The PCC has not upheld a civil servant’s complaints about the republication of her Tweets by the Daily Mail and the Independent on Sunday.
In the first ruling of its kind, the PCC “concluded that the newspapers’ actions did not constitute “an unjustifiable intrusion” into the complainant’s privacy.”
Ms Sarah Baskerville complained to the Press Complaints Commission that an article headlined “Oh please, stop this twit from Tweeting, someone”, published in the Daily Mail on 13 November 2010, intruded into her privacy in breach of Clause 3 Privacy and was misleading in breach of Clause 1 Accuracy of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The complaint was not upheld.
…. Additional complaints against both newspapers about alleged breaches of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code were also rejected.
“This is an important ruling by the Commission,” said Stephen Abell, PCC director.
“As more and more people make use of such social media to publish material related to their lives, the Commission is increasingly being asked to make judgements about what can legitimately be described as private information. In this case, the Commission decided that republication of material by national newspapers, even though it was originally intended for a smaller audience, did not constitute a privacy intrusion.”
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