Complaint
This series gave an account of the events leading up to the murder of Denis Donaldson. Jane Donaldson, his daughter, complained that it fell short of the BBC’s standards of accuracy and impartiality. The complaint focused on statements, by former Sunday World journalist Hugh Jordan and in the programme’s narration, that journalists had not revealed specific details about Mr Donaldson’s whereabouts in County Donegal before his death. Ms Donaldson said this was contradicted by a contemporaneous Sunday World article by Mr Jordan which identified the area where Mr Donaldson was living and described the cottage and its surroundings. She also complained that the series omitted other relevant information about the circumstances preceding Mr Donaldson’s murder and that the weight given to Mr Jordan’s account reflected a lack of impartiality on the part of the BBC. She further argued that the programme risked prejudicing anticipated legal proceedings.
Outcome
The ECU found that the question of whether Hugh Jordan had disclosed information about Denis Donaldson's whereabouts before his murder was an important element of the series and should have been properly verified against the contemporaneous reporting. Although the programme team had reviewed a digital archive version of the relevant Sunday World article, following the complaint they located a hard-copy version of a different edition of the paper in which the article included additional details identifying the area where Mr Donaldson was living and describing the cottage and its location. As a result, the ECU concluded that it was not duly accurate for the programmes to have given listeners the impression that no indication of Mr Donaldson's whereabouts in County Donegal had been published before his death, and that audiences had been materially misled. This aspect of the complaint was upheld
The ECU did not uphold the remaining aspects of the complaint. It found that decisions about what additional contextual information to include were matters of legitimate editorial judgement and that the omissions identified by Ms Donaldson did not materially mislead audiences. It also found no breach of the BBC’s standards in relation to potential prejudice to legal proceedings, or the allegation that the programme lacked due impartiality.
Partly upheld
Further action
The finding was reported to the management of BBC Northern Ireland and discussed with the editorial team concerned. The relevant episodes on the BBC Sounds version of the series were edited to reflect the finding and an explanatory note was added.