The Daily Mirror and Daily Record invaded the privacy of Dannii Minogue by reporting that she was pregnant before she announced the news, the press watchdog ruled today.
The Press Complaints Commission said both papers made “a regrettable lapse in editorial judgment” and rejected their argument that news of the pregnancy was in the public domain because another newspaper and website had written about it.
Minogue had not had her 12-week scan when the Daily Mirror ran its story, headlined “Look who’s Xpecting!”, on 9 January.
Both papers argued that the pregnancy was no longer private because the website of Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald website had run a story the previous day, as had a blog, Faded Youth.
“The references in the Sydney Morning Herald and the blog were speculative rather than confirmed, and did not mean that the information was so extensively in the public domain that it would have been perverse not to refer to it,” the PCC said.
It said papers needed to use “common sense” with private material that had appeared online; otherwise “any reference online would represent automatic justification for a newspaper to publish otherwise intrusive material”.
Minogue’s representative said that the Mirror was aware when it published the story that the X Factor presenter had not had the scan.
The newspaper argued that information was either “in” or “not in” the public domain; it could not be partially so. But it said it was happy to publish an apology to the complainant, as a gesture of goodwill.
The PCC has taken an extremely hard line against newspapers reporting on pregnancy ever since the Independent’s Pandora diary broke the news that actress Joanna Riding was withdrawing from a play because she was pregnant. in her complaint to the PCC, Riding said she had not even told close friends and family about the pregnancy.
On that occasion, as with this one, the PCC agreed and handed down an adjudication rather than brokering a resolution. the paper’s first offer of remedy had been a letter to the editor.
The Mirror probably thought it could get away with reporting news of Minogue’s pregnancy, but should have had a better feel for the PCC’s resolve on the matter, considering the Sun was reprimanded in 2007 for merely reporting rumours that Charlotte Church was pregnant.
Mirror rapped for Dannii Minogue pregnancy story
TwitterGlitter.com – Mirror rapped for Dannii Minogue pregnancy story
