People who sell their stories to the press cannot expect an automatic right to future privacy, the Press Complaints Commission has warned.

The body made the statement after rejecting three out of four complaints made against the Manchester Evening News concerning publication of exclusive pictures of surviving Siamese twin Gracie Attard with her parents.

The paper says it printed the pictures only after the parents had decided they wanted to go public – but only wanting the pictures to go in publications they had signed deals with.

The MEN heralded the adjudication as a major victory for press freedom – winning a ruling that concluded that anyone who sells their story to a newspaper may expect to forfeit their right to privacy. This was despite a court injunction to prevent future publication, on which the MEN has already lost an appeal.

PCC chairman Lord Wakeham said: “This is an important adjudication by the Press Complaints Commission.

“It underlines that the PCC is committed both to the protection of children’s welfare, and to the public’s right to know.

“Furthermore, it makes clear – as we’ve ruled a number of times in the past – that while respect for privacy is hugely important, those who sell details of their own private life may undermine their rights to it in the longer term.

“That is just one of the reasons why we ruled that the Manchester Evening News did not breach the editors’ tough Code of Practice in publishing pictures of Gracie.

“It is a commonsense decision – which again shows that tough and effective self regulation by newspapers through the PCC works to protect the public’s rights and the public interest at one and the same time.”

The MEN published the photographs after the parents had gone to court and lifted an order banning the publication of anything which identified the child.

They were printed without permission of the parents and after 80,000 papers were printed there was a court injunction to re-impose the restrictions on the MEN and prevent them being used again – but not by two Sunday papers.

That meant the parents’ deal to sell the story to two Sundays was safe; the MEN always maintained the ruling was patently unfair and had more to do with protecting a financial deal than protecting privacy.

The ruling itself said: “It is not the function of the Commission to seek to protect the financial position of complainants through the use of the privacy sections of the Code of Practice.

“Indeed, the Commission has always taken the common sense view that where a complainant releases or sells information or photographs then they may become disentitled to the protection of the Code in certain circumstances.

“Privacy is – in the Commission’s opinion – not a commodity which can be sold on one person’s terms.”

To read the adjudication and the PCC comments, click here.

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