What is Clause 2 (Privacy) of the Editors’ Code and why does it matter?

By Communications Officer Hira Nafees Shah

Journalists and editors often face challenging decisions and there are times when a balance must be struck, particularly between an individual’s privacy and rights over personal data; the public’s right to know; and what is genuinely in the public interest. 

In 2024, IPSO received 996 complaints about privacy. The Editors’ Code of Practice explains how people’s rights are protected under Clause 2: 

i) Everyone is entitled to respect for their private and family life, home, physical and mental health, and correspondence, including digital communications.

ii) Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent. In considering an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy, account will be taken of the complainant’s own public disclosures of information and the extent to which the material complained about is already in the public domain or will become so.

iii) It is unacceptable to photograph individuals, without their consent, in public or private places where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. 

Journalists are expected to consider people’s right to privacy, as IPSO Head of Complaints Alice Gould explains:  

“Clause 2 (Privacy) of the Editors’ Code is important because it protects individuals from unjustified intrusion into their private lives, protecting people’s dignity in relation to their family life, home, physical and mental health, and correspondence. However, it also carefully balances the right to privacy with the public interest in disclosure.” 

Publications can sometimes justify intruding on a person’s privacy because of the public interest. And when doing so, IPSO considers “the extent to which material is already in the public domain or will become so”.  

For example, a recent complaint  required IPSO to balance these competing interests. The article under complaint quoted from victim impact statements submitted as part of court proceedings by close family members of a murder victim. The article was published before the statements were due to be heard in court. 

The family members who submitted the statements,  the victim’s mother and sister,  complained that the article had breached Clause 2 (Privacy), by publishing their statements, prior to the hearing where they had been expected to be heard. 

The Complaints Committee considered whether publishing victim impact statements before they were heard in court, breached the privacy of the family members who had given the statements. They ruled that there was no breach of Clause 2 (Privacy) as information heard in court is generally expected to enter the public domain. Although the victim impact statements had not yet been heard in court when the article was published, Clause 2 considers the extent to which the information will become public. The family had submitted the statements on the basis that they could be heard at open court, so there was no breach of the clause.  

In other instances, the Complaints Committee has ruled that the intrusion into private life is unjustified. In Abbas vs Mail Online, the complaint was about an article written from the perspective of grandparents, whose daughter had died in Pakistan. They questioned the circumstances in which their daughter had passed and inquired about the wellbeing of their grandchildren. The article included names and photos of the children. The complainant – the father of the children – maintained that the article’s publication intruded into his and his children’s privacy and affected their home life and his children’s time at school.   

The Complaints Committee found that the article contained information over which the children had a reasonable expectation of privacy, since it included their details and raised questions about their whereabouts and their current life in Pakistan. It also speculated about how their mother had died. The public interest in the story was not sufficient to justify the breach of the children’s privacy.  

So, when ruling on complaints about intrusion, the Committee will refer to the Editors’ Code which says ”account will be taken of the complainant’s own public disclosures of information.” 

This is particularly relevant in terms of social media. IPSO frequently receives complaints from members of the public, who did not have their profiles set to private or “friends only”. Complaints about material that has been in the public domain and does  not reveal anything private would not normally breach the Code. To help journalists think through questions about using material gathered from social media, we have produced social media guidance which gives more details and examples of how the Code has been applied to real complaints.  

Journalists should think about people’s right to privacy when reporting on big breaking stories, as stated in our Guidance on reporting major incidents:  “The nature of the material, who has published it, and the context of the story must also be considered. Before publishing anything taken from social media, editors and journalists should consider the extent of any possible intrusion and the public interest.”