Judge backs privacy ruling

THE High Court yesterday upheld a ruling by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission that parents of two people who died in tragic circumstances should have been warned before television programmes were broadcast which brought back the distress of the deaths.

Mr Justice Popplewell said the commission was 'perfectly entitled' to take the view that two programmes screened by Granada Television's World In Action some time after the deaths amounted to 'unwarranted infringement of privacy'.

He rejected an application from Granada for the watchdog body's decision to be quashed.

One programme featured, without warning, a photograph of nine-year-old Annette Wade, from Blackpool, who was murdered in 1989. The other showed a picture of Helen Sandford, 21, an anorexia victim from Bournemouth, who died in 1987.