On April 19 2015, in print and online, The Herald on Sunday covered an incident involving Mathew Sinclair, former Black Cap, having allegedly "vanished with his children" after a domestic incident. The story referred to the police finding Mr Sinclair and the children at a fast food restaurant not long afterwards. The story referred to Mr and Mrs Sinclair's two young children by name. The print version carried a posed family photograph. The online version carried a photo of the children, with pixelated faces, accompanying their father leaving a Taradale restaurant on the day of the incident.
Paul Cronin complained that the photographs and naming of the children breached the Press Council principles of Privacy and Children and Young People. It was, he said, "gutter journalism at its worst" and that the children were likely to have been harmed by the reference to them. He said the children could not give consent to their images being used, and there was no legitimate public interest in the matter.
In response the newspaper said Mr Sinclair had left the home where he lived with his wife taking the children with him after police had been called to the property. There was concern about the wellbeing of the children and police were called to search for them. This elevated the matter into the public domain. The decision was taken to obscure the children's faces in the online photograph "to reflect to their lack of responsibility for whatever had gone on in this instance". Mr Sinclair had previously consented to publication of the photo used to illustrate the print story. In this photo the children were about two years younger.
The Press Council states that in cases involving children, editors must demonstrate an exceptional degree of public interest which overrides the interests of the child or young person. The public interest in the story was far from being sufficient to override the interests of the children. These children did not deserve to be identified in this story and there can be no doubt that the children's privacy, in their being named and photographed, was breached.
The Press Council also noted some inconsistency in the newspaper's approach. The newspaper was concerned enough to pixilate the faces of the children in the photo taken on the day of the incident and yet they were named in the story, and identified in the published family photo. In these circumstances it is difficult to see what the newspaper thought it was achieving just by the pixilation.
