Singer Dana wins settlement against Irish Times, Meta
Eurovision winner Dana Rosemary Scanlon has won a defamation settlement against the Irish Times and Meta Platforms Ireland.
The former MEP said she felt she had been treated with “anti-Christian bias” by the media.
“Sadly, I believe, over the past decades my beliefs and my personal faith were widely targeted, with a hostile and virulent anti-Catholic and anti-Christian bias,” said Dana.
While the settlement terms are confidential, Dana said on Tuesday that it had been a long 14 years spent in courts dealing with cases which she said could have been settled many years ago.
The singer’s defamation case arose from media coverage of the trial of her brother John Brown, who was acquitted in 2014 of sexual abuse charges dating back to the 1970s.
Since that time, Ms Scallon has successfully sued a number of media organisations including the Daily Mail NI, the Sunday World and Associated Newspapers for false claims made regarding her evidence in the case.
John Brown was unanimously acquitted on all charges and later received undisclosed sums in settlement of his own defamation cases.
In a statement today, Dana said: “People spend a lifetime building their good name and reputation and the damage caused by insidious and false headlines is immediate, life changing and long lasting.
”False allegations and comments and traverse the globe in a matter of seconds – especially on all social media platforms. Once there, it’s virtually impossible to correct or remove them”.
“Defamation can affect anyone’s life, especially those people in public life, whose careers, reputations and good names have been so publicly and often irretrievably damaged by defamatory headlines and derogatory social media comments,” Ms Scallon added.
‘UNDERLYING AGENDA BEHIND FALSE NEWS’
“Sir Cliff Richard, Louis Walsh, Paul Gambaccini and Former TD and Minister Pat Carey have all had to go through this same process, to resolve untrue and damaging allegation and headlines,” she said, adding:
“Their support and the support of my family and friends and so many people in this country, as well as that of my legal team, has helped sustain me through these past years.
“I have found that there is always an underlying agenda behind false news and that agenda provokes unsavoury and sensationalism with reporting that is exacerbated by online social media platform comments by reaching more people than ever before,” she said.
