It wasn’t an invasion of privacy for Sky News to show an unrelated 12-year-old girl in a news report about a knife attack in London.
The Nov. 2018 news report showed CCTV footage of the attack. The UK broadcast regulator OfCom noted that the footage was of “low quality.”
The girl’s mother complained to OfCom that her daughter was pictured via CCTV footage in a news report about the Nov. 2018 attack. Her daughter was shown walking into a store when a knife attack victim was walking about before being attacked.
Sky News defended its report, saying the girl was “only visible for 1.9 seconds” and only people who knew her probably would recognize her. After receiving the mother’s complaint, Sky News blurred the girl’s face though.
Despite the girl being a minor, there was no “legitimate expectation of privacy,” OfCom ruled, so her privacy wasn’t invaded. OfCom noted that the girl wasn’t named. Why? Because the footage showed her “only fleetingly,” “was of low quality and was therefore indistinct,” and there was “nothing particularly distinctive,” OfCom found.
iMediaEthics has written to Sky News.