Protecting ordinary people

Free and practical advice

Members of the public can get caught up in news stories for any number of unexpected reasons and often have no prior experience of dealing with the press. Yet unlike organisations or high-profile people they usually have no recourse to press officers or lawyers for help. The PCC gives free advice to thousands of people each year who contact us as a story is breaking for information on how the Code of Practice can work for them. We give them practical help on a range of problems, such as what to do at times of grief and shock, how to correct an inaccuracy or whom to approach at a particular publication. This often ensures that any potential breach of the Code is averted - or is dealt with by the editor directly with the complainant, thereby avoiding the need for a formal complaint to the Commission.

Resolving complaints

When breaches of the Code do occur, people want them put right as quickly as possible. Crucially, the culture of resolving complaints that has been consolidated among newspapers and magazines over the last few years has encouraged editors to seek to resolve the substantial majority of complaints that raise a possible breach of the Code. This gives members of the public the chance to have their grievances dealt with very quickly, with no need for a lengthy and adversarial legal process.

• The parents of a young boy complained that a prominent regional newspaper had identified their son as the victim of a crime. The newspaper recognised that there had been a mistake and investigated how it had occurred and initiated steps to ensure that the problem would not recur. It wrote to the complainants to apologise, published a letter from them and arranged for the family to have a weekend break together.
• A woman complained that a local newspaper had published a photograph of her children without her permission. The newspaper published an apology and gave an assurance that the photographs would not appear in future articles relating to the news event with which the family was involved.
• A national newspaper published a photograph of a man with a well-known entertainer, along with details about the man's private life. The man did not want any further publicity but the newspaper wrote to him to apologise, destroyed the photograph and gave the complainant an ex gratia payment to underline their regret.
• The father of a woman who unexpectedly became the focus of national news attention complained that a number of newspapers were harassing her. Some of the papers concerned wrote to apologise while others gave immediate undertakings not to approach her again. Harassment ceased almost immediately.
• A woman whose house had been burgled complained that her precise address had been included in the report of the case, and that this had made her vulnerable to further thefts. The editor apologised to the complainant and promised not to publish her address again.
• A woman complained that an interview with a comedian had included details about her relationship with him. The newspaper apologised to the complainant and promised to remove her name from its electronic archives to ensure that she was not included in any future piece.

Adjudicating complaints

Sometimes it is not possible to resolve a complaint - either because the editor does not accept that the Code has been breached or because the complainant considers any offer to be inadequate. In such cases the Commission takes a formal view about whether it is necessary to censure the editor and to require him or her to publish a critical adjudication in full. Set out below are a handful of the cases where the Commission has adjudicated on complaints from ordinary members of the public in the past year.

• Two local newspapers seriously breached the Code when they revealed the identity of a teenage nvCJD sufferer. The Commission has previously made clear that identification of such people without consent is not acceptable, and although the newspapers published apologies, the Commission did not consider that this was a sufficient remedy considering the gravity of the mistake.
• A woman who sold her house to a well-known actress complained that a celebrity magazine had used photographs of it - already established in the public domain - out of context, giving a misleading impression that she had sold some wedding presents along with her house. The editor did not accept that the feature was misleading but the Commission disagreed and upheld the complaint.
• Parents of a young girl who had committed suicide complained that they had been harassed for an interview by a local newspaper journalist in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. In upholding the complaint the Commission emphasised that the protection of the vulnerable is at the heart of its work and it considered that the journalist should have been aware that a more sensitive approach was necessary in these tragic circumstances.

These are just a few of the complaints that the Commission resolved or adjudicated in 2001.