The newspaper published
the unedited video on its website, which the PCC ruled invaded the
right to privacy of the pupils who were identifiable from the film.
The PCC's remit was extended just this year to include editorial
audio-visual content published by newspapers, and this is the first
use of those powers.
A 16 year old student at the John Ogilvie High School in
Lanarkshire received a poor report in mathematics. She videod an
unruly classroom on her mobile phone to show her parents as an
explanation of her poor results.
Her story appeared in The Sun, The Daily Mirror and The Hamilton
Advertiser, and was the subject of complaints by Laura Gaddis, the
president of the school's parent teacher association.
Gaddis said that the article published in the newspaper and the
publication of the video breached the PCC Code of Practice because
neither the school authorities nor the children or their parents
had given permission for filming to take place or for publication
of the film to take place. She also said that no contact had been
made with the school in relation to the article.
The PCC said that demonstrating a discipline problem in a school
was in the public interest. "The subject matter of the story – that
classroom discipline was allegedly so lax that it was affecting
pupil performance – was clearly one of considerable public
interest, and to a large degree the video provided the evidence to
support the girl’s position about her teaching conditions," said
its ruling.
"It was therefore entirely legitimate for the paper to bring
conditions in the classroom to public attention, and to use – at
least in part – the information contained in the video."
It said that The Mirror obscured the faces of children in the
still photographs it published and The Sun's image quality was so
poor that no pupils could be identified, and so those papers had
not breached the Code.
The Hamilton Advertiser, though, had erred in posting the video
online without obscuring the children's identities, it said.
"The newspaper had a responsibility to ensure that the material
it published did not infringe the rights of the pupils appearing in
the footage, some of whom were clearly identifiable. They had not
known they were going to feature in the newspaper and on its
website, and there had been no consent for publication," it
said.
"While the newspaper had argued that obscuring the faces would
have undermined the impact of the story, the [PCC] Commission
considered that any public interest in identifying the pupils was
not so great as to override their rights under the Code," it
said.
The PCC said that the publishing of the material represented an
unnecessary intrusion into their time at school, in breach of its
Code.
The PCC began regulating the multimedia web content belonging to
member newspapers in February of this year. It does not have a
remit over user-submitted material, only that which it considers to
fall under the editorial control of the newspaper publisher.
