Guidelines

11.4.7

When people have been killed, injured or are missing, it is important that, as far as is reasonably practicable, next of kin do not find out from BBC output.  We recognise that, when names are not given in our reports, there may be needless concern among people with close relatives who might have been involved.  But we believe this is not as bad as the distress caused when they find out through the media.

We need to narrow the area of concern as quickly as possible without identifying individual victims, for example in the case of an air crash, by including details such as airline, flight number, place of departure and destination, to avoid alarming even larger numbers of people.

(See Section 11 War, Terror and Emergencies: 11.4.4 and Section 7 Privacy: 7.4.38 - 7.4.44)