00797-24 A woman v Mail Online

Summary of Complaint

1. A woman complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that Mail Online breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) and Clause 2 (Privacy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “’I found out I wasn't the father of my baby through the DOG CAM: Fireman tells how his world came crashing down when he checked on his pet and discovered his police sergeant wife telling her lover that HE was their daughter's real dad’”, published on 17 February 2024.

2. The article reported on the experiences of a named man, the complainant’s ex-partner. It reported he had used a “dog cam” “to check on things at home only to find his wife Facetiming another man – and getting their baby to call him 'Daddy'”. It described the complainant as “his police sergeant wife”. It went on to report that the man “claim[ed] his wife, who MailOnline has chosen not to name, had been in a secret affair with a colleague for three years and, while she signed [the man] as father of her daughter on the birth certificate, she knew all along the baby was not his.”  

3. The article included further detail about how the man had discovered the “secret affair”: it explained the man “decided to check the camera he used to monitor their two dogs – a beagle called Holly and their rottweiler Hector – to see if [the complainant] had made it home okay”. It quoted directly from the man, who said: “I saw my wife sitting on the floor with our daughter on her lap on Facetime. She was saying ‘say thank you to Daddy for buying you the presents yesterday’ then was saying ‘are you showing Daddy your present’.” The article stated that the man had “made a formal complaint to the police claiming one of its employees had broken the law for knowingly falsifying details on a birth certificate, a claim his estranged wife denies. He also said she broke the police's code of ethics, but the complaint was rejected.” The article closed by noting that the man’s “estranged wife declined to comment”.  

4. The article was illustrated with eight photographs of the man and the complainant, including “selfies” and another image where they posed for a camera. In the photographs, the complainant’s face was pixilated, while her ex-husband’s was not. In some photographs, the woman’s hair, which was blonde, was visible. The article included four photographs of the complainant in her police uniform. In these photographs, her face, badge, and the front of her hat were pixilated. The article also contained an image of the complainant’s two dogs, captioned, “[the man] made the shocking discovery while at work and checking in on the dog cam the couple had bought for their beagle Holly and rottweiler Hector.” The text of the article said the couple’s “beagle Holly, who [the] wife had before meeting him, had to be put down”.  

5. Prior to the article’s publication, the police press office told the publication it would not be commenting as the article did not relate to a police matter. The publication also contacted the complainant – to ask her for her response to her husband’s story. The complainant declined to comment, and asked the publication not to publish the story, in light of her right to a private and family life, as well as the alleged risks the article could pose to her safety.  

6. The complainant said the article had intruded into her and her daughter’s private lives, in breach of Clause 2. She said the alleged relationship with her colleague was private, and reporting on it was an intrusion into her private and family life.  

7. The complainant said the photographs of her included in the article were published without her permission. She also said that, since the article’s publication, she had been contacted by several people, including some she had not been in spoken to “for many years”, who were became aware of the affair through the article. The complainant also said the inclusion of the photographs of her dogs and their names made her and her daughter identifiable to the wider community she lived in, as people knew her dogs’ breeds and names. The complainant was also named in a comment made by a reader in response to the online article, which was removed by the publication a few hours after it was posted. While this comment was not within IPSO’s remit, as it was removed after being brought to the publication’s attention, the complainant said the fact that a member of the public had named her supported her position that she was identifiable.

8. She also said the article also identified her as a police officer. She said that, as she was from Northern Ireland, this was a risk to her safety. She said the photographs of her in uniform would, in and of themselves, identify her, as they included information such as badges, numbers and insignia. She said that many officers had approached her as a result of the publication of these images. She also said that, before the publication of the article, family members, and neighbours were unaware of her profession.  

9. The complainant also said that the article was inaccurate in breach of Clause 1 because it was one-sided and biased towards her ex-partner. She also said the article gave the inaccurate impression she had killed her dog, which had died of natural causes.  

10. The publication did not accept reporting on the alleged relationship represented a breach of Clause 2. It said the subject of the article was the complainant’s ex-husband, who had approached the publication unprompted, “wanting to tell his story”. It said that the ex-husband had advised that the circumstances of the breakdown of his relationship with the complainant were already known to friends and family prior to the article’s publication. It said the man had been unable to “achieve closure” in holding the complainant accountable for the end of their relationship, and wished to exercise his right to freedom of expression by publicly telling his story, under his own name. The publication acknowledged the tension between the complainant’s right to privacy and the man’s right to free expression. It said that, in light of this tension and taking into account the complainant’s rights, they had made the decision not to name the complainant and to pixilate the photographs of her which were included in the article. The publication considered that the complainant would not be identifiable to readers, and any intrusion would be so minimal that it would not represent a breach of Clause 2.

11. The publication did not accept that the complainant was identifiable. It said the complainant’s face was pixelated in the photograph, and the images did not show any private moments or activities. It said details which might identify the complainant’s rank or ID number, such as insignia on uniform were pixilated. It also said the complainant had chosen to alert her employers to the situation during pre-publication correspondence. It said the complainant’s willingness to share details of the matter with her employer indicated that the relationship and its relation to her employment was not private.  

12. The publication also argued that its reporting was in the public interest: there was a public interest in the woman’s ex-partner exercising his right to freedom of expression, and expressing his concern that the woman’s actions had not been taken seriously by her employer – a UK police force.  

13. The publication also said that the information included in the article were proportionate to the public interest served by the article’s publication. It said the complainant’s ex-partner had requested his full name be included and given the fact he had been allegedly misled as to whether he was the parent of the child, and the complainant had allegedly falsified the birth certificate, it was proportionate to grant his request. It also said including details of the complainant’s profession was important because a significant element of the ex-partner’s concerns was that the police had not properly dealt with his allegation that his ex-wife had not only broken the force’s code of ethics but also the law. It said the fact that the complainant was a police sergeant was a significant detail, and therefore relevant to the context of the article. The publication also said that, when it contacted the complainant directly to see if she wished to comment, the complainant referred the matter to her employer for them to respond on her behalf. It said the publication of the specific details of the conversation the complainant’s ex-partner overheard was proportionate to the public interest because it was the key moment when the ex-partner realised he may not be his daughter's father. It said the conversation demonstrated that the complainant had sought to conceal the paternity of the child and supported the ex-partner’s view that she knowingly falsified details on the child's birth certificate. It said the issue of the public interest had been considered prior to publication, and supplied an email chain where the question of anonymisation was raised, and where the competing rights of the ex-partner’s freedom of expression and the complainant's privacy rights were discussed.

14. Turning to the complainant’s concerns under Clause 1, the publication said the complainant had been contacted prior to publication and specifically asked if she wished to contribute to the article. It said she chose not to do so, while not denying the allegations it contained. The publication also denied the article stated or implied that the complainant killed her dog.   

Relevant Clause Provisions

Clause 1 (Accuracy)

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence should be as required by the regulator.

iii) A fair opportunity to reply to significant inaccuracies should be given, when reasonably called for.

iv) The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

Clause 2 (Privacy)*

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.

The Public Interest

There may be exceptions to the clauses marked * where they can be demonstrated to be in the public interest.

1. The public interest includes, but is not confined to:

•  Detecting or exposing crime, or the threat of crime, or serious impropriety

•  Protecting public health or safety.

•  Protecting the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation.

•  Disclosing a person or organisation’s failure or likely failure to comply with any obligation to which they are subject.

•  Disclosing a miscarriage of justice.

•  Raising or contributing to a matter of public debate, including serious cases of impropriety, unethical conduct or incompetence concerning the public.

•  Disclosing concealment, or likely concealment, of any of the above.

2. There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.

3. The regulator will consider the extent to which material is already in the public domain or will become so.

4. Editors invoking the public interest will need to demonstrate that they reasonably believed publication - or journalistic activity taken with a view to publication – would both serve, and be proportionate to, the public interest and explain how they reached that decision at the time.

5. An exceptional public interest would need to be demonstrated to over-ride the normally paramount interests of children under 16.

Findings of the Committee

15. Human interest journalism allows people to share their perspectives and can provide a unique insight into human experiences. Nonetheless, such stories must still be told in a way which appropriately balances the rights of individuals to free expression against the rights of others to be free of unjustified intrusion into their private and family lives.  

16. While the complainant was not named in the article and her image was pixilated, the Committee accepted she was identifiable to people who knew her, through her connection with her former partner and other details included in the article such as the names of the dogs. An individual would generally have a reasonable expectation of privacy over details of a relationship which is not conducted publicly. As such, the Committee acknowledged the article represented a degree of intrusion into the complainant’s private life; its task was to consider whether the level of intrusion was justified in all the circumstances. The Committee noted the complainant’s ex-partner was also a first party to the story – having been directly impacted by the complainant’s relationship– and that he had a right to freedom of expression to tell his story. The Committee also noted that the relationship arguably had implications beyond the private lives of the individuals involved – it also involved the alleged falsification of a birth certificate and an allegation that a serving police officer had behaved inappropriately. Furthermore, the publication had taken reasonable steps to limit the intrusion so that the complainant would not be identifiable to a general reader of the article, including the omission of the complainant’s name and likeness. Considering these factors and taking into account the ex-partner’s right to freedom of expression, the Committee considered the level of intrusion to be justified . As such there was no breach of Clause 2 on this point.  

17. The Committee next considered whether the photographs of the complainant and her dogs included in the article represented a breach of Clause 2. The Committee did not consider that the photographs included any information in respect of which the complainant would have a reasonable expectation of privacy – they did not show her engaging in any private activity, but simply posing for photographs. Additionally, the images of the complainant’s dogs did not reveal her identity to anyone who did not already know her. The Committee therefore did not consider that the images revealed any private information about the complainant beyond what was already in the text of the article, which – as previously established – the Committee did not find breached Clause 2. There was no breach of the Clause on this point.  

18. The Committee next considered whether including information about the complainant’s profession in the article represented an intrusion into her private life. The complainant said that revealing her profession could lead to threats to her safety, given that she was from Northern Ireland. While the Committee acknowledged the risk to police officers working in Northern Ireland, it noted the complainant did not work in Northern Ireland, but instead worked in the Metropolitan Police. The Committee further noted that, generally, people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy over information which identifies their profession, and that police officers often serve as the public face of policing in their communities and are expected to conduct themselves to a high professional standard; absent special circumstances, which the Committee did not consider were present in this case, the fact that someone is a police officer is not private information. For these reasons, the Committee did not consider including the complainant’s profession in the article to represent an intrusion into her private life. There was no breach of Clause 2 on this point.  

19. The Committee next considered the complainant’s concerns under Clause 1; namely, her concern that the article was one-sided and biased in favour of her ex-partner. The Committee noted the Editors’ Code of Practice does not address issues of bias. It makes clear the press has the right to report one side of events, as long as it takes care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, and to distinguish between comment, conjecture and fact. In this case, the publication was entitled to focus the report on the man’s version of events, regardless of whether the complainant considered it biased against her, where the complainant did not identify any specific inaccuracies in his account. Further, the Committee did not consider the article implied the complainant had killed her dog; it simply stated that the dog “had to be put down”, which the complainant did not dispute. There was no breach of Clause 1.

Conclusions

20. The complaint was not upheld.

Date complaint received: 17/02/2024

Date complaint concluded by IPSO: 12/07/2024 

Independent Complaints Reviewer

The complainant complained to the Independent Complaints Reviewer about the process followed by IPSO in handling this complaint. The Independent Complaints Reviewer decided that the process was not flawed and did not uphold the request for review.