THE media is frequently condemned for going too far – not caring enough about the impact of what's published – and sometimes those criticisms are justified.

But readers might be surprised at how much isn't published because of ethical considerations and requests for understanding and sensitivity.

Last week's tragic case of a boy – identified only as Child H in a damning report on the failings of care experts – is a case in point.

The boy had been so badly neglected at his home on Teesside that he ended up half blind and scrawled a desperate "Help me" message on his bedroom wall. It was an utterly heartbreaking state of affairs as child care professionals missed an number of basic opportunities to stop the neglect.

One manager of a team of social workers, who decided no further action was necessary despite doctors flagging up concerns, was dismissed and Jane Humphries, Stockton council's corporate director of children, education and social care, visited the boy in person to apologise for her department's failings.

The case had first come to light last year when the boy's mother and step-father, Gillian Hendry and Craig Dick, were jailed for child cruelty. The judge decided that, due to the seriousness of their offences, they should be named and prosecutors released pictures to the media, showing the squalor in which the family had lived. Those pictures were used prominently across the national media.

At the end of July, I received a letter from Colin Morris, chair of Stockton's Local Safeguarding Children Board, expressing concern that the media would use those images again in the context of the "serious case review" report being made public. Mr Morris explained that the original publication of the pictures had a "significantly detrimental impact" on the child's emotional wellbeing and had led to highly distressing remarks from fellow school pupils. The fear was that the pictures would be re-published again and the boy would suffer again.

It should be made clear that there was no criticism of the media for using the pictures after the court case. They were released to underline the seriousness of the crimes committed by Hendry and Dick. Perhaps, with hindsight, that was the wrong call by prosecutors but, nevertheless, there was a clear acknowledgement of a public interest in showing the extent of the neglect.

There was no demand from Mr Morris not to use the pictures again, just a polite request to editors to take make the child the priority – to appreciate that he had already been through more than enough in his short life.

The conclusions of the report were published in detail on The Northern Echo's front page under the headline "We failed you". The public interest was about holding the child care experts to account for letting down a little boy so badly. However, I complied with the request not to re-publish the pictures of the unbearable squalor in which he had been forced to live.

The media does get it wrong sometimes – but the ethical arguments are weighed a lot more responsibly than people may appreciate.

There was a lot of bad news in that serious case review report but the paragraph which jumped out most stated: "The boy has regained some of his sight following an operation on his eye and is now doing well in a loving environment. His much younger sister is also thriving."

That's very good news indeed.