Journalist ‘ostracised’ after Garda chief query
FORMER Irish Independent journalist Gemma O’Doherty told the tribunal she was ‘ostracised’ and branded a ‘rogue reporter’ after calling to the then-Garda commissioner Martin Callinan’s home.
She went to his house to check his address in April 2013, after a Pulse report appeared to show he had penalty points for speeding quashed, she said. The tribunal has heard he was ‘extremely angry’ that she went to his house instead of asking the press office.
That evening, she received a call from INM senior editor Ian Mallon, who was ‘in a very serious temper’. In the following days, she was ‘completely ostracised’ at the newspaper, called a rogue reporter and told ‘the commissioner had thought I was a renegade Republican’.
A front page article was run about the commissioner’s quashed points. Mr Callinan has told the tribunal that the points were quashed because he was on urgent Garda business at the time.
Separately, Anne Harris, the former editor of the Sunday Independent, told the tribunal that at an editorial meeting in 2014 she was told by current Irish Independent editor Fionnan Sheahan that garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe was a paedophil.
Rossa Fanning SC, for Independent Newspapers and Mr Sheahan, said his clients would deny this when they gave evidence.
Ms Harris denied that she was motivated by animosity.