Mr Darragh Headen and the Leinster Express

On 3 March 2015 the Leinster Express under the heading “Facebook issues of the week …” published a post by Mr Darragh Headen.    The post was accompanied by a photograph taken from Mr Headen’s Facebook profile page. The photograph was composed of an image of Mr Headen with his two small children sitting on his lap. He wrote to the newspaper saying that he had not given permission for his children’s photograph to be published.

Mr Headen complained to the Press Ombudsman’s Office that Principle 9 (Children) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines had been breached by the publication of the photograph of his children. The complaint was forwarded to the newspaper.  The Press Ombudsman’s Office did not receive any response from the newspaper to Mr Headen’s complaint.  

It is regrettable that the newspaper did not engage in the complaints process as it offers an opportunity for a newspaper to address complaints from readers.  Uniquely, this did not happen in this instance.

Principle 9 seeks to protect children from undue press attention. In this instance there was no public interest whatsoever in publishing the image of the two children as they were entirely irrelevant to the subject matter of the post.  The newspaper could easily have cropped the Facebook image to exclude the children.  The fact that the image of the children was available on the complainant’s public profile on Facebook cannot justify the newspaper publishing the image.  The complaint is upheld on the grounds of a breach of Principle 9 of the Code.

14 April 2015