A newspaper that published a picture of a schoolgirl who had been injured in a road accident has been censured by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) for three separate breaches of the editors’ code of practice.
The regulator ruled that the Derby Telegraph had invaded the girl’s privacy, had intruded into her grief or shock and, thirdly, had breached the clause that protects children under 16 from being photographed.
The mother of the girl, then aged 11, complained to Ipso following the publication on 20 November 2014 of an online article headlined “Girl involved in incident outside Derbyshire secondary school”.
It reported that the girl had been injured after it was believed she had been knocked down by a car outside a school. In an accompanying photograph of the scene, the girl was shown lying on the pavement.
Her face was pixelated but the girl tending to her, which turned out to be her sister, could be identified.
It transpired that the photograph was taken before the arrival of the emergency services by a member of the Derby Telegraph’s staff who happened to be passing.
Before publishing its report, the newspaper had contacted the school, police and ambulance service. The latter confirmed that it had been called to attend a teenager with a suspected leg injury.
The paper had not been able to contact the child’s family. Although it pixelated her face, the paper was unaware of the other girl’s relationship to her.
In her complaint to Ipso, the mother said the use of the photograph had added to the family’s distress. The incident was a private matter, and a photograph relating to the welfare of her children should not have been published without her consent.
She was also concerned that the newspaper had not pixelated the face of her uninjured daughter.
After being made aware of the complaint, the Derby Telegraph immediately removed the image from its website. It also offered to remove the article from its website, and to write a private letter of apology to the complainant.
Ipso’s complaints committee ruled that the immediate aftermath of an upsetting incident in which a young girl had been injured in full view of her sister was clearly an issue that related to the welfare of both girls.
The uninjured sister was readily identifiable in the photograph, and the injured sister was likely to be identified because of the familial connection.
Parental consent should have been sought for publication of the photograph, said the committee, and no exceptional public interest justified such publication without consent.
Although the photograph had been taken on a public street, the committee took the view that the injured child had had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The photographing of the child represented a failure to respect her private life.
And the committee further viewed the publication of the picture as distressing for the family, and so intruded into their grief and shock.
The Telegraph was therefore required by Ipso to publish its adjudication, which can be found here.
Source: Ipso
