DCU welcomes decision by Press Council to uphold complaints about two SPHE articles
The complaint was in relation to two articles published on 4 and 24 October 2024 by Gript about a postgraduate diploma course in SPHE/RSE run by DCU for secondary school teachers.
Social, Personal and Health Education/Relationships and Sexuality Education (SPHE/RSE) is a secondary school subject that has
regularly been targeted by far-right groups in Ireland in recent years
.
The DCU course teaches tutors and SPHE coordinators about the syllabus, offered at schools, which has changed in recent years.
The Gript articles were based on testimony by former SPHE teacher Mary Creedon. In its correspondence with the Press Ombudsman and Press Council, Gript said it also reviewed documents and other materials and relied on statements from other unnamed course participants.
In a video that was widely shared last year, Creedon alleges that while on the DCU course,
she watched a video depicting a female cartoon masturbating and other images showing sex and sexual activities between heterosexual and homosexual couples.
She falsely claimed that she was expected to show similar imagery to her second-level junior-cycle students.
DCU said it was made 'explicitly clear to those taking the course that exercises and resources that were not age appropriate were not to be used in school classrooms'.
Audio by subterfuge
One of the articles also contained an audio clip that DCU said was 'obtained through subterfuge and without the knowledge or permission of those recorded'.
In a decision in May,
the Press Ombudsman upheld DCU's complaint and remarked that Gript provided 'no evidence' that the DCU course 'gave adult teachers to understand that sexually explicit exercises used during their training were to be replicated in school classrooms'.
'Adaptation of material so that it is age appropriate is not replication and to suggest otherwise, as the publication does, is distortion,' said the Press Ombudsman.
Regarding the audio recording, Gript acknowledged that it was obtained by a source using subterfuge and relied on the public interest justification.
However, the Press Ombudsman said this 'private, informal chat during a break in the course that revealed nothing of investigative import'.
It added that this 'material obtained by use of subterfuge was not justified by the public interest'.
It also found that those who were secretly recorded had a 'legitimate expectation that their conversation was private' and that while the right to privacy should not prevent publication of matters of public interest, this audio recording 'had no public interest content'.
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This audio recording was not made by a Gript employee but a person described by Gript as an 'an involved party' who believed it to be in the public interest.
The decision was appealed by Gript to the Press Council.
The Press Council appoints the Press Ombudsman and decides on appeals related to decisions of the Ombudsman.
Gript had claimed that there had been an error in the Press Ombudsman's application of the Truth and Accuracy, Fair Procedures and Honesty, and Privacy principles in the Press Council's Code of Practice.
However,
the Press Council last month upheld the decision by the Press Ombudsman
and said the Ombudsman didn't err in their application of these principles.
The Press Council said it considered the appeal at its meeting on 18 June 'on the grounds relied upon and on the information, documentation and submissions made by both parties to the appeal'.
It decided that Gript 'did not show that the Press Ombudsman had erred in her application of Principle 1 of the Code in respect of the publication's obligation to show that it had striven for truth and accuracy'.
One the use of the audio, the Council said the Ombudsman had not erred 'in as much as ultimate responsibility for publication of material obtained by subterfuge rests with the publication, and that publication of the information was not justified in the public interest'.
In her original decision, the Ombudsman said the audio clip 'indicated that vocabulary discussed at the DCU course 'came up' in a classroom setting. It does not show that the teacher brought up the vocabulary or that there was replication.'
'The Press Ombudsman finds that these articles were presented as a journalistic exposé,' she continued.
'However, while the articles indicated that the publication shared its sources' misgivings about the SPHE/RSE curriculum and what a source described as its 'gender ideology', the university has been funded precisely to support that curriculum. Gript.ie is entitled to express its views but is required by the Code of Practice to base its reporting on facts.'
In a statement today, DCU welcomed the decisions.
It noted that the Press Ombudsman found that the Gript articles 'contained no evidence that DCU was doing anything other than running a postgraduate course to enable adult teachers of SPHE/RSE to teach the subject to secondary school children'.
'The University has always maintained that materials used on the Graduate Diploma in SPHE/RSE are provided only to the teachers as adults in the context of their broader SPHE/RSE education on the programme,' said a DCU spokesperson.
'The Ombudsman's decision, and that of the Press Council, vindicates this. The University stands firmly over the content of the course and with the academic staff who deliver it.'
The spokesperson also noted that the Graduate Diploma in SPHE/RSE continues to train teachers and welcomed a new cohort at the beginning of this year.
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