Noel Doran Declines Right To Reply In Allison Morris Scandal - with updated correspondence

Today The Pensive Quill carries correspondence between NUJ Member-for-life Ed Moloney and Irish News Editor Noel Doran that previously featured on The Broken Elbow.

Scroll down for updated (October 3) correspondence

Noel Doran Declines Right To Reply In Allison Morris Scandal
Ed Moloney
September 30, 2013

Some of my readers will be aware of the ongoing dispute between my colleague Anthony McIntyre and Noel Doran, editor of The Irish News and one of his senior reporters, Allison Morris over, inter alia, that newspaper’s coverage of an interview Morris had with Dolours Price and the consequent subpoenas served on Boston College by the US government on behalf of the PSNI.

Recently I contacted Noel Doran by email offering him the right to reply to an article that had appeared on McIntyre’s Pensive Quill blog which I intended to reproduce as an act of solidarity over threats from lawyers to close down his site. I reproduce the exchange below and beneath that the original article at the heart of this argument. Suffice it to say Noel Doran never took up my offer (click on each email and article extract for a larger version).

The emails:

From: Ed Moloney
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2013 14:28
To: Noel Doran
Subject: comment

dear noel
I have been asked and have agreed to run this piece on my own blog, thebrokenelbow.com. it originally appeared on anthony mcintyre's pensive quill blog and has been the subject of some dispute between himself and yourself which has led, sadly, to the threat by you to close his site down. anyone who knows me will be aware of my feelings about censorship in all its forms and needless to say i view the threat to silence any writer with the utmost distaste. it has always been my view that journalism should be characterised by the free flow of commentary with the reader, not the libel court, being the final arbiter. accordingly i believe this matter should have been settled via the right to reply mechanism, thereby allowing yourself or ms morris or both to correct & challenge perceived wrongs and inaccuracies. that being the case, i would like to extend the same invitation to yourself and will withold publication until i hear back from you. take care.

best regards

Ed Moloney

From: Ed Moloney
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 11:54
To: Noel Doran
Subject: anthony mcintyre

dear noel
a week ago i emailed you offering you and aliison morris the right to reply to an article that had appeared on anthony mcintyre's pensive quill web blog that i intended to re-post on my own thebrokenelbow.com blog. not only have you failed to indicate whether you wish to take up this offer you have not even acknowledged receipt of my email. i offered you the right to reply as i think it is most important that people who feel they have been misrepresented should have the maximum opportunity to put the record straight. when people do not take up such offers, however, they can hardly complain if others conclude it is because they have nothing to say and no defence to make. in case this is not the situation with you i will defer posting the mcintyre article until next monday which gives you another four days or so to take up the offer of a reply. if i don't hear from you by this time on monday i shall have to assume that you do not wish to respond to these charges. take care.

best regards

Ed Moloney

From: Noel Doran
Date: September 27, 2013 at 10:01
To: Ed Moloney
Subject: your message

Hi Ed,

There is no record of any previous email from you arriving here last week or indeed in the last year. Perhaps you could indicate exactly when your message was sent and to which address. It is also a little curious that you are offering the right of reply to an unspecified article which you have yet to publish. Again, it would be helpful if you would identify the piece from Anthony McIntyre which you are proposing to use.

Noel Doran.

From: Ed Moloney
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2013 10:31
To: Noel Doran
Subject: Re: comment

dear noel, you write saying that you have no record of having received an email from me. here below is that email, sent to the same address as yesterday's email and dated september 19th, eight days ago. as you can see i enclosed a copy of the pensive quill piece for you to read.

best regards

Ed

As published on The Broken Elbow:

Continue reading on The Broken Elbow or The Pensive Quill

UPDATED OCT 3rd – ~~ONE, TWO~~ THREE NOEL DORAN E-MAILS AND RESPONSES

The following emails were sent by Noel Doran to Ed Moloney on October 3rd, 2013. Ed Moloney's response to each email follows in chronological order.

From: Noel Doran
Date: 3 October 2013 12:18
To: Ed Moloney
Subject: your website

Ed,

I note that two specific allegations against me have appeared on your website. The first is that I declined to reply to emails from you and the second is that I was involved in a threat to close down Anthony McIntyre’s blog. Both claims are entirely untrue.

As I pointed out to you in my email of September 27, the only message I received from you arrived the previous day. Further investigation confirmed that two other emails from you were automatically blocked by our firewall on September 19 and 27 because they contained profanities. It is standard practice for newspapers to maintain firewalls of this nature, in order to prevent abusive material or indeed viruses from entering our email system. If we wish to allow an email which was initially blocked by our firewall to be delivered, a relatively straightforward procedure is in place. However, we need to be made aware, usually through a telephone call, that a message has not received a response. As I had informed you that I had not received at least one of your emails, I do not understand why you instead alleged that I was failing to respond to you.

Your website further states firstly that attempts were made by lawyers to shut down Mr McIntyre’s website and then that I was the person who instigated this process. As Mr McIntyre has put the legal correspondence online, it should be made entirely clear to you that a reasonable request was made for the removal of abusive material but no mention was made at any stage of shutting down the website. It is also quite obvious that the legal correspondence was on behalf of my colleague, Allison Morris.

I believe that you have an urgent responsibility to correct the misleading and indeed false claims about me which you have placed on your website.

If you also wish me comment on the shameful article you have published, which uses an invented by-line to make malicious personal attacks, please let me know.

Noel Doran.

I will make a couple of comments. Firstly, readers can check my emails of 19th and 27th September for the presence of any profanities. I can see none and indeed I am not in the habit of using them in emails. That is not my style. Either there is something very wrong with the Irish News’ firewall or something very wrong with Noel Doran’s understanding of how such things work.

Secondly, I am glad that Noel Doran is no longer seeking to close down The Pensive Quill and that he now prefers the route of reply to legal action against those he has quarrels with. I have already offered Noel Doran the right to reply and of course that offers remains extant.

Another Noel Doran e-mail:

From: Noel Doran
Date: 3 October 2013 14:30
To: Ed Moloney
Subject: your website

Ed.

I note that you are replying to me online, so feel free to publish this response as well. If you check, you will find that the profanities picked up by our firewall were contained in the article, under the invented by-line of Paul Campbell, which you sent to me (September 19). Your second paragraph may be your way of admitting that almost everything you claimed in your original post was wrong, but you have yet to explain why you believe that the use of pseudonyms to make personal attacks through your website is justified.

Noel Doran.

Noel – I am glad, at least, that you now implicitly accept that the email I sent you on September 27th contained no profanities at all and that there were none in my substantive message to you on the 19th. But why did you include these in your complaint when you knew it wasn’t so?

As for a writer using a nom de plume or as you prefer to call it “a pseudonym”, there is a long, distinguished and honorable record of this happening in literature, politics and newspapers, from JK Rowling to Stephen King, from the Bronte sisters to Benjamin Franklin; the Irish Times used Quidnunc, Hibernia used Tom Luby and the Federalist Papers were by-lined by Publius, all to hide the true identity of the authors. So nothing new or remarkable about it happening on a blog. It’s part of the history of human literature. You can read about the practice here and here.

A third e-mail from Noel Doran:

From: Noel Doran
Date: 3 October 2013 16:50
To: Ed Moloney
Subject: your website

Ed,

To summarise, you suggested that I had declined to reply to your messages, that I had attempted to close down Anthony McIntyre’s website and that the email you sent me on September 19 did not contain any profanities. Each of these claims is demonstrably untrue, and you have been reduced to playing with words in your responses. Your final attempt to compare the malicious nonsense you published under a fake by-line to the work of the Bronte sisters and Benjamin Franklin represents an entirely appropriate conclusion to this debate.

Noel Doran.

So, Noel, I guess that means you won’t be giving a response to The Pensive Quill article after all? That’s a pity. You call it “nonsense” and if so it should be easy for you to answer and demolish. Since you won’t do that you can hardly complain if some people conclude you won’t respond because you can’t.

One final word on anonymity in journalism. Doesn’t the Irish News grant anonymity to sources for its stories all the time, not least Allison Morris in her various pieces on dissident republican groups? I understand and approve and have done it myself often but pray, what is the difference between that and a writer using a nom de plume to ensure his/her anonymity.

On that note this tedious exchange has ended.