By James Simons-
Press regulator, Ipso has rebuked The Daily Mail for its failure to sensitively handle a report about an alleged murder victim when it published a “gratuitous” video showing him lying on a blood-stained floor.
In a major flop by one of Britain’s most widely read online publications, IPSO expressed “concern at the two pieces of misinformation” given to the complainant by the publication when he first made contact. The website initially told the complainant the video it had embedded in the article had not contained footage of his father, only to backtrack later and say this must have been added after publication, and that it had no control over this.
Mail Online later also admitted that an initial claim it made that the Foreign Office had been contacted before publication, was actually incorrect. Although correctly apologising for any distress caused by the video, the online publication confession to this terrible mistake is embarrassing. They will need to avoid this type of mistake in future . The publication said that the foreign editor overseeing the story had reviewed and approved a different video but the wrong one had been published by accident.
The UK’s online paper published the death of British man John William Jones, who was found dead with a stab wound in his Malaysian home on 18 October last year. His wife Samantha has been charged with murder and is currently awaiting trial in Malaysia. Ipso criticised the paper for breaching its codes of conduct in that story
The Mail Online headlined the story “British woman faces the death penalty after ‘stabbing her husband to death during an argument’ in Malaysia”. The paper then embedded a video from a foreign news website showing Jones lying on the floor surrounded by blood. His face and upper body blurred out.
Jones’ son who saw the story complained bitterly about the article to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. He said the video was gratuitous and breached Clause 4 -intrusion into grief or shock- of the Editors’ Code of Practice.
Jones said he found the video “deeply upsetting” for his family and that there was no justification for publishing the images of his father and the crime scene.
Mail Online correctly apologised for any distress caused by the video, stating that the foreign editor overseeing the story had reviewed and approved a different video but the wrong one had been published by accident. The Ipso Ruling said:
“It was not able to confirm exactly how the video published became embedded in the article,” the IPSO ruling said.
“Nevertheless, it said that the footage of the victim that was published was heavily pixilated, such as to make the victim unidentifiable.
“It said there were no obvious injuries visible, and that the victim’s face and upper body had been blurred. It said the video was a dispassionate illustration of the scene of a serious crime.”
But IPSO upheld the complaint, saying: “This was not footage showing the aftermath of a major incident, or an event that had taken place in public. Instead, it related to an incident that had taken place inside a home.
“Publishing a video showing gratuitous footage of an alleged murder victim at a crime scene, on a blood-stained floor, represented a failure to handle publication sensitively.”
The Complaints Committee said the breach was exacerbated by the fact it was published just 12 hours after the incident, and seven hours after the victim’s son was informed.
IPSO declined to uphold a second complaint by the victim’s son that the timing of the article’s publication also breached Clause 4 of the code. The complainant said not all members of the family had been informed of the death by the time of publication and Mail Online did not contact the Foreign Office until several minutes after the article went online.
The committee expressed concern that “no definitive steps had been taken to check if the immediate family had been informed prior to publication” and that the Foreign Office was not contacted until later, but said that “on balance” this did not represent a failure to handle the story sensitively. The Daily Mail has separately been criticised by this publication for appearing to promote porn actress, Stormy Daniels by making a celebrity of the porn woman.