Katie And Peter: The Baby Diaries showed nanny Rebecca Gauld being sacked on the phone by Price and broadcasted Gauld’s phone number.
Ofcom (The independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) ruled today that the ITV2 series Katie and Peter: The Baby Diaries treated nanny Rebecca Gauld unfairly and breached her privacy.
Gauld, a nanny once employed by model Katie Price and singer Peter Andre, complained that her privacy was unneccessarily infringed in the making and broadcast of the program. She also objected to the fact that the telephone conversation where Price sacked her was broadcast without her being informed.
The show, which aired last July, centred around the birth of Price and Andre’s second child.
In one episode, Price discovered that Gauld had gone on holiday to Portugal, despite informing her employers that she had visited her father in Wales. Price believed that Gauld had lied to her and let her down and so decided to terminate her employment.
The programme showed Gauld’s possessions being packed up into bin bags and a telephone conversation during which Price dismissed her. It also showed Gauld later arriving at the house to collect her belongings.
In its defence, ITV claimed that Gauld had been given an opportunity to respond to remarks put to her on camera by the show’s producer.
However, the regulator ruled that Gauld was not given an appropriate opportunity to respond to the allegations made against her and ruled that filming and broadcast of footage of her room and the broadcast of footage of her telephone number was an unwarranted infringement of her privacy.
The regulator also ruled that the recording and broadcast of footage of a telephone conversation with Price in which Gauld was dismissed from her position was also an unwarranted infringement of her privacy.
The regulator noted that Gauld had signed a release form in relation to the filming of footage of her, but added that “there was nothing in the form to suggest that her bedroom might be filmed in her absence or that Katie Price or her staff would be filmed going through her personal possessions”.
Ofcom considered that, at the time of the filming, Gauld was not on notice that she was about to be asked to leave her employment and therefore her home.
“There was nothing in the circumstances of the filming that diminished Ms Gauld’s expectation of privacy in relation to the room, which had in effect become her home,” Ofcom stated adding that she had a “legitimate expectation of privacy in relation to filming in her bedroom in her absence”.
Last week Price and Andre accepted substantial damages and a public apology at the high court in London from a News of the World story based on an interview with Gauld which falsely claimed that the couple were uncaring parents.
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
