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A Woman and the Irish Sun

By
Thursday, 26th March 2009
Filed under:

Complaint

A woman complained through her solicitors that the publication by the Irish Sun of a photograph of her taken at an event organized by the photographer Spencer Tunick at which some 1,200 people posed nude was in breach of Principle 5 (Privacy) of the Code of Practice. The woman complained that despite assurances that she had been given by Mr Tunick that she would not be identifiable in his photographs, she was clearly identifiable in the photograph published, which was not taken by Mr Tunick but by a commercial photographer. She asked for an assurance that there would be no re-publication of the image.

The newspaper maintained that because the photograph was taken in a public place by one of a number of commercial photographers present, no breach of Principle 5 had taken place. They also maintained that there was no logical distinction between the photographs taken by Mr Tunick – to which the complainant had consented – and the photograph they had used. The newspaper offered to delete the picture from its own information systems. However, it said that it could not guarantee that the same images might not be re-published at some future date, because it did not own the photograph and because the complainant’s name was not included on the written information accompanying the photograph. The complainant did not find the newspaper’s offer acceptable.

Decision

The undertaking given to the complainant and other participants by Mr Tunick plainly did not apply to other photographers present on this occasion – an occasion on which the participants’ reasonable expectation of privacy was qualified and to a degree limited by the essentially public nature of the event and by the presence of other photographers.

The Press Ombudsman’s opinion is that the offer made by the newspaper to delete the photograph from its information systems was a reasonable one in the circumstances, and that the newspaper should keep this offer open for a reasonable time. No further action is required under the Code of Practice.

26 March 2009