Susan McKay: ‘There’s a lot of loose anger in this country at the moment’

On Susan McKay’s office walls, the shared theme of prints of paintings by Jack B Yeats, Johannes Vermeer and Gabriël Metsu is letter-writing. For a Press Ombudsman keen for more people to know they can contact her office, the choice of art is fitting.

“We want to promote the notion that people have a say,” says McKay.

This is in the interest of the press for two reasons. The first is that it is often the feeling of having no say that sparks public distrust of the media. In some quarters, hostility towards journalists has become noticeably visceral.

“There’s a lot of loose anger in this country at the moment,” she says. “There’s a lot of people who are very ready to lose their tempers.”

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The other reason is financial: McKay is campaigning for politicians and other public figures who might be on the verge of litigation against member publications of the Press Council – exposing them to “potentially ruinous” costs – to make a complaint to her instead.

People have the right to go to law, she accepts, but there are “compelling reasons” to eschew that path for the service provided by her office. It’s free, faster than the courts and can offer redress for a broader sweep of code-breaching journalism and journalistic behaviour than just defamation.

“It’s not in the interest of democracy that newspapers should be spending their dwindling resources trying to defend defamation cases when there is an alternative system in place,” she says.

Politicians from across the political spectrum have availed of the ombudsman’s office in the past, the first being then minister for health Mary Harney. So why is the first instinct of certain figures to call their lawyers?

“Some of them feel that there is a prestige, I think, to going to law, which they obviously don’t think applies to coming to the Press Ombudsman’s office,” says McKay, who sees it as her task to get people to attach a similar status to an upheld complaint by her office as they do to a legal victory.

Sometimes people taking legal cases covet the money from a big win, too, though it is “very striking” how so many people with valid complaints against media outlets don’t seek money at all, simply vindication.

Legal threats alone can pose existential risks to publications. The costly, time-sapping nature of the onerous Irish defamation regime means that even when outlets successfully defend actions, their budgets take a hit. While the Defamation Bill probably will lead to lower costs, McKay rather ominously predicts that the hard times afflicting the press industry mean “this may not be enough”.

Might some public figures who take legal cases actually like the idea that the press is so financially vulnerable?

“Perhaps they do. But I do think they need to stop and think. Is it in their interests that we diminish the ability of the press to do its proper job, which is holding power to account and telling the news? Is it in anybody’s interest if you effectively risk forcing newspapers to cut staff or shut down? It’s not.”

Tellingly, it was partly because the media landscape was “getting more and more difficult” for former freelancers like her that McKay applied to succeed Peter Feeney as the third press ombudsman.

Although she hasn’t yet found time to discuss it with the Press Council – the 13-strong body of independent and industry figures who appointed her – she would rather be called the press ombudsperson, having consulted and received a favourable verdict from translator Frank Wynne on the Old Norse roots of the word in response to “various people” insisting that “ombudsman” wasn’t gendered.

We’re independent of Government and we’re independent of the industry, but the industry funds us

—  Press Ombudman Susan McKay

Since beginning her term in October 2022, it has been a busy and “fascinating” first year-and-a-quarter for the journalist, author and self-described Derry Girl, so much so that a book she was writing about borders – both those that divide countries and “the kind of boundaries people cross and don’t cross” – and had been close to finishing remains uncompleted.

And McKay’s in-tray isn’t set to lighten any time soon. Asked to depart its modest Pearse Street premises, the organisation – known in full as the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman – is now negotiating a new lease. Rows of second-hand leather chairs occupy a patch of its existing floorspace, ready to furnish a large meeting room that McKay hopes will fit up to 30 people and allow for the holding of media literacy events and meetings between members of the public and the press to discuss sensitive and often misunderstood journalistic practices, such as court reporting.

Between this greater public outreach, a renewed drive to enlist more member publications to the Press Council, the push “to make sure that as many people as possible know that we exist”, and new challenges such as the uses and abuses of AI, the chances are that the volume of complaints landing in her inbox will rise. In 2023, there were 305, up from 260 the year before.

Still, there are limits to what the organisation can do with just two full-time staff (McKay and case manager Bernie Grogan) and a vacant part-time administrator post.

In a follow-up email after our initial conversation, McKay writes that she knows Press Council member publications – which include a growing list of younger, smaller online-only titles – are “committed to funding the Office of the Press Ombudsman as it is the engine of the whole self-regulatory system”.

But there doesn’t seem to be much escaping the fact that resources are “very tight”, even to cope with the current level of complaints.

[ Susan McKay: Press Ombudsman appointment is positive for women ]

[ Journalist and author Susan McKay appointed Press Ombudsman ]

“This coming year we will be eating into our reserve funds and that obviously isn’t sustainable longer term because we don’t have vast reserves, so it’s something that has to be kept constantly under review.”

The administrator job used to be full-time, but the budget now makes that impossible, and though McKay would like more funding for education initiatives, Press Council members’ strained finances mean that’s not on the cards, so she has applied for communications funding from Coimisiún na Meán, the broadcasting (and soon online video-sharing platform) regulator.

“We’re independent of Government and we’re independent of the industry, but the industry funds us. It’s important that we’re funded by the industry in such a way that we’re capable of responding to whatever number of complaints that we get,” says McKay.

The self-regulatory system is “a good model” for the industry, she notes, as its representatives can set and review the Press Council code of practice, which lists 11 principles that must not be breached. It’s a “very healthy sign” that more publications have joined the Press Council of late, though she attributes this to a less healthy phenomenon.

“There is a sense of solidarity, which may come in part from the fact that there are now people who describe themselves as journalists but don’t necessarily operate to anything like the same standards.”

These fractious times are reflected in the nature of the complaints McKay receives. Potential breaches of the eighth principle – a commitment to not publish material intended or likely to cause grave offence or stir up hatred on the basis of 12 grounds, including race, religion and gender – may not have been cited by complainants last year as often as those relating to principles on truth and accuracy, privacy and distinguishing fact and comment. But she anticipates an increase in such prejudice cases in 2024.

“There are quite a lot of complaints at the moment related to issues of asylum seekers, refugees, the crisis in accommodation for people coming into the country and the attitudes towards the use of community facilities,” she says.

“It’s really important that the media stays serious and calm in the midst of it all so that we do steer our way through it, standards are upheld, and we don’t fall into practices that aren’t the most rigorous.”

What the first press ombudsman, John Horgan, called “fresh air journalism” is vital to avoid mistakes – from the misidentification of protest organisers to the “feel” of a demonstration – that can spring from reliance on social media for information.

“There are certain things that I see happening that are very reminiscent of the North, especially that whole thing of certain people putting themselves forward as spokespersons and being reported as such. Somebody says they are a spokesperson for such and such community. Really? Who says?”

This is where local newspapers traditionally came into their own, and still do, with the reporters they employ able to identify who consistently speaks in the interest of the community and who has just popped up to claim that role for themselves. It would be “a serious loss” to democracy if local newspapers disappeared, says McKay.

The problem is that social media isn’t just providing people with alternative narratives, it is doing so at hyper-fast speeds, compounding the sense that news should be immediate and meaning “instantly obtainable from looking at something”, which isn’t necessarily the case. Most recently, she witnessed this from the top of the bus stalled near Parnell Square as the Dublin riot broke out: other passengers “automatically” got out their phones to film what was happening.

There is no freedom of the press if journalists aren’t safe. We need to take a stand on these things

—  Press Ombudsman Susan McKay

Media outlets aren’t only contending with this pressure in an era of ever-shrinking resources, they’re doing so within a tenser climate. Not all demonstrations involve intimidation of the media, McKay stresses. Most protesters welcome the attention of the press, media coverage often being a big reason for holding protests in the first place.

“But there are people who have a grievance about what they call the mainstream media and people who are deemed to be representative of it may not feel safe.”

Nowhere is violence against journalists more in evidence in 2024 than in Gaza, where huge numbers of reporters and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces. But McKay has experienced the loss of colleagues closer to home, too. This is the first year of the Lyra McKee student bursary, a partnership between the Press Council and four universities set up in honour of the freelance journalist, who was 29 when she was shot dead while observing a riot in Derry in 2019.

“I knew her quite well, and it was so shocking, so, so shocking what happened.”

Around the world, aggressive attitudes towards the media often have a misogynistic, undermining thread, says McKay.

“Quite a lot of the people who would intimidate journalists in general are also quite sort of macho and they have an attitude to young women journalists in particular that is unacceptable,” she says.

“There is no freedom of the press if journalists aren’t safe. We need to take a stand on these things.”

McKay, a former Northern Ireland editor of the now defunct Sunday Tribune newspaper, has a track record of taking stands: one of the founders of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre in the 1980s, she is also a previous chief executive of the National Women’s Council of Ireland.

Her background as a “highly opinionated” journalist, known for writing opinion columns, meant some people expected her to initiate complaints, not understanding that this isn’t how the ombudsman role works.

She has stopped writing for newspapers for now – it would be “mortifying” if one of her articles was to attract complaints – and speaks of a need to be careful to avoid controversies, both when publishing her unfinished book and talking publicly, including in this interview. Nobody should be put off using her office to make a complaint, she says.

In any case, her personal beliefs don’t arise when she is deciding whether or not a complaint should be upheld. The only thing that matters is whether or not the code has been breached.

Over the years, her writing has foregrounded people who feel excluded and unrepresented – the people who often don’t know that they can seek redress when they are on the receiving end of unfair coverage.

Her background helps her to see both sides, she says.

“I know the conditions under which journalists have to work, and they’re often quite challenging, but I’ve also worked with victims’ organisations in the North. I’m very, very aware of how powerful the media is and how overwhelming it can be to find yourself caught up in it.”

Both this work with the Wave Trauma Centre for victims and survivors of the Troubles and the “eye-opening” nature of some of the complaints she handles as ombudsman has prompted a degree of retrospection when it comes to her own journalism.

“I think when you’re a journalist you tend to be quite blasé about being published and seeing your name in print. It’s a good thing to see your name in print. But if you’re a member of the public and you’re in some sort of difficult, probably very traumatic situation in your life that causes you to come to the attention of journalists, it can be really overwhelming and life-changing to end up in the media.”

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