Two of the UK’s best-known broadcast journalists found themselves making headlines yesterday after potentially compromising pictures were published in the Sunday Mirror and the People.
Former Independent editor Andrew Marr, who now has his own BBC show, was pictured “getting up close and personal” with a woman at a wrap party for his new series. The picture was taken outside a pub in the street.
He told the Sunday Mirror: “It was an innocent goodbye to my series producer”.
The People reported yesterday that “just days earlier” his BBC colleague Dermot Murnaghan, who also hosts his own news show on Sky TV, was pictured kissing make-up artist Camilla Tew.
The paper reported that the journalist “was seen leaving his £1.5million home for a bike ride and was waved off by his wife of 23 years, Maria”.
Neither mentioned the photographs as they reviewed the Sunday newspapers on their shows yesterday.
Marr, who won a High Court injunction in 2008 to suppress reports of an earlier affair, told the Sunday Mirror: “It was an innocent goodbye to my series producer”.
The fact that both were pictured in public places makes it less likely that they would have a case for breach of privacy.
The Press Complaints Commission Editors’ Code of Practice states:
i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications.
ii) Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent. Account will be taken of the complainant’s own public disclosures of information.
iii) It is unacceptable to photograph individuals in private places without their consent. Private places are public or private property where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
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