The Edi ' - The Leveson Inquiry

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For Distribution to CPs Private health details of ;)ublic figures or their famihes, are generally protected under the Code untass there is some public interest in revealing them -- such as when they might significantly affect the performance of a semor politician. But when a Sunday newspaper revealed specific health details of Government Minister David MiHband’s wife, in a story discussing their adoption of a child, the PCC judged it to be highly intrusive. Suchdetals should not have been published, it said, without explicit consent or some convincing public interest reason¯ It was a serious breach of the Oboe. ,’~: [;e~or~ 52 2~’~0 conversation secretlytaeed frorr Broadmoor Special Hospital, Where he was e patient, the PCC had to judge whether hisrigh~ had been breached The Commission decided that. as a result of Coonan’s crimes, his criminal career, medical condition and the c]reumstancas of his treatment and detention were properly matters for public scretmy and discussion, And, although the conversation -- run by the News of the World as the Ripper Tapes -- referred to his mental state, medical condition and treatment, the information was not particularly revealing, much of it was already in the public domain and it was not sufficiently private to be protected under the Code. The PCC rejected both the privacy complaint and another that the taping of the conversation had breached the Code’s provisions on the use of clandestine listening d~vices. ~.u~r;~ ¯ ~i ’~ ~ [/~~ ~/odd; f:;~.u~: m response to a complaint from Sir Paul McOartney, the PCC decided that Notre Dame cathedral, although a great pubIic monument thronged with tourists, was alSO a private place for a person at prayer It deprecated the publication of pictures in Holler magazine showing Sir Paul praying inside the cathedral soon after his wife’s death. While not orivataly owned, the cathedral was clearly a place where a person would have a reasonable expectation of Holiday, pictures: When supermodel Elle Macpherson was taking nor family on holiday, she chose a private villa on the private island of Musti~ue, which has no public beaches, and therefore provided a reasonable expectation of privacy for net children So when a celebrity magazine published shots of the family relaxing, her complaint to the PCC was upheld. ~,.4~c. ~er:, ~h ¢ Hello~ ,~e÷~:;:~,~t 7~ However, the PCC decided that, n the middle of summer, a publicly accessible Majorcar aeacn overlooked by holiday apartments was not a place where newsreader Anna Ford and nor partner mlgi~t reasonably expect privacy as they relaxed m their swimwear. It also said publication of the pictures did not show disrespect for her private life, The adjudication was ci~allenged on judicial review, but upheld by the Divisiona Court. ~.For~/Scott v Dai, / ~J~il i ©K ~ tv~a~z~n~ ;~eb~rt 52, 200[i A crowded beach is one thing, a quiet tearoom in barking, another. A diner complained that a picture of him tuck qg rote a 0utterscotch tart was taken without consent end used in a newspaper, The PCC said customers should reasonably expect to sit inside a quiet care without having to worry about surreptitious The Prince William pictures, in the PCC’I view, clearly breached the rule that photographs should not be taken without consent in e private place where the individual has e reasonable expectation of privacy. Mid-river in a South American wilderness was an example of just such a private place./n fact, the elements that contribute to a reasonable expectation of privacy have been delineated in a series of Commission rulings. Before publication, editors must decide: Was the person photographed out of the public view net visible or identifiable with the naked eye to someone in e public place? Was he or she engaged in e pdve~e activity at the time? tf the anent ~o either question is Yes, there are serious risks that the pictures could breach the Code. making e large withdrawal. So, when it did, Mr Kisby complained that it was an intrusion on his privacy that could nave led to security problems for him and his family. The magazine arc ued that the cashier was the ~ublic face of the bank and could not expect his identity to be concealed. However, the PCC ruled that publshing a photograph of a person, without consent, at his workplace was in this instance a clear breach of the Public or private space? Whle the interiors of publicly accessible buildings such as cathedrals, cafes, banks or Offices can constitute e private place within the Code the e~a~erior of e parson’s own home may not always do so. Mrs Gall Sheridan, the high-profile wife of a prominent Scottish politician, objected to a tabloid newspaper’s photograph, taken with a long lens, of her in her back garden. She claimed she had a reasonable expectation of privacy The newspaper disagreed, it said Mrs Sheridan was a public figure, standing on her driveway, visible from the street -- even without a long lens camera -- and was not engaged in any private activity, other than holding nor keys The PCC, in an adjudication puling together many of the factors upon which SUCh issues hinge, said that had Mrs Sheridan been hidden from view in an encfosed back garden, she might have been protected. But here she was clearly visible from the street and engaged in an innocuous activity. The fact that the photograph was taken with a long lens was photographs be ng taken and pub shed in newspapers, ~uttbw.~;~ . " o h a b h h th immareria~: wna~ was impor~m was n ~ ~ e me ns y w ~c e v uor~ n~ Adverbs÷r: ~÷por~ b~8 2002). Smilarv bankcashierMa~Kisb ddnote~ ecthis hate ra h p cture was taken but thet she was dentifiabletoordinarypessera- Y P P g P to appear, without consent, in a men’s magazine simply because he was snapped while serving a ’lottery lout’ millionaire who was by, The complaint was net upheId. (Sheridan v Sco’,~ish Sun" ~e~er~ 75 2007). MOD100036591 16
For Distribution to CPs ~ ~L~ ~L~C NTE~EST The PCC agreed that identlt~jing her house end showing the No judgment is more difficult than when weighing the privacy of the interiors in such circumstances without consent involved a degree ndiviOual against freedom of exore&slon and intrusion in the wider of intrusion way out of proportion to any public interest served by public interest ~S~;~ S~;~n ,~%t~ ~ub//c lr#eres~L The two principal highlighting the police raid or exposing a specific criminal offence. I&sues in making such a judgment are: i~k~°/~ ~ ,Sc~rbot~f~ ~v~nm~ Nevada: ~-:tet~ort / ? 2fJO~ Is publication of the private information genuinely in the public The warning about the dangers of relying on police invitations to interest? Andjoin such exercises was strongly reinforced when another weekly Is the degree of intrusion proportionate to the public interest newspaper accompanied a raid on a house suspected of having served? Stolen satellite navigation systems. No stolen goods were found, nor Sometimes editors surmount the first hurdle, only to fail at the charges brought, but the newspaper published intenor shots of the secena house including a teenager handcuffed in his bedroom. There were no such prob eros n dentifying the public interest Afthough the boy’s face had been pixellatad and no extenor when the then Tory MP Rupert All&son’s affair with a married woman pictures of the house were used, the Commission ruled that this was was splashed in a newspaper: He complained that it was his private a serious intrusion, It made clear that, as no stolen goods had been business. But the PCC ruled that as his election literature had lad found, there was no public interest in publishing the pictures. (~ constituents to believe he was a family man -- an Imor&ssion that ~g~n#n v ~rkinc, ~r~d E;~ge ;h~m Re~;;~;~er. f~e~.:,~l 7R 2{J08). had not been corrected -- Dublication was justifiec ~so~ ;/~.~r The PCC also reminded editors that under both the Code and .... ~ ~ ~ o~ current guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers, it is The Commission also found a public interest in the Evening the media’s responsibility when attending such raids to obtain Standard naming a counci worker who had warnea a friend that a permission from the owner tO enter the property before doing so. care-worker was a paedephile -- but had done nothing to alert the ACPO Guidance says: "Consent should be m a form which is capable of proof, i.e. Jn writing, filmed or taped verbal comment," And a convicted drug smuggler’s complaint about a newspaper which published interior pictures of her home was rejected because it was in the 3ublic interest to show how she had spentthe proceeds Attending poli{;a raids: By contrast= a newspaper came unstuck wnen it joined a police drugs ra~d on local nom&s, it posted a video cllp of one raid, wnere a Small amount of cannabis was found, on its website and used stil pictures in the ~aper, headlined Drugs And Cash Seized In Raid. But the homeowner denied any knowledge of the drugs and had not been charged with an offense. issued Jn 1995, on the reporting of G,./~a;’~,;~ ~%~;~e covers four main areas: r: Editors should generally respect a .~ss there iS a public Interest in pub!laotian. itaelf, a justification. Publications should ~out such w nners by any means which s harassment, ~re still protected by the Code, They are ke care not to publish inaccurate material r privacy is protected by CJacee 3 -account whether similar material had 4th the winner’s consent. )ung, or old, or the sial{ or recently ;loud copy, but they are still entitled to regardless of the sums involved, sting rewards to people to identify ~ned, unless it is in the public interest. The .=eking information from camelot staff onfidence to the winners under the lottery Undercover, ~ver the top: The Commission took e similar line about a snatched photograph of Christopher Bourne, dubbed by a regiona Sunday paper "the greediest man in Britain". He had bought 30 Xbex games consoles so that he could exploit a pre-Christm&s shortage end auction them at a profit on eBay. A~er refusing to be pictured himself, Mr Bourne was secretly photographed when ha let his son pose with the consoles The picture was published with the headline Dad Cashes In On Xbox Miserj4 The PCC said that, while the paper was entitled to its strong views, there was no evidence of crime or impropriety by Mr Bourne. The intrusion into his pnvecy by photographing ~im surreptitiously in nls own nome was out of proportion to any conceivable public interest in publishing his picture. The complaint was upheld. :-~/~ Gratuitous humiliatjon: Preportionality was the key to compliance when two newspapers reported on an affair between an aristocrat’s wife -- who it later emerged suffered from mental illness -- and a former prisoner One story breached the Code, the other did not. The Daily Mail account -- headlined The Aristocrat’s Wife, The Jobless Jailbird And The ’Lady Chatterley" Affair That Put Her Marriage Under Threat -- was based on information from the girlfriend of the man involved, it spoke of text messages and revealed where sexual encounters had taken place. But the newspaper deliberately emitted more intimate details about the relationship. A second story was published in the News of the World, based on the confessions of the adulterous boyfriend himself, under the headline Lady Mucky Wanted Me Rough And Reedy It included intimate details of sexual activity. tn each case, the PCC said the key issue was the balance of one person’s freedom of expression versus another person’s right to privacy In the Mail, the girlfriend’s right to give her side of the story had been maintained, without including "humiliating and gratuitously intrusive detail" about the wife. The complaint of an intrusion into pr vecy was therefore not uphe d. ~ worri~n v L~& ,...~ E#~L~Ort 74 2007 However the News of the World story failed the PCC proportionality test. The Commission ruled that the public interest mvelvea in exposing adultery by someone who had married into an aristocratic family was insufficient to justify the levet of intimate detail that had been given, (.4 w~rn~n ~/ News M the ~zo~?d Re~or~ 74. 2o07) A similar test of gratuitous humiliation was appued when two newspapers published images that had led to the suspension of e woman teacher at a military college.The explicit photographs had The panel colourcods ~Whatthe Codesays ~l[ors neea lo ask themes}yes wner Code ssues arise ~¢, Bdefings on specific areas where the Code apples.= 27 MOD100036592
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