The Sun’s front page photograph of Wayne Rooney’s six-year-old son, Kai, looking distressed after England’s defeat, appears to have upset his mother.
Coleen Rooney tweeted: “It’s absolutely shocking”. But it was unclear exactly what she did find shocking: the use of any image of her son, it being adjacent to the headline “Dumbs gone to Iceland”, or the fact that it portrayed him near to tears.
Similar pictures of the boy were carried on the inside pages of other papers, including the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star and Metro.
Kai was with his mother at the match in France in which England were beaten 2-1 by Iceland. She also retweeted a comment by one of her Twitter followers that suggested she was critical of the Sun.
It said: “Hope you won’t let them away with that … shower of scumbags doing that to a child.”
But it is unlikely that Rooney will have cause to make a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) because the Sun, and all the other titles that used pictures of Kai, do not appear to have breached the editors’ code of practice.
The boy was attending a public event. He and his brothers Kaly, aged three, and five-month-old Kit, have often been pictured with their parents. Seven days ago, Rooney posted a photograph of the boys with their father on Twitter.
Although, at first glance, the Sun’s headline might have been misconstrued as a comment on Kai, it was clear from the copy that it referred to the England football team.
Rooney’s distress about the picture may have been linked to the fact that she had previously been criticised for taking him out of school to attend the tournament.
After online critics suggested she should be fined, Rooney countered: “Kai goes to a private school, so no fine. Extra work to take away with us, though.”
