Complaint
The programme was one of a series which followed the work of the ambulance service in Merseyside, and included a sound recording of an emergency call from a man whose wife had collapsed. Later in the programme, it transpired that the paramedics had been unable to resuscitate her.Β Their daughter, Mrs Helen McHale, complained that the material had not been properly anonymised and had been used without consent and without warning to the family, causing upset and distress.Β The ECU considered the complaint in relation to the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ’s Editorial Guidelines on Privacy, with particular reference to the section on Revisiting Past Events, which says:
So far as is reasonably practicable, surviving victims or the immediate families of dead people who are to feature in the programme should normally be notified of our plans. We should only proceed against any reasonable objections of those concerned if they are outweighed by the public interest.
Outcome
The provisions for notifying families do not apply when material is used in a way which conceals the identity of the individuals concerned, and the programme-makers believed they had achieved this by disguising the caller’s voice and removing visual clues to the location of his home. However, they had not given due consideration to the question of identifiability to family-members and friends who knew the circumstances of the incident. In the context of the programme, which made clear that the emergency occurred somewhere in Merseyside at the time the Grand National was being run, it was foreseeable that family and friends would be able to identify those involved irrespective of the steps taken by the programme-makers. Consent for the use of the material should therefore have been sought, and its transmission in the absence of consent (and, in the nature of the case, without warning) breached the privacy of family-members.
Upheld
Further action
The finding was reported to the Board of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Content and discussed with the programme-makers concerned. The material in question will not be re-broadcast without the consent of the family.