Can news media publish photos of car crash victims?
Although there must be a concern about the victim's identity, we are faced with a huge problem when it comes to identifying those who were involved in the incident: the news media are subject to Codes of Practice that include privacy standards. The publication of a photo of a person who died in a car crash taken from a publicly accessible web page (such as Facebook) can breach media privacy standards. The publication of private material in a manner that would be considered highly offensive to the person affected could also be a privacy breach, depending on the circumstances. These privacy laws limit publicity where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the circumstances. For example, one couple sued news media who filmed them being extricated from a car wreck, (Andrews v TVNZ, High Court, 2006) but on the facts of that case, the claim did not succeed because the filming did not show the couple “in a bad light”. Nevertheless, there is a Privacy Act exemption that allows personal use, but that exemption does not allow personal information to be published if an ordinary person would consider it to be “highly offensive”. There is also an exception for publishing personal information that is already publicly available as long as it’s not unfair or unreasonable to do so in such circumstances. Besides, Police appear to be committed to making sure the news media get the message that grieving families have a right to be left alone by reporters as long as the families expressly request that their privacy is respected and that they don’t want to be contacted by any news media.
In conclusion, efforts have been made to maintain families’ privacy, however, it’s extremely difficult to ensure that privacy reaches every family, which sometimes generates huge conflicts.
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