Mr and Mrs Ennis complained that the publication in the Sunday World of 13 September 2009 of photographs of body parts of their late son, Keith, was in breach of Principle 5 (Privacy) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Periodicals.
The newspaper responded that the photographs had been sourced from the Netherlands police via the internet, and that the newspaper had received no complaint when the same photographs had been published to illustrate a report in March 2009.
Decision
The public availability of any image, on the internet or elsewhere, does not mean that it can be published, or re-published, with impunity and without regard to Principle 5 of the Code of Practice.
Principle 5.3 of the Code of Practice requires that the feelings of grieving families should be taken into account in publishing information in situations of personal grief or shock. In the circumstances detailed above, the gratuitous publication of extraordinarily graphic and detailed photographs of identifiable parts of Mr Ennis’s dismembered body, including his severed head, plainly failed to take into account, and on the evidence available to the Press Ombudsman exacerbated, the personal grief and shock being experienced by his family, and for this reason represented a clear breach of Principle 5 of the Code of Practice.
The complaint is therefore upheld.
