Irish Examiner editor in court next week over Deirdre Tynan article
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Tuesday April 20, 2004 22:32
by redflaremist
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Some of you will remember our friend Deirdre Tynan, a journalist from the scum rag "Ireland on Sunday" who printed a story about how she "infiltrated" a publicly advertised meeting in a public house a couple of months back. Great work on that one Deirdre.
This was the first "May Day Mayhem" bullshit media sensationalist violence hype article to appear in a newspaper, and there's been a deluge of them ever since.
Her drunken two-faced antics won her no friends or favours, despite her pleas that she was just doing what her editor told her to do. She also claimed in emails beforehand she was sympathetic to the politics of the anarchists who held this meeting. More lies.
Anyway, the Irish Examiner editor is in court next week, charged with Contempt of Court. Deirdre Tynan, while working for the Examiner, wrote a piece discussing the Brian Murphy/Anabel's case, in breach of court reporting guidelines. Her editor never checked the article. She was fired immediately once the error was discovered.
Seems as if she hasnt learnt her lesson. Shoddy journalists have a home at Ireland on Sunday it would seem.
Comments (28 of 28)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28Being fired from a rag of a newspaper. That's not going to be too pretty on her CV.
why do u care?
You are incorrect as usual - Deirdre Tynan never worked for the examiner, she was and is a freelance journalist and has worked for the examiner several times since the incident involving the reporting of the murphy case..
You say "Deirdre Tynan never worked for the examiner[...]"
and then follow that up with: "she [...] has worked for the examiner several times"
Beautiful! You express yourself so clearly.
We all know that he meant she never was 'employed' by the examiner. Grow up and stop being such a fool, you really don't have a point apart from being a smart arse
I'm just trying to sort out the truth from the lies and blundering miscommunication that the accuracy hound above and your good self have perpetrated.
I'm genuinely confused how "worked for" and "employed" could be substituted and still make sense. Do you mean that "Deirdre Tynan was never employed by the Irish Examiner and Deirdre Tynan has been employed several times by the Irish Examiner"?
Still doesn't make sense to me. Must be the same type of logic that leads to someone producing the bilge that Tynan does.
Perhaps it's all just a terrible, huge tragic mistake and Tynan's articles actually mean something else but are just expressed poorly?In any case seeing as you're so informed let's get some specifics:
1.Did Tynan receive money for articles contributed to the IE?
2.Since the inaccuracies discovered in the litigated IE article has Tynan received money or been commissioned by the IE for further articles?
Don't bother with insults, just facts please. Thank you.
1 - Deirdre Tynan has never been an employee of the Examiner, therefore she cannot have been 'fired' as the article says. She was not fired for anything that she wrote, as she had no position to be fired from. The article on this thread is innaccurate.
2 - Of course she received money for the litigated article. She is a freelancer selling articles to different publications, she doesn't do it for free. But she is still not employed by them, she sells them a product (an article) which they pay her money for. That is not the same as employment.
3 - She may or may not have been commissioned to write articles. But even if she was commissioned to write, she still gets paid even if its not published.
4 - It is not standard practice for a journalist to be 'fired' for writing an article that is the subject of legal proceedings. The editor is duty-bound by the NUJ to protect the journalist.
5 - The legal proceedings are ongoing. Therefore, there is no way that the Examiner would fire her for it. This would amount to an admission of wrongdoing editorially, which the paper would never do as it would prejudice their case, thereby eradicating any possibility of a defence.
6 - The contempt of court charge has nothing to do with whether or not what she wrote was innacurate. That could only be dealt with by a civil defamation trial, or a criminal libel trial. Therefore, her history as a journalist who reports the truth cannot be determined on the basis of this case.
So, all we can take away from this is that Tynan showed another lapse of ethics when she reported details that the court specifically deemed should not be reported.
That fits in quite plausibly with her demonstration of a lack of ethics in her recent piece on the "secret" anarchist meeting:
why do u care about tynan and this case? Whats it to u in the end?
The answer is right in front of your nose. Take a massive guess why anyone would be concerned about it.
I wrote that earlier posting which stated that Deirdre Tynan never worked for the examiner. The posting was described as vague or in some way badly illustrative of a specific point of information.
I have never seen so clear an indication that you lot know nothing about what you are writing about - you do not even know what a freelance journalist is - if you did, (I said in the posting 'she was and is a freelance reporter') you would know that this means she is not a member of any publication's staff and therefore takes payment for commissioned/offered articles on a pay for work basis and is paid similarly for shifts in a newsroom.
Therefore, the claim that she was 'fired' is lies and just proves that you lot who regularly contribute to this site are more than willing to make stuff up that suits your agenda.
The contributor who wrote 'The Facts' (I suspect is a Real Journalist, unlike you lame contributors who just want to be columnists in the Irish Times becasue Daddy reads the paper and Daddy doesn't love you enough) was accurate.
about the original authors lack of understanding of the nature of freelance journalism (something that few people without a media background understand) is not really the point. That the journalist lied and her lies have seen the examiner brought to court and this isn't the first time her exaggerations and lies haven't been exposed.
6 - The contempt of court charge has nothing to do with whether or not what she wrote was innacurate. That could only be dealt with by a civil defamation trial, or a criminal libel trial. Therefore, her history as a journalist who reports the truth cannot be determined on the basis of this case.
Dear misguided Aidan - of course it matters whether somone understands what the specific duties and responsibilities of a freelance news reporter are if THEY, YOU or any other IDIOT 'publish' something about the actual nature of the job and about any professional doing the job.
Also, Aidan you misguided person, tell me somthing: what lies did Deirdre Tynan write in the Examiner? One lie will do? What did she write that was not accurate and that was subsequently published in the examiner? Eh? C'mon Aidan, just one lie will do but be specific and support your answer!! -- Again, Dear misguided Aidan, I think we will get a generalised answer full of presumption and bias from a guy who should clearly devote more time to learning facts than professing inaccuracies!
By the way -- this is a message board similar to all the other message boards for soccer, rugby and popstars' fans -- why fool yourselves by pretending Indymedia.ie some sort of special online publication?
Tynan's piece about the anarchists was fine. Stop obsessing about the poor woman who pricked ye're bubble of well educated privilege. Unlike most of ye she has to work for a living somewhere other than a university.
The problem was not simply that it was not 'fine' but that she knew it was not going to be 'fine', got pissed, and invited those she was attacking to sympathise with her predicament of publishing what she knew to be crap because she needed the job. Very, very odd yes. Fine, no.
I'm just a humble law student but I'd like to point out that the examiner is up in court in relation to breach of guidelines for the media in relation to reporting during specific legal argument - in which case reportage would not be a lie under any circmstances, simply prohibited on some occassions!
Also, I believe a few publications, including the UCD Tribune, are up in front of the court in relation to a breach of the same guidelines, which is quite common in high-proifile murder cases that last for a lengthy period!
The thick-headed eejit who said the examiner was in court because of a reporter's LIES should take great care when writing such things when a court case ongoing, for their own sake! It is inaccurate legally and the person who wrote that lies were published can be traced via their computer's I.P.300 serial code/address and be taken to court for civil defamatioin by any member of the staff of the examiner, the reporter who covered the case and, of course, the editor.
Also, you should not make a determination in relation to the case before the judge does or you could get done for contempt!
At last, some sense in this website -- the comment that Deirdre Tynan wrote lies in the examiner is not only inaccurate but also ethically inexcusable.
Who edits the content on this message board? Allowing diatribe against any professional just because it agrees with your views is ethically wrong and very, very lazy! Perhaps you are afraid to upset the people in your little group whom you know as friends and drinking buddies --- but to drag an innocent party in to that back-slapping cosiness is not fair!
A blast from the past that goes a little way to explaining why Tynan is not so popullar in these parts. The 3rd paragraph is pretty prophetic
---
A conversation with Deirdre Tynan of Ireland on Sunday
A drunk women approached me at the Bad Thoughts meeting last Thursday. 'Listen, I need to talk to you, we need to go somewhere quiet, I cant talk here'. Here was a small upstairs room of a pub, which was filled with good natured anarchists chatting and drinking. I thought her furtiveness was a bit strange, but nevertheless, we sat down in a quiet comer. "The thing is" she said glancing nervously around her
"I feel awful, I feel terrible, I'm a journalist, I've been sent here to write a hatchet job, but I feel sympathetic to what you are doing. The article will come out on Sunday - I feel terrible. I write for Ireland on Sunday and I've been told to get a certain type of story, and I'm going to write it but there is nothing I can do. I have to pay my rent. I used to work for the Daily Mail in Paris. But I got sick of writing lies about Roma. It is so right wing. So I quit. But now I'm in Dublin and I have to write this story. But then all publicity is good publicity isn't it."
Well no, I told her. All publicity is not good publicity. If you write a story about violent anarchists it will have two effects. Firstly, it will mean that nobody will be interested in any alternative vision of the future we might have. Secondly it creates a climate of fear which allows the police and state to use violence against us. In Genoa, the press reported, in the days coming up to the protest, that there might be bomb attacks on the city. No such attacks materialised (because they were nothing more than police fiction). What did materialise was a situation in which the police felt free to gas, beat and ultimately shoot one of the protestors. So, no, all publicity is not good publicity. Ignoring my point, she continued, "the police are out to get you, they have been sending in press releases, they are getting trained by the PSNI. I feel so bad, what am I going to do?"
Well you need a personal ethical framework I said. "That's impossible," she said.
I told her I worked as a sociologist and we have professional ethical guidelines, one of which is that if you interview someone, you tell them first who you are. Couldn't you at the very least do that? Couldn't you at the very least not write lies? Couldn't you at the very least not take quotes out of context? Couldn't you at the very least report our statements. She didn't answer, except to re-iterate how bad she felt and that she needed to pay her rent. I suggested she should look at the NUJ ethical guidelines.
"Those don't apply anymore," she said. "Those are from the sixties." She had a brainstorm "I could take my name off the article?"
This bizarre suggestion indicated that her concern was more for her own good name, than for any damage her article would do, or indeed with any concern with the truth. Surprise, surprise, this lack of concern for the truth is evident in the article which finally appeared in Ireland on Sunday. She spoke of having 'infiltrated' a meeting whereas in fact, she attended a widely advertised and open public meeting. She spoke of hate-filled anarchists she met there, whereas in fact, she spent the evening talking drunkenly to many anarchists whose politeness and patience were stretched in the extreme by her continual concern with having to sell her soul in order to pay her rent. She spoke of plots, where there had been open discussions on a variety of political issues. She spoke of thousands of anarchist protesters, where there had been about forty at the meetings. I could go on.
I was the contributor who wrote the 'facts'. But I'll clear it up for ye again. Most of you haven't a clue apart from a couple of sane contributors.
The story is....... the editor of the examiner is not in court because she told lies, he will be in court because she broke court guidlines by reporting a legal/technical argument. What she wrote was pure reportage, therefore she cannot have lied about it, she just wasn't meant to report on those particular words.
She was not fired, she had no job to be fired from.
Breaching court reporting guidelines is a common mistake, and can be easily done inadvertently.
Indymedia is as subject to the laws of defamation/libel as any other form of publishing. So be careful what you write if it is defamatory. The publishers (ie. indymedia's parent company) are liable, not the plonkers who post stuff. You could get the arse sued off you if you are not careful.
If you don't like what Tynan wrote about you, then, one of you, sue IoS for defamation!!!!!! If what you say is true, it is an open and shut case. Stop whining and do something about it.
I doubt if it was "common" mistake as then we'd hear about papers in the courts regularly over this.
And you've made clear about the "fired" thing quit harping on about it.
Deirde's ethic's and professionalism are a joke.
We both know that the libel laws in this country are a joke designed to protect the wealthy and powerful.
Deirde's article and ethics are in question here, a week before she attended the meeting (which I don't see you or her deny her words or actions) she approached indymedia eager to be involved, obviously a ruse, but contemptable as she kept saying how commited she was to antigobalisation causes and how she loathed what she had to write.
The article on IoS and Deirde's behaviour are examples of the systematic lack of interest in credible and unbiased reporting. the kind of thing you accuse of us.
Simple things like "the facts" "the truth" "journalistic standards" and "professional ethics" are clearly lacking in this person, yet you hold us to adhere to these qualities while she does not.
Talk about trying to have your cake and eat it.
The original post for this piece states:
"the Irish Examiner editor is in court next week, charged with Contempt of Court. Deirdre Tynan, while working for the Examiner, wrote a piece discussing the Brian Murphy/Anabel's case, in breach of court reporting guidelines.
The original "redflaremist" piece goes on to say:
"Her editor never checked the article. She was fired immediately once the error was discovered."
This was disputed on the explicit grounds that Tynan did not "work" for the IE:
"You are incorrect as usual - Deirdre Tynan never worked for the examiner, she was and is a freelance journalist and has worked for the examiner several times since the incident involving the reporting of the murphy case."
Now, I "R. Isible" found this very confusing because of the exact phrase "worked for". I understand that to mean that one expends time and energy on behalf of another person or goal. Something that Tynan clearly did. A rude person called "Mini" then introduced the word "employed" which was never used by the "redflaremist" piece or the attack on it by "Only one right way". It turns out that this "Mini" person and "Only one right way" argue that because a freelancer only gets paid per article then they can't be said to be "employed" and thus can't be "fired".
Fair enough. Tynan can't be fired. But she can be excluded from working-for-money-for-articles-but-not-being-employed. I hoped that "Mini" who is well informed about this would fill us in on whether Tynan's history of a lack of ethics (adequately demonstrated in her Independent on Sunday farrago and now suggested to have a deeper basis on the foot of this incident) has been subsequently not-employed-but-working-for the IE. Sadly "Mini" who is so verbose otherwise remains silent on this point.
I find this of interest because I really am interested in what the ethical standards for journalists are. I am genuinely quite staggered by the behaviour of Tynan and the Independent on Sunday. I wonder how common this is and "Mini's" ardent defence and knowledge of the situation suggests that at least one other "professional" journalist sees nothing wrong with this. I further wonder why the NUJ has done nothing along the lines of disciplining Tynan or condemning her behaviour as unfit for the professional standards of a journalist. Is the NUJ just a creepy little body with a fine sounding charter but an actual mission of fighting a losing battle against casualisation of labour?
Anyway, as I see it "redflaremist's" piece contains one small inaccuracy: the use of the word "fired". This has now been clarified and all that remains shining forth is how "professional" journalists like Tynan and "Mini" behave. I thank you both for your public demonstration of the actual operational ethics and beliefs of your profession.
At no stage did i say i was a journalist, someone else on the thread suggested that.
Saying that she was fired was 'one small inaccuracy' is a load of bollocks. Its one big inaccuracy.
Redflaremist's article insinuates (in an amateur way of course) that Tynan wrote something innacurate for the Ex. She didn't.
Re whether Tynan wrote for the Ex after the article??? Yes she did. The judge only charged Ex with contempt of court at the end of the trial. Between publishing the offending article and the end of the trial, Tynan wrote several more articles on the Murphy case. She was specialising in that case, as the Ex don't have the resources to keep a full-time reporter in the courtroom for a single case. Once that case had finished, there was no more need for her to write about it.
She is a freelancer, she moves around writing for different papers. She will probably write more for the Ex in the future.
NUJ is a trade union for journos, not a fucking press council. Its not its job to criticise its own members publicly, and it never will.
Mini your display of rudeness, sexism and stupidity is refreshing. It's not often that such a high level of debate occurs on indymedia and I have to thank you for raising the level and setting a standard to which we should all aspire. Your latest sally is gas! You say:
"Redflaremist's article insinuates (in an amateur way of course) that Tynan wrote something innacurate for the Ex. She didn't."
And all we have to do is to scroll up the top and look at "readflaremist's" post and it clearly says that what she did was to breach court reporting guidelines. Only a mind like yours that understands that "worked for" and "employed by" are completely exclusive could infer that "breach of court reporting guidelines" is the same thing as "wrote something inaccurate". Here's the bit you should get someone to read to you (in case you find it hard navigate your way in the mass of black marks that we call letters):
"Anyway, the Irish Examiner editor is in court next week, charged with Contempt of Court. Deirdre Tynan, while working for the Examiner, wrote a piece discussing the Brian Murphy/Anabel's case, in breach of court reporting guidelines. Her editor never checked the article. She was fired immediately once the error was discovered."
Keep it up. Your pedantic quibble about "firing" was correct. We've established that and the rest is just you ranting and raving. The fact remains that Tynan has displayed a lack of ethics. To you that doesn't mean much (possibly because you're unethical yourself), but I'd imagine there are other people in the NUJ to whom it should matter.
This isn't just imagination though. The NUJ itself says (see URI at bottom of page for the link to the Code of Conduct):
"1. A journalist has a duty to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards."
Strike one against Tynan. She signed her name to the bilge about "infiltrating" the anarchists.
" 2. A journalist shall at all times defend the principle of the freedom of the press and other media in relation to the collection of information and the expression of comment and criticism. He/she shall strive to eliminate distortion, news suppression and censorship.
Strike two. Distortion as above.
" 3. A journalist shall strive to ensure that the information he/she disseminates is fair and accurate, avoid the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or misrepresentation."
Now what do you think of that "Mini"?
"4. A journalist shall rectify promptly any harmful inaccuracies, ensure that correction and apologies receive due prominence and afford the right of reply to persons criticised when the issue is of sufficient importance."
Or how about that "Mini"?
Anyway, you get the point, or else you don't want to or else can't. I rest my case.
Oh, and I'd suggest you lay off the insults. It doesn't do much for your argument.
Just because you are aware of the existence of the NUJ Code of Conduct doesn't mean that you have any insight into this argument. You all think you are some form of alternative media, but you are really just a message board for spotty, hairy, friendless freaks who don't know the first thing about journalism. How's that for an insult!
The NUJ code of conduct is not legally binding in any way, shape or form. In fact, any journos I know think its a load of crap, as is the NUJ.
The only way to regulate the press is through libel law, not some fucking wishy-washy code of conduct that no-one gives a shit about.
Why don't you and your ilk use these laws to get some sort of recompense from IoS instead of crying into your ponchos here on indymedia? No-one cares about your moaning about Tynan all the time. Do something about it if she was so horribly wrong!
To contradict earlier postings on this thread from muppets who claim that the examiner being in court somehow has something to do with Tynan and her 'shoddy' journalism, here are some of the judges comments today:
"Judge White said he was also satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that the 'Irish Examiner' had committed a criminal contempt in publishing matters that were dealt with the absence of the jury.
However, he said he fully accepted that the article was a result of inadvertence and a genuine mistake." He also noted the newspaper's apology after it published the article written by a freelance journalist. "
Irish Times breaking news, today
It clearly establishes that Deirdre Tynan while employed as a freelance journalist for the IE wrote an article in breach of court reporting guidelines and that the IE published this freelance journalist's work in error. I hope they won't make the mistake of trusting her judgement again. A repeat incident would probably see an editor and newspaper receiving much less lenient treatment from a judge.
I stumbled upon this discussion from 5 years ago and felt it needed an ending.
Well, the Examiner didn't get into any real bother over Ms. Tynan's error.
Deirdre Tynan went on to win the top news award at the 2004 ESB Irish Journalist Awards. She won the 'Story of the year Award' for her investigative article, published in the Ireland On Sunday newspaper, which exposed irreparable flaws in the government's 60 million euro e-voting system. The system was later scrapped. The full citation is available on the website of the ESB, who were the event sponsors in 2004.
A check on the news database Lexis-Nexis shows that Deidre Tynan went on to write both court and general current affairs articles for the Irish Examiner for several more years. She has also written for the Irish Mail On Sunday, the Irish Times and The Sunday Tribune. For UK editors, she has written for both The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. She has also written articles for the New York Daily News, New York.
She left Ireland in 2005 and attended a Graduate M.A. programme at New York University, New York, specifically aimed at developing the special skills of experienced journalists. There, she developed a speciality in reporting on Central Asian Affairs. Also, according to the website of the journalism department in NYU, she graduated from NYU's MA programme in 2007.
She is now based in Bishkek, in Krgyzstan. According to NYU, the Irishwoman is currently the Chief Central Asian Correspondent for EurasiaNet, a central asian news reporting service.
She was the second Irish female journalist to report from Afghanistan after the Taliban fell. She was also one of only a handful of western journalists to report from Turkmenistan when the dictatorship there fell. She was smuggled into that country via a lorry at a time when there were explicit threats against western journalists and monitors that they would be harshly treated by both pro and anti-government forces if they were discovered to have entered the region.
She has most recently reported the conflict between Georgia and Russia as well as reporting on normal day-to-day matters in the central Asian region.
And, of course... none of the other people who posted anonymously on this website and criticised her work were ever heard of again.
Indymedia Ireland is a media collective. We are independent volunteer citizen journalists producing and distributing the authentic voices of the people. Indymedia Ireland is an open news project where anyone can post their own news, comment, videos or photos about Ireland or related matters.