Your legal editor's report in yesterday's Telegraph of a case in which an Essex man was awarded compensation by the European Court of Human Rights because his local council allowed footage of his attempted suicide, caught on security cameras, to be show on TV without his permission was an important and interesting piece of news. What dumbfounded me was that the report disclosed the man's identity and even included a photograph of him.

If he was upset about footage of him being shown on TV, which under the circumstance this reader at least can well understand, he is surely also going to be upset about you disclosing his identity and especially including a photo of him in the Telegraph. Unless, of course, you had his consent, which I find hard to imagine.

How would you, dear editor, feel if it had been you or a close member of your family?

Were you deliberately so contemptuous of this person's privacy (and this really is a private matter), or are you just too thick-skinned and stupid to realise it?

Either way, I think you owe him (and to a lesser extent your readers) an apology.

£7,000 for man after suicide bid is shown on TV, 29 January 2003