Adjudication No. 68 (September 1979) [1979] APC 21

ADJUDICATION No. 68 (September 1979)

The Australian Press Council has received, on a reference from the Privacy Committee of New South Wales, a complaint from a woman objecting to the conduct of The Sydney Sun in publishing photographs of herself and her two sons, taken as they were leaving, in a state of great distress, a hospital to which her husband had been taken after having been wounded by a gunshot.

It is not disputed that the photographs were taken in a public place and without discourtesy or undue intrusion upon the privacy of the persons concerned. The photographs were sufficient evidence that the subject did not want to be photographed, but the Press Council does not, on that ground, hold that there was any invasion of privacy in the taking of the photographs.

The question remains, however, whether publication of the photographs in the newspaper infringed the moral right of the individuals not to have their grief publicly exposed to morbid curiosity. Their distress was essentially a matter of private concern to them and the members of the public could not be justified in receiving evidence of it unless there were circumstances, making the exposure a matter of overriding public interest.

The circumstances of the husband's wounding were a matter of proper public interest, but that consideration does not answer the question. In the opinion of the Press Council the publication of the photographs merely pandered to morbid curiosity and is not to be justified on any grounds which gives proper force to the moral right of a person to have his privacy respected.

The Press Council repeated in this context what it has said on an earlier occasion: "To carry the freedom of the Press to such an extent 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 and The Sun is admonished.