Scanlon and Farrell and the News of the World

The Press Ombudsman has decided to uphold a complaint by Michael Scanlon and Rosanna Farrell that an article in the News of The World on 10 April 2011 about the couple’s return, with their second child, to the house where their first child had died tragically two years earlier, was in breach of Principle 5 (Privacy) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

It was not possible for the Press Ombudsman to make a determination about another part of the complaint.

The complainants maintained that the article had not shown any sympathy or discretion towards them and their family and was an unwarranted invasion of the family’s privacy.

Consideration of this complaint, which was lodged formally prior to the closure of the News of the World, was postponed for a considerable time to allow the representatives of the parent company of the newspaper to engage in the conciliation process of the Office of the Press Ombudsman and to make any observations they considered relevant. However, despite several postponements granted at the request of the parent company’s legal representatives, in the light of the fact that the newspaper concerned had ceased publication, renewed requests by the Office of the Press Ombudsman for a reply to this complaint did not elicit a response. Notwithstanding this lack of response, the Press Ombudsman felt bound to make a decision on the complaint in the light of the fact that it had met all the conditions specified in the complaints procedures of his Office before the closure of the newspaper.

The Press Ombudsman decided, in the light of the available evidence, that the content of the article, and in particular the way in which it referred to an earlier family tragedy, was a breach of the requirement of Principle 5 of the Code of Practice to take into account the feelings of a family still evidently grieving after the death of their first child, and that there was no demonstrable public interest in the publication of the information concerned. The same considerations apply to the publication of a very recent photograph of the couple leaving the house concerned.

The Press Ombudsman decided, however, that the publication, as part of this photograph, of an image of the couple’s seven month old son was not a breach of the infant’s privacy as the infant was not recognizable.

The Press Ombudsman was unable, in the absence of any evidence, to make a determination about the accuracy of disputed quotations attributed in the article to the complainants, or of a lengthy quotation whose attribution was unclear but may have been from an anonymous source.

28 October 2011