Media law update: PCC privacy adjudication, Paul Kirkland and Wiltshire Gazette & Herald

The bread and butter of the glossy magazine industry is celebrity. Feeding the public’s fascination with the private lives of the rich and famous is giving rise to a seemingly unceasing battle between the right to expose and the right to protect privacy.

But while these arguments rage over splashes and exclusives, the regional press is getting on with what it does best: informing its readers about what matters in the locality, including what goes on in local courts and in our local streets.

However, the regional press can also fall victim to arguments of privacy invasion and unfair treatment.

Paul Kirkland of Wantage complained to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over the publication of photographs of his elderly mother-in-law on a public road at the scene of a car accident.

Published on the website of the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald on 13 February 2008, under the headline ‘Road closed after accident’ and in the newspaper the following day headlined ‘Driver trapped’, the photographs accompanied an article about an accident which caused long tail-backs in the area.

The online photograph showed the lady receiving treatment by the emergency services at the scene; her features were obscured in the following day’s newspaper. The grievance included complaints under clauses 3 and 5 of the PCC code, which deal with privacy and intrusion into grief or shock.

Of significant concern to the complainant was the fact that the online photograph had been published before the victim’s condition had been fully established. It had also been published before members of the family would necessarily have been alerted to the accident, and/or when they may have been in a state of shock.

The code provides at clause 5 that in cases involving personal grief or shock, ‘enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively’; it provides at clause 2 that ‘everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private life, home, health and correspondence’.

The PCC accepted that the post-complaint actions taken by the newspaper – removing the online photograph, publishing a critical letter from the complainant and an apology and apologising privately – constituted sufficient remedial action in respect of these clauses, although it would have upheld the complaint had this action not been taken.

‘There is a clear need for newspapers to exercise caution when publishing images that relate to a person’s health and medical treatment, even if they are taken in public places,’ it said.

This is entirely consistent with the House of Lords decision in Campbell v MGN Limited, in which the Lords found that publishing details of the model Naomi Campbell’s quasi-medical treatment at Narcotics Anonymous (NA), including a photograph of her on the steps outside the NA venue, was an infringement of her rights under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In this case, ‘there was insufficient public interest in a more routine incident such as a car crash to override the rights to privacy of the victim’, it said. However, the PCC carefully provided a caveat noting that ‘rare and large-scale events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters involve a degree of public interest so great that it may be proportionate and appropriate to show images of their aftermath without the consent of those involved’.

Neither has the PCC’s adjudication robbed the local press of its ability to report on important matters of public interest, given that it considered that the photograph which obscured the victim’s face was ‘just on the right side of the line’.

Investing in technology to pixellate and/or obscure faces is a sensible way for local publications to continue to serve the public interest in reporting important local matters. Such publications can both avoid infringing the rights of individuals and avoid the prohibitive costs of fighting privacy actions.