The Press Complaints Commission has ruled against two IPC titles on the grounds of payment to criminals and breach of privacy respectively.
Women’s weekly Chat magazine was criticised for paying convicted criminal Sylvia Payne for her story of unlawful sex with a member of her own family.
The magazine paid a fee to an agency, which, in turn, paid Payne and her son.
The commission considered that this was a clear and unacceptable breach of Clause 16 (Payments to criminals) of the code, for which there was no conceivable public interest justification.
An IPC spokesman said: “We entirely accept the PCC’s adjudication and will be publishing this in full.”
The PCC also ruled that IPC’s Loaded had breached Clause 3 (Privacy) of the code, by publishing a photograph of a bank cashier at work, without his consent. Part of a feature on millionaire “lotto lout” Michael Carroll, the photograph showed him withdrawing cash from the bank and incidentally pictured the complainant, a cashier at the branch.
The commission said that, given the innocuous nature of the photograph, it was satisfied that the magazine’s offer to publish an apology was sufficient remedy.
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