To be upset that school gave newspaper my dd's address?

[browneyedone]

My dd (15) has had recent sportig success outside of school in and the school wanted to be kept informed. After I told them the results from the last competition the school stated they were going to pass it on to the local newspaper. So far OK, but what I wasn't expecting was for them to pass on the name of the road we live on (which is a cul-de-sac and amounts to a dozen houses) and for this to be published in the article. AIBU to think this is irresponsible of the school and the newspaper?

Well I have this type of job. I don't mind my neighbours knowing what I do, though I don't broadcast the specifics. However I don't want one of my clients leafing through the paper, finding out where I live and turning up at my house. You can't eliminate risk, but you can minimise it.

My neighbours have no idea what my job is, why would they?
No one is saying that terrorist pop down the paper shop and get the village gazette every week but there are wider issues. I go to great lengths not to be obviously known. My social media is in a false name so if I'm googled you have to go through a lot of pages before you'll find a link to me. I have a very unusual surname too. So if the local rag, most of which have an online presence, was to put my name or a child of mines name in the paper along with the name of the street where I live, it could potentially be an issue. And as pp this goes for many common professions. The point is that whatever you say there are massive safe guarding issues and really absolutely NO valid reason for including the street name.
The school has apologised and what's done is done in this case but it shouldn't have been put in in the first place. They don't need to put it in.

So in that case oohblimey you just say to the school - no, thanks, I don't want dc in any photos.

So the circs of the op would never occur

My neighbours know what I do for a living and I know what they do. Unless they are lying to me, which could be the case .

We also have a pretty good idea about how we vote and what our movements are. All without buying the local paper. It's because we talk and keep our eyes and ears open and sometimes put posters in the window. That's what neighbourhoods are about, for good or ill, isn't it?

I don't want one of my clients leafing through the paper, finding out where I live and turning up at my house. You can't eliminate risk, but you can minimise it.

If someone really wants to find you, they'll do it. Like the person who took a shine to me in the street and followed me home.

In a 'good news' story, if a parent of a child said to me that they didn't want their child's street name in the paper for whatever reason, I'd say fine, we'll just print the name of the town / village. We don't go putting street names in against the parents' wishes just for the hell of it. That eliminates the risk of a child of a police officer / prison officer etc being identified. It also negates the risk of an adopted child being identified, for example.

But if we go into a school and are given info by a teacher then we have to assume that the teacher has permission from the parent to give out that info. Otherwise we'd never do any stories in schools, ever.

As has been said many times, it's not the local paper's fault that the child's street name is in there.

But no, let's have another thread having a pop at journalists, eh?

Also, I can go to any council office in any town in the country and view the name and address of anyone I want to.

I used to be a journalist and this was common practice 20 odd years ago, but people are much more aware these days of the possible dangers so now usually only the name of the town or village is used.
What's done is done but I would ask school to ensure that your address is not disclosed again, and ask the paper to remove it from their website, if it's on there.

Becky, you would only be able to see the names of adults on the electoral roll not juveniles.

people are much more aware these days of the possible dangers so now usually only the name of the town or village is used

I'd say there aren't any more dangers, rather than objections to perceived dangers. What is the real danger of publishing the road your child lives in unless that child is a specific target - like someone who has to be protected from an abusive parent? I can see that, but in that case it comes back on the school. Why shouldn't the paper think it was okay to publish those details? What is going to happen?

Otherwise you might as well publish pictures from school Nativity plays with the children's eyes blacked out. To me that looks more like the kind of thing a kidnapper would send. Chilling.

Guardian

But no, let's have another thread having a pop at journalists, eh?

It feels more like a thread having a pop at lax procedures in schools to me.

Yanbu at all and I would be furious too. Back in the 80s as a young teenager my photo and road name were published in a local newspaper in a similar context and a pervert used this info to start sending disgusting letters and making lewd phonecalls which was horrible. I assumed that such things wouldn't happen these days because schools are responsible about safeguarding.

has had recent sportig success outside of school in and the school wanted to be kept informed.

Why do school want to be kept informed? Its got nothing to do with them, its outside school. They are only doing it so her success can be linked with them in some way.

I'd say there aren't any more dangers

Well, you'd be wrong.

But no, let's have another thread having a pop at journalists, eh?

I'm a journalist. Some local papers have a policy of not printing street names apart from in court cases, while others don't. So it isn't taking a pop at journalists generally, just questioning why that policy might not be followed by some local papers, when it's clear that it can sometimes be a safeguarding issue to print a street name and a surname, and also clear that you really don't need to print a specific street name to catch people's interest - you can say "from the Glebe estate", or whatever.

As I said before this was something that was covered in my own training 20 years ago so it seems a bit slack that it isn't policy everywhere now.

And I love local papers. I read them regularly. The more local the better.

BeckyMcDonald
But if we go into a school and are given info by a teacher then we have to assume that the teacher has permission from the parent to give out that info. Otherwise we'd never do any stories in schools, ever.

It's highly unlikely that a teacher would volunteer a pupil's address. The newspaper would have to ask for it. I've never seen a school permission slip that asks if a pupil's address can be published - only images and names. So I think that the paper and the school between them can assume that publishing an address needs specific sanctioning by a parent.

limited it's not just about physical danger. It's about privacy. People have a right to limit the sharing of their contact information. Even if contact details can be found/pieced together by e.g. trawling the web, publishing them in a newpaper/media story, with other information, could result in unwanted communications. Information sharing can be harmful - the elderly poppy seller who committed suicide was thought to have received thousands of communications from different charities in the space of one year.

While most parents will be happy for their children's photos and names to be published, I think many would opt out of providing an address. (And if by some quirk, newspapers were also in the habit of publishing private telephone numbers, the reaction would be even more unfavourable.)

I think journalists know full well what they are doing when they violate people's privacy.

They see it as their jobs to "make the story continue and make some drama".

In the Leveson inquiry, Rowling commented how newspapers did their best to print identifying details of her children (which as pp noted would be available online - and of course with Rowling's wealth it is always going to be a serious security issue).

They wanted "Rowling children stalked/harassed/kidnapped" to be the next headline (and of course they could then run stories on how they were "heroes" who were supporting Rowling).

"X runs 50m in y seconds" and "X of Acacia Drive runs 50m in y seconds"? Why would anyone need to know X lives on Acacia Drive?

(and a simple fact based story wouldn't get many clicks - although congratulations )

"Local schoolgirl gets hassled after sporting victory" would. Young women are vulnerable to lone weirdos.

The pp who mentioned that the newspaper printed her address after she complained about verbal street harassment?

It wasn't just naivete or sloppy procedure - they wanted a follow-up story (complete with sadface pic) in which she was complaining about the level of harassment increasing

(which they themselves had consciously contributed to, but they would paint themselves as the "heroes" who were speaking out on her behalf)

The media get kudos for creating a "feeding frenzy" around anything they do.

There was a journalist I met briefly socially whose own husband took me to the side and apologised/warned me about her behaviour because she just lied all the time?

She was very charming and "nice" but had form for saying one thing to one person and one thing to another in order to create a tense situation (casually passing on private information) and then stepping back and feeding off the emotional drama whilst saying "oh, dear, look what's happened, isn't it awful! just look at it!"

It is sheer spite and malice and manipulation.

NC for obvious reasons

No offence Bobbi but for the vast majority of journalists that is total bollocks. We are people and don't want to see others become victims of crime. There are probably a few hardened bastards working on the big tabloids, but most of us are just people plugging away on the local paper/telly/radio, or writing articles about economics or showbiz - not psychos desperate to get other people's children kidnapped FGS. That really is a crazy thing to say.

I used to work at the BBC and their child protection training - compulsory - is v specific about not giving details of children's addresses, or too much identifying info generally, because it makes them too easy to find. NOT just for victims etc in sex cases, but any children. If you look at this for example you can see that the students' first name and school is given. Definitely no surnames or addresses.

Limited I usually think you're a really sensible poster, but I have to say, just because some total bastard followed you in the street, doesn't mean there aren't other bastards out there using different ways of targeting people.

Think how easy it would be to take the level of info given in the article mentioned by the OP, and set up a fake profile on social media for example. Contacting a child over facebook or twitter is as easy as falling off a log, and if you can pretend you know them/friend of a friend/have a similar interest, probably even easier. It's way more about protecting the child from these kind of approaches - the modern equivalent of the horrible phone calls experienced by too many of the posters here when they were children. :(

Argh. Thought I'd posted a reply to this yesterday but discovered it obviously hadn't posted when I was looking for updates and couldn't find it on the list of my threads...

Anyway, I too would be furious. I'd do the following things (sorry, it was a nice list yesterday, bit more scrappy today!):

• Report to the Data Protection people for passing on your dd's address without permission

• Research best practice for child safety online on a couple of well regarded sites (like CEOP, the BBC, I know O2 have some good guidelines, etc). Pretty sure that most of them will stress how important it is not to publish identifiable address details

• Check school's own online safety guidelines - again, they should make sure that they are telling students not to publish identifiable address details. If they're not/don't have guidelines/etc then that's a related problem in itself and maybe also shows how little the school understands the issues

• complain again to the HT - pointing out that whilst it's nice that they apologised, they really don't seemed to have grasped the severity of the issue and let them know that you have raised the issue made a complaint to the Data Protection people due to their failure to protect your dd's data

• Also say that releasing address details is a major safeguarding issue - and whilst it is good that they will no longer release dd's address again, that they need to ensure that they don't do it for any other pupil, due to it 1) contravening the data protection guidelines and 2) safeguarding. Having this in writing about your child and others is good so that they can't pretend they don't know if it happens to another child.

• Point out that putting identifiable personal details online, particularly for minors, is something that is against all social media guidelines from Those Who Know (and quote the main ones). Point out that it is also against their own best practice guidelines / that they don't have best practice guidelines which which shows that they are seriously lacking in understanding of this.

• Copy in the governors and say that you are raising it with them as the HT does not seem to understand the seriousness of the issues.

• See if there's anyone at the local council education office who has any input into schools safeguarding policy and similar, and see if you can copy them in too, and also raise it with them as an issue as the HT does not seem to understand the seriousness of the issues.

-Bit late now for the printed copy stuff but the paper should remove the details from their online copy of the article - double check that it has been done! Also see how consistently they apply their policy and if they do put everyone's address in or just some...

think that was it!
Hope the meeting at school went well today...
Remember to follow up with an email to confirm all the major points and get your important info down as a paper trail

No offence bobbi, and as a journalist I should be able to put this in a more sophisticated way, but you're talking shite.

I very, very much doubt that someone's husband took you aside and warned you - sorry, that's total shit.

The thing is with local reporters (of which I am one) is that the vast majority of us don't/won't shit on our own doorstep.

Our editions are mostly made up with court cases, council stories, police notes, local events and sporting matters.

We have human interest articles too and these are written very sensitively, often ran by the interviewee (in the case of a child's/spouses death for example)

I can tell you there's not a local journalist I know (I work with ten and there's twould other papers in my area so I know a lot of journalists) would tell people lies and stand back... really not ethical and you're not painting a nice picture of the majority of us who are daughters, sisters, mothers too and have qualifications and work hard.

Wow bobbi what an insane post - you sound totally paranoid.

Apart from the fact it's not true that would simply be a very bizarre way for any journalist to behave.