IPSO editors code of practice

Clause 1 - Accuracy: key details

• The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

• A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published

Clause 2 - Privacy: Key details

• Everyone is entitled to respect for their private and family life, home, physical and mental health, and correspondence, including digital communications.

• Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent.

• It is unacceptable to photograph individuals, without their consent, in public or private places where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Clause 3 - Harassment: Key details

• Journalists must not engage in intimidation, harassment or persistent pursuit.

• They must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals once asked to desist; nor remain on property when asked to leave and must not follow them. If requested, they must identify themselves and whom they represent.

Clause 4 - Intrusion into grief or shock: Key details

• In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. These provisions should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings.

Clause 5 - Reporting suicide: Key details

• When reporting suicide, to prevent simulative acts care should be taken to avoid excessive detail of the method used, while taking into account the media’s right to report legal proceedings.

Clause 6 - Children: key details

• All pupils should be free to complete their time at school without unnecessary intrusion.

• They must not be approached or photographed at school without permission of the school authorities.

• Children under 16 must not be interviewed or photographed on issues involving their own or another child’s welfare unless an adult with legal parental responsibility or similarly responsible adult consents.

• Children under 16 must not be paid for material involving their welfare, nor parents or guardians for material about their children or wards, unless it is clearly in the child’s interest.

• Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child’s private life.

Clause 7 - Children in sex cases: key details

• The press must not, even if legally free to do so, identify children under 16 who are victims or witnesses in cases involving sex offences.

• The adult may be identified.

• The word “incest” must not be used where a child victim might be identified.

• Care must be taken that nothing in the report implies the relationship between the accused and the child.

Clause 8 - Hospitals: key details

• Journalists must identify themselves and obtain permission from a responsible executive before entering non-public areas of hospitals or similar institutions to pursue enquiries.

• The restrictions on intruding into privacy are particularly relevant to enquiries about individuals in hospitals or similar institutions.

Clause 9 - Reporting of crime: key details

• Relatives or friends of persons convicted or accused of crime should not generally be identified without their consent, unless they are genuinely relevant to the story.

• Particular regard should be paid to the potentially vulnerable position of children under the age of 18 who witness, or are victims of, crime. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings.

• Editors should generally avoid naming children under the age of 18 after arrest for a criminal offence but before they appear in a youth court unless they can show that the individual’s name is already in the public domain, or that the individual (or, if they are under 16, a custodial parent or similarly responsible adult) has given their consent. This does not restrict the right to name juveniles who appear in a crown court, or whose anonymity is lifted.

Clause 10 - Clandestine devices and subterfuge

• The press must not seek to obtain or publish material acquired by using hidden cameras or clandestine listening devices; or by intercepting private or mobile telephone calls, messages or emails; or by the unauthorised removal of documents or photographs; or by accessing digitally-held information without consent.

• Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be obtained by other means.

Clause 11 - Victims of sexual assault: key details

• The press must not identify or publish material likely to lead to the identification of a victim of sexual assault unless there is adequate justification and they are legally free to do so. Journalists are entitled to make enquiries but must take care and exercise discretion to avoid the unjustified disclosure of the identity of a victim of sexual assault.

Clause 12 - Discrimination: key details

• The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.

• Details of an individual’s race, colour, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.

Clause 13 - Financial journalism: key details

• Even where the law does not prohibit it, journalists must not use for their own profit financial information they receive in advance of its general publication, nor should they pass such information to others.

• They must not write about shares or securities in whose performance they know that they or their close families have a significant financial interest without disclosing the interest to the editor or financial editor.

• They must not buy or sell, either directly or through nominees or agents, shares or securities about which they have written recently or about which they intend to write in the near future.

Clause 14 - Confidential sources: key details

• Journalists have a moral obligation to protect confidential sources of information.

Clause 15 - Witness payments in criminal trials: key details

• No payment or offer of payment to a witness – or any person who may reasonably be expected to be called as a witness – should be made in any case once proceedings are active as defined by the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

• This prohibition lasts until the suspect has been freed unconditionally by police without charge or bail or the proceedings are otherwise discontinued; or has entered a guilty plea to the court; or, in the event of a not guilty plea, the court has announced its verdict.

Clause 16 - Payments to criminals: key details

• Payment or offers of payment for stories, pictures or information, which seek to exploit a particular crime or to glorify or glamorise crime in general, must not be made directly or via agents to convicted or confessed criminals or to their associates – who may include family, friends and colleagues.

• Editors invoking the public interest to justify payment or offers would need to demonstrate that there was good reason to believe the public interest would be served.