ie, Ms

O’Doherty declined to comment

for legal reasons.Although the

story about Commissioner

Callinan was cited as the main

reason behind Ms O’Doherty’s

departure, most reports recalled

Ms O’Doherty’s diligent inves-

tigations into the  death

of Roscommon priest Fr Niall

Molloy that led to the reopening of the case

in . Writing in the Irish Independent

last year, Ms O’Doherty’s story on the case

opened with a quote from Labour’s John

Kelly telling the Senate that the Molloy story

was the “biggest cover-up in the history of

the State”. Ms O’Doherty went on to say that

her investigations had “exposed a litany of

damning evidence and glaring inconsist-

encies which point to nothing less than a

cover-up of staggering proportions, involv-

ing several institutions of the State and the

Catholic Church”.

Supporters of Ms O’Doherty, including

relatives of Fr Molloy and other murder

victims who felt badly treated by the police,

protested outside the Irish Independent

oﬃces and wrote a letter to editor-in-chief

Stephen Rae claiming: “As Irish citizens

we see her dismissal as nothing less than a

grotesque attack on press freedom, human

Few in Ireland care or notice when investigation

is scuppered. By Ronan Lynch





O’Doherty’s

dismissal has

been widely

ignored by

the Irish

mainstream

media

“

Gemma O’Doherty

goes way of Centre

for Public Inquiry

gemma O’dOherTy NEWS