A weekly newspaper has been criticised by the Press Complaints Commission for intruding into the private life of a 14-year-old girl and running an inaccurate story about her health.

The Medway Kent Messenger reported on an event that was being organised to raise money for a 16-year-old boy and his 14-year-old cousin to go to Florida.

The article told how both teenagers were ‘seriously ill’, had spent their lives ‘in and out of hospital’, and that the girl suffered from a muscle-wasting disease – when the girl actually suffered from a far less serious condition and had never spent a night in hospital.

The girl’s mother claimed the article had breached both Clause 1 (Accuracy) and Clause 6 (Children) of the Code of Practice.

The PCC agreed and the complaint was upheld.

The complainant said her daughter had only appeared in the photograph to give her cousin moral support, and she had told the photographer that she would need to speak to the journalist before any article was printed, but no one contacted her.

She also said that a subsequent clarification concerning the nature of her daughter’s illness was completely inadequate.

The newspaper apologised for any distress that had been caused and said it had been contacted by the fundraiser who had given them details of the girl’s condition.

It said it had dealt with the fundraiser on a number of previous occasions over similar matters, and so it was not unreasonable to have assumed that she was speaking with the full authority of the parents concerned.

But the PCC said that although the newspaper’s motives appeared to have been honourable, the references to the state of the girl’s health did seem to be seriously inaccurate and the article was a significant breach of Clause 1.

It said that as soon as this became apparent the newspaper should have published a prominent correction and apology and that, bearing in mind the girl’s age and the gravity of the error, its published clarification was wholly inadequate.

It also found a breach of Clause 6 as the fundraiser was clearly not in a position under the Code to give consent for the article to appear, and failure to seek proper parental consent was an intrusion into the 14-year-old’s private life.

However because the complainant was present when the photograph of her daughter was taken, there was no breach of the Code in relation to the manner in which the picture was obtained.

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