A report on the death of a man who collapsed at his home was not handled with enough sensitivity, the Press Complaints Commission has said.

The press watchdog received a complaint from the man’s sister after an article headlined “Starving pet starts to devour pensioner” appeared in the Rhondda Leader in January.

She claimed that the article had caused distress and included unnecessarily sensationalist details.

But the newspaper said that the construction of the story and its headline had been handled sympathetically and with appropriate sensitivity – although the unusual circumstances of the case would have made it easy to publish a sensationalised article.

It also said that its enquiries – which were based on information provided by a member of the public and then confirmed by two sources – were made with sympathy and discretion.

But after investigating the complaint, the PCC ruled that there had been a breach of of Clause 5 (Intrusion into grief) of the Code of Practice.

In coming to its decision the Commission took into account that the article had been written before the man’s funeral, and that details in the story had not been officially put into the public domain, for example as a result of an inquest.

It said that although judgments in such cases were inevitably subjective to some degree, the overall tone of the Rhondda Leader article, and the gratuitous inclusion of some of the detail, had breached the Code.

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