Channel 5 has for a second time agreed to apologise and pay “substantial damages” to claimants who say their privacy was breached by an episode of bailiff documentary series Can’t Pay? We’ll Take it Away!
The settlement relates to an episode of the show broadcast in April 2017. The claimants, Paul and Clare Wylie, had their home visited by two High Court enforcement agents the preceding October because Mr Wylie owed a debt to his former employer.
Mrs Wylie denied a film crew who arrived with the agents permission to film the encounter, but footage and audio captured by the agents’ body cameras were nonetheless included in the April 2017 broadcast of Can’t Pay? We’ll Take it Away! In the first broadcast, which Channel 5 says went out to five million people, the Wylies’ faces were visible. Their faces were blurred in a subsequent broadcast seen by 5.8 million viewers.
Representing the family, law firm Hamlins wrote: “The Claimants’ case is that the programme wrongly revealed matters that were private to them which took place in their home. It is the Claimants’ case that the filming of them within their home and subsequent publication of the private information obtained in that way to over 10 million people amounted to a grave misuse of their private information.”
Channel 5’s counsel said: “The Defendant’s case that it has at all times believed that this programme forms part of a series of real public interest, where each of the stories involves a careful balancing exercise between matters of public interest and the right to respect for privacy.
“It is prepared to accept, however, that on this occasion, in relation to the Claimants, it may well have got that balance wrong and for that reason it is prepared to settle their claims and also apologise to them for the distress caused to them by the broadcast of the episode in question.”
Coincidentally, the Wylies’ home was visited by bailiffs the same month Channel 5 broadcast another episode of Can’t Pay? We’ll Take it Away! for which it has since paid a settlement. In that case, optometrist Brian Hitchin, 88, similarly had his encounter with enforcement agents broadcast to 11.9 million viewers. Hitchin’s case was settled in April last year. The Wylies notified Channel 5 of their intention to raise their claim the following month.
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