Journalist stands over articles about former soccer star
While he never said Mr Speedie was a criminal, it was true to say he associated with a gangland figure, Mr McCaffrey said.
“I did not say he was a criminal but that he was associated with Ritchie Thompson, a senior member of ‘Fat’ Freddy Thompson’s gang”, he said.
He was being cross-examined on the second day of an action against the Sunday World over two articles in April 2011 which Mr Speedie claims defamed him as they falsely meant he was engaged in criminal activity, was involved in smuggling or transportation of drugs, and had links to gangland crime.
He is suing the newspaper’s publishers, Sunday Newspapers Ltd, editor Colm McGinty, and Mr McCaffrey who wrote the stories. The defendants deny defamation and plead that the words in the articles were true.
Under cross-examination yesterday, Mr Speedie claimed most of what he had been quoted as saying in the articles had been made up.
While he had had a phone conversation with Mr McCaffrey, he would not speak about personal matters with someone he did not know. As soon as the journalist started talking about Freddy Thompson, he told him to “fuck off” and put down the phone.
“He is well wrong and he knows it, sat there, he knows he is a liar.”
In his evidence, Mr McCaffrey, now news editor with UTV Ireland, said he got a lot of informa-tion directly from the conversation he had with Mr Speedie when he rang him on April 8, 2011. He said he did not get a chance to ask him many questions as “he was happy to talk and talked away”.
“I got the impression, he was happy to get it off his chest and he was happy to give information, information which I had not known of beforehand.”
The contemporaneous note he took reflected the conversation and what he wrote in the paper.
The hearing continues.
