Adjudication No. 35 (July 1978) [1978] APC 12

ADJUDICATION No. 35 (July 1978)

The Australian Press Council has had referred to it by The Privacy Committee of New South Wales, a complaint made by the Principal of a public school against the action of the Sydney Daily Telegraph in publishing the names, ages and recognisable photographs of two young children, pupils of the school, whose mother was the centre of a dramatic incident which the paper reported. The paper alleged that in a fit of hysteria following receipt of an eviction notice the mother locked herself and a child in a house, held a knife to the throat of the child and screamed that she would kill him.

The report stated that the police and a doctor were unable to persuade the mother to release the child, and that his brother ran back and forth between the police and the mother with messages. The incident as reported came to an end when the woman's brother and sister were brought to the house and spent an hour with the woman. The children were taken by police to the Red Cross. The photographs published in the paper showed the mother being put by police into a car and the children being escorted from the house.

The paper has stated that it tries to maintain a proper balance between the function of reporting the news and the rights of an individual to privacy, and that the report was published only after considerable editorial discussion. The decision to publish was based on two considerations.

(1) The incident, which occurred over a period of hours, caused conspicuous police activity which caught and held the attention of many people in the area. It was reasonable to expect that even without newspaper publication, details would be broadcast locally by word of mouth and would have become known to people associated with the school.

(2) The elder child displayed considerable courage and resourcefulness, and was instrumental in averting what could have been a tragedy, a matter which the paper thought worthy of recording.

It is unquestionable that the incident, having taken place in public and involved police action, was a proper subject of newspaper publicity. The only question is whether the publication of the children's names, ages and identifying photographs was an unjustified invasion of their privacy. The Principal of the school has contended that although the incident would have been widely known even if not reported in the press, the effect of identifying the children in the paper would inevitably be to make it more difficult for them to live down what he has termed the highlighting of the relationship between the children and their mother.

The Press Council recognises that it is often difficult for a newspaper to decide how far it is justified in featuring the identity of a person who has been involved in a distressing incident which in itself is a legitimate subject of news reporting. The difficulty is not disposed of by saying that the person concerned has acted in a meritorious manner worthy of recognition in the press, for the question still remains whether in the particular circumstances he has a moral right not to have his association with the case publicised- Where he has a close family relationship with another actor in the events it may well harm him to have that relationship emphasised, and may offend a proper sense of respect for his privacy.

It is not always easy to draw the line between a mere lack of sensitivity, sometimes hardly more than a failure of good taste, in publishing the identification, and such a failure of reasonable compassion as should be criticised as an intrusion into the private life of the person whose family relationships are made public.

The Press Council is of opinion that in the present case the dramatic events which were the main subject of the report could have been reported quite sufficiently without identifying the children, and particularly without publishing their photographs, and that what the paper did amounted to an unjustified entry into the sensitive area of family relationships so as to attach to the children the stigma of their mother's irrational behaviour. To carry the freedom of the press to such an extent in the Council's opinion should be recognised as an infringement of the privacy of the individual and as tending to alienate public support for the freedom itself.

The complaint is upheld.