The Sun and the MailOnline newspapers have wrongly used a photograph of a young woman, having mistakenly identified her as an air hostess, in a controversial story concerning the transit of One Direction star Liam Payne’s body.

The Sun newspaper printed the picture of student Summer Leigh Morris, alongside a story in their paper, claiming she was a flight attendant who had breached BA rules by identifying the plane that had been carrying Liam Payne’s coffin and his family.

Crew members are not allowed to reveal confidential and private information about flights.

However, Morris is not BA employee, she is a third year musical theatre student and was not present on the flight or in any way implicated.

Both paper’s online editions carried the story with Summer Leigh Morris’s photographs lifted from her personal Tik Tok social media, without checking she was the right person, or asking permission to use the picture.

The wrongful identification led to a storm of abuse towards the young student, who was branded ‘callous’ by The Sun but was powerless to correct the false accusation.

The actual flight attendant concerned was named Summer-Leigh Morrison and her picture was only replaced once the wrongly accused victim’s mother contacted the newspapers to ask them to take her daughter’s photograph down.

However, the Saturday edition of the Sun newspaper, on November 23, which is edited by Victoria Newton, had already been printed and Morris’s picture remained for the public to identify her.

The headline of the story in the printed Sun edition read:

BA Quiz Hostess over Liam Post – anger Over Insta coffin flight info

With a banner above stating:

Data Breach On Tragic Star

And a large clearly identifiable picture of the wrong woman.

The story was written by the Sun’s Associate News Editor Steven Moyes.

The article concerned a stewardess at risk of losing her job after taking to Instagram to post online that she was on the same flight that was taking Liam Payne's body.

Summer-Leigh Morrison was on the flight travelling with the late One Direction star’s coffin and was believed to have breached strict guidelines by sharing a picture of the British Airways flight manifest that detailed who was on the flight.

Posting on Instagram she wrote, ‘Just been told we're carrying a coffin with us today. To then find out it's Liam Payne's body and his family are on our flight too, heart breaking’

It is understood that the air stewardess has been suspended as British Airways bosses investigate.

Payne died aged 31 on October 16th after falling from the third floor balcony of a hotel in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. His funeral was held in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, on Wednesday November 20^th just days before the story came out.

In a visibly distressed state, Summer Leigh Morris, the victim of the wrongful identification said:

"I've woken up to my photos being plastered in all of the newspapers because apparently, I was a flight attendant exposed that Liam Payne was on their flight.

“It literally wasn't me and I'm literally so panicked because my photos are everywhere and people are being really, really mean to me in the comments about my appearance when it literally wasn’t me.”

She added:

"Surely if you're writing a big article for big newspapers you would like, get the right girl?"

She later posted: “I just thought I’d update everyone, so in Sun online they've managed to replace my pictures because my mum was trying to get in contact with the Sun for ages, so at least they've done that but obviously it's still printed and then all the other papers are still using my pictures and obviously I'm still getting loads of comments on the Daily Mail and just things like this popping up, not ideal erm yeah. Thank you so much for everyone being so kind, like I really, really appreciate it, I am seeing like comments and stuff and I know a lot of people are saying to sue and get legal advice and stuff I am trying. I've rang up so many numbers and because it's Saturday like nowhere is open and it keeps going to like ring Monday, ring Monday. And I just want to get the ball rolling now because I've literally been like hysterical all day, like this is awful, this is horrible and like, knowing I haven't done anything wrong and they're just wrongly using my picture, like it's horrible, like even without everything that everyone else is saying but I do really really appreciate everyone messaging me whether like you know you're not, like it is really, really kind I didn't expect that. I just think that like apparently this happens a lot like the Daily Mail and all this, papers use people's pictures wrongly, like, why is this still happening like how?"

"I don't get why people aren't fact checking like it can literally ruin people's lives like and how it's made me feel today is awful and I feel like, it's just, I don't understand why this is could even happen?"

In a later post Morris revealed how both papers had now taken down her images from the online stories and the Mail had added a small apology at the bottom of their article and disabled the comments.

This article has been amended to remove photographs which purported to feature Summer-Leigh Morrison but were in fact of a different, unrelated young woman. We apologise for the error. 

But the student said: There are still 1.5 thousand comments slating my appearance so I feel like the damage has already been done there.”

“And I feel like once people have already seen the article they are going to have gone off it. People are not going to back and check.”

“Also from them using my images there’s been lots of other articles around the world that have used my image and there’s also a you tube video from the channel that has over a million subscribers."

She pointed out that the image remained in print in The Sun.

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We contacted The Sun newspaper for an explanation but they made no comment.

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Commenting on the revelations, Hacked Off board director Emma Jones said:

Basic fact checking should be standard practice and is critical in powerful newspapers such as The Sun and the MailOnline, especially when stories concern serious accusations relating to private individuals.

Furthermore, disinformation due to sloppy journalism and scraping information from the internet without consent causes lasting damage to the reputations of those wrongly named.

Newspapers acting with impunity and using private content taken from people's social media pages without permission is inexcusable and leaves victims exposed to abusive comment and the spread of fake news and reputational damage.

The traumatic experience of Summer Leigh Morris demonstrates the increasingly powerful reach of national newspapers on the internet, once stories are published, and the need for independently regulated press and standards to ensure newspapers are held to account.

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