The DM has form on all this.
At the outbreak of GW1, I was (for my sins - and, in retrospect, not proud) the newly appointed Defence Correspondent at the DM. When the first Tornados were shot down, the DM went into overdrive vis-a-vis the crews and their backgrounds, including doorstepping the relatives. Please bear in mind that this was the product of instructions from the News Editor and nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the specialist correspondent.
Once the paper started publishing details of family, etc, I marched into the Editor's office (Sir David English) to point out that this would not help if the crews were 1) interrogated (hopefully you understand what I am saying here) and; 2) if they were placed on public display. And I told him why.
I was, therefore, present when he called in the News Editor and told him, in no uncertain terms, that the hounds were to be called off - without saying exactly why. (I suspect he felt that this was 'need to know'.)
Now we know what subsequently happened. I continued in my belief that the Editor's instructions were being obeyed, so it came as a huge surprise, some time after the end of GW1, when I found myself chatting to one of those who were paraded on TV who, in no uncertain terms, told me he would not speak to anybody from the DM as their reporters had continued to doorstep his wife for weeks!
I should add, too, that as the specialist correspondent, I wrote what I wrote as honestly as possible. On more than one occasion I was forced to defend my reputation by showing the subject the original, as submitted by me, compared to what had appeared in the rag over my byline - with changes that had been made without my knowledge and which I only saw once they were in print!
To be honest, agreeing to move to the DM was the biggest mistake of my career post leaving the services. I subsequently left the journalism game, totally, a few years later: it seemed that integrity was a word that was unknown in most of the press.