APPENDIX 121
Memorandum submitted by Dame Elizabeth
Neville, Chairman, The Media Advisory Group, Association of Chief
Police Officers
I am writing to you in connection with the Committee's
current enquiry into privacy and media intrusion. Although I am
aware the deadline for formal written evidence has passed, I would
like to draw the Committee's attention to the position of news
agencies, which I hope members will be able to take into account.
New agencies often play a significant part in
disseminating information about individuals, particularly those
who have been victims or witnesses of crime or a major incident.
They provide material not just to local newspapers and broadcasters.
who in many cases will have acquired some detail directly, but
on occasion to regional and national media, thus immediately giving
a story a much wider audience than otherwise might have been the
case. When the aftermath, for example, of a serious crime generates
national media coverage, the pressures on individual victims and
their families already traumatised by their experience become
intense. The effects of this are a source of major concern to
police in the course of their investigations and I believe to
responsible editors and broadcasters.
Agencies are however not subject to the Press
Complaints Commission Code of Practice. Police experience suggests
that some news agencies do not therefore feel subject to the same
constraints as newspaper editors and broadcasters. On occasion
their activity results in violations of privacy and the ultimate
publication of a version of events by media who are far removed
from where the people concerned live and with an emphasis which
lacks a necessary appreciation of the impact on individual and
communities.
It is not our intention to suggest any additional
constraints on media already governed by the PCC's Code of Practice
but to propose the Code's extension to news agencies. We feel
such a move would help tackle some instances of intrusion into
the lives of private individuals, often in circumstances where
they are less able to deal with it.
I hope this proposal is one the Committee will
be able to consider and I apologise for not putting it to the
members of the Committee within your formal time scale.
4 April 2003
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