Fair Game To Print Pictures Of The England Football Coach And Wife Soaked By A Mud Bath While On Holiday? What if The Wife Wasn’t In The Picture?

Philip M. Stone September 24, 2009 Follow on Twitter

Despite being asked not to by the UK Press Complaints Commission (PCC) a few days earlier, the Murdoch tabloid News of the World on the Sunday and Associated Newspapers’ Daily Mail on the Monday each ran big picture spreads of the England football coach on holiday in Spain with his wife, both soaked in mud from a treatment. They certainly weren’t looking their best and the captions and cartoon bubbles of what they might have been saying to one another certainly poked big fun of them. By Wednesday both newspapers had asked forgiveness and sweetened the pot with charity donations.

The British media and others are making a big deal of how quickly this was resolved, saying that the PCC really does carry muscle and once it complained to the two newspapers they quickly did mea culpas, and paid money totaling around £20,000 to a football charity. The unspoken words being that since the PCC has shown it has that kind of muscle there’s certainly no need for further government privacy legislation.

But does this really show the PCC has muscle? Very unlikely. More likely they recanted t because while they might have had a legal foot to stand on in printing pictures of Mr. Capello covered in mud on a Spanish beach, it’s doubtful they had any legal grounds for publishing pictures of Mrs. Capello who is not a “public person”. We’ll never know, unfortunately, if it all would have been resolved so quickly had the pictures been of just Mr. Capello, or if the lady had not been Mrs. Capello.  

Roy Greenslade, the premier UK media writer, said in his blog, “I understand that within those papers the culprits have been disciplined. Paul Dacre, the Mail's editor, was particularly upset. As chair of the committee that oversees the code he could not be seen to ignore PCC warnings.” Yet in the comments section of Greenslade’s blog there seems to be a large bout of skepticism on whether that was really so.

Capello had been pretty smart. He spotted photographers on his tail during his holiday so he got word to his employer, the English Football Association, which in turn notified the PCC which in turn sent a note to newspapers saying that Capello, 63, was not happy and any publication of him and his wife would be considered a breach of privacy. Fat lot of good that memo did as far as the News of the World and The Daily Mail were concerned!

So with the Sunday publication of the News of the World, plus more pictures on its web site, the Football Association immediately complained again to the PCC. It spoke to the newspaper’s editor and the online pictures were removed. The PCC also sent out another note to newspapers not to use the photos, but that didn’t stop The Daily Mail the next day.

After getting the apologies and financial settlement in what was really quick order, the PCC issued a statement claiming, “Both newspapers accepted that internal procedures – warning of Mr. Capello’s concerns – had failed and that the pictures were printed in error. Following complaints they have apologized to the Capellos, given undertakings for the future, and – at the request of the Capellos – made substantial donations to the Sir Bobby Robson (cancer) Foundation.”

US President John F. Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis remarked that his greatest fear in deciding his country’s military response was that “there’s always someone somewhere out there who doesn’t get the message.” So maybe in this instance it’s as the newspapers say – that the right people didn’t get the message – or then again …

A PCC spokesman told Amateur Photographer, “It is an important case, as it shows that a celebrity has chosen to come to the PCC rather than the law, both before and after publication on a privacy matter, and has achieved a satisfactory resolution in a very short space of time (three days).”

Whoa, wait a minute, the PCC certainly succeeded in closing the barn door quickly after the horses had escaped, but the fact is Capello went through the right procedures and two newspapers literally dragged  pictures of him and his wife through the mud (they really made ugly fun of them both!). The only resolution here was to get quick apologies and some money given to charity, but if the PCC is to be seen as really having done its job those pictures would not have gotten printed in the first place. Given that why should a celebrity go to the PCC when there seems to be no guarantee the PCC system will work 100%? Who, next time, won’t get the message?

This is a real sensitivity within the British media where recent legal privacy actions are quickly putting an end to tabloid fodder – print or show pictures of what someone does in their private life, no matter how public that person may be,  and real legal privacy issues come to the forefront. And with celebrities more and more using high priced legal teams that don’t get paid if they lose but can collect up to twice their legal costs from defendants should they win, fighting libel actions is fast becoming a seven figure expense that few newspaper owners, including the very richest, really want to take on these days. 

The hope, of course, is that the PCC and newspapers will get their acts together after the Capello episode. The PCC thought it had done what it was supposed to, but it didn’t work in two cases. Maybe not its fault but it needs to scrutinize with editors exactly whom should receive such notices and how – maybe someone actually has to talk to someone instead of relying solely on email, texting and the like -- and the newspapers will have scrutinized their internal procedures to ensure whomever needs to know once such a notice arrives in house does actually get to know.

It’s a system that needs to show that it works to keep privacy issues under control before harm is done, rather than being just a system to get fast redress when it goes wrong. For if the PCC and the newspapers don’t really get their act together then the government will undoubtedly step in with legislation, and that’s the last thing the media really wants.

This Capello episode should be considered the shot across the bow.