Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

Here is Section 12 of the Press Complaints' Commission Code of Practice:

i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.

ii) Details of an individual's race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.

Notice, there is no reference to age. Not only is age excluded from subsection ii – it is absolutely the norm to include references to the age of people in stories, whether it is relevant or not – but it is even excluded from subsection i. Apparently, pejorative references to a person's age are okay.

Journalists plainly believe that age is almost always relevant to a story. Take this paragraph from a Telegraph story about the feud between BBC presenters Eddie Mair and Robert Peston:

Mair, 46, had earlier written about his hopes of a peace on Radio 4’s blog, saying: “I wondered whether we could use this special day as an opportunity.

We are not treated to the knowledge of Peston's age. One could argue that both these journalists are behaving childishly, so knowing their age is of relevance. Except that I am not sure anyone would have imagined either Mair (46) or Peston (51, since you ask) was a child. Would this story have been different if Mair had been 36 and Peston 71?

Here is a cutting from a BBC story about a robbery:

Winful Taylor, 27, of Streatham, south London, has been charged with robbery and will appear at South Western Magistrates' Court later.

Of what relevance is it that Taylor is 27? Recall that with regard to other areas of discrimination the Code only bars mention of race, sexual orientation, etc. where the factor is not relevant to the story. In a story about, for example, rape it would plainly be relevant to the story if the victim was only nine or was as old as ninety-nine. But is the difference between twenty-nine and thirty-nine worth mentioning? 

The UK is in the midst of a major discussion about media ethics. Let us not overlook this glaring omission from the PCC's Code.