The Aberdeen Evening Express and the Press & Journal have been rapped for identifying a schoolboy suspected of having tuberculosis.

The Press Complaints Commission told both newspapers that their articles were an unnecessary intrusion into his private life – and that any public interest did not override the boy’s right to privacy.

It also told them they should not rely on how other media had tackled the story as a guide to what information they should carry in their own articles.

The boy’s parents made two separate complaints to the PCC in May that that a number of articles published in the Evening Express in May, June and July 2001, and the P&J in May, named their son as a victim of suspected tuberculosis, claiming a breach of Clause 6 (Children) of the Code of Practice.

The Press & Journal maintained that its story about the boy – who had suspected TB after failing to receive a jab because of a “drug manufacturing problem” – was clearly in the public interest. And the Evening Express also considered the identification of a child suffering from TB to be clearly in the public interest.

Other media, including a national newspaper, had named him on May 24, and the health board had issued a statement on behalf of the complainants, without naming them, expressing their relief that he was making a good recovery.

The complainants told the PCC that their son had been named as suffering from suspected tuberculosis, but patients in a similar position were not identified.

The school itself had alerted parents to the child’s condition without naming him.

In upholding the complaint, the PCC said: “The Code states that schoolchildren should not suffer unnecessary intrusions into their private lives – which specifically includes matters relating to health – unless there is an exceptional public interest in doing so.

“The Commission noted the newspaper’s argument that the boy’s name had been put into the public domain, and that readers needed to be informed of the identity of a child with a notifiable disease.

“However, editors must make their own judgements based on the newspaper industry’s Code and not rely on the behaviour of other media or editors – which may be the subject of other complaints.

“Indeed, the Commission noted that some other editors had not published the boy’s name when legitimately reporting this story.

“The Commission did not consider that the public interest in this case was so exceptional as to override the interests of the child, which the Code holds to be paramount, and considered that the public interest could have been served by writing about the case without naming the child.”

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