Well, now you can. The Press Ombudsman and Press Council of Ireland are now fully up and running. They launched a new website on New Year’s Day (it’s not just a new-look site, it’s a whole new website, with new urls for everything, which – annoyingly – meant that I have had to recode the links in my earlier posts on this topic). More to the point, the Ombudsman and Council are now ensconced in their new premises at 1, 2 & 3 Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2, and following yesterday’s formal launch (Blurred Keys | Irish Examiner | Irish Independent | Irish Times (sub req’d) here and here | Press Gazette) they are now (eventually! thankfully!!) open for business. So, if you think that a print publication has breached the Press Council’s Code of Practice for Newspapers and Periodicals, you can now make a complaint to the Ombudsman and thereafter to the Press Council.
The shiny new website comes complete with a shiny new slogan:
Time will tell whether this process really is a new Charter – the claim strikes me as a tad grandiloquent. However, after too much vacillation, it is now at least well begun; and, as my Irish teacher taught me:
tosach maith leath na h-oibre!
(For the non-Irish speaking reader, this translates as: a good start is half the work).
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[...] Act sets out the minimum requirements such a body must meet to be so recognised. The Irish media established a Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman with effect from 1 January 2009. [...]