Press Council reprimands Blick: Privacy violated twice

"Drama surrounding star author Suter: Son choked! Toni (3) choked while eating". With this headline, Blick reported on September 2, 2009 on the death of author Martin Suter's adopted son. The main picture on the front page was a photo of the child that his parents had placed on his grave. The Press Council has now approved a complaint by Suter, as it announced on Tuesday. Although the author is a public figure, Suter has always regarded his family as a protected part of his private life and has communicated little about them.
The Press Council criticized Blick in particular for reproducing the private photo on the grave and selling it on to the German newspaper Bild and its online edition. The child's parents had only placed an obituary after the funeral because they wanted to avoid a media frenzy. Based on this announcement, Blick searched for and photographed the grave. The Press Council has now ruled that an obituary is "not a license to plunder a gravesite for journalistic purposes".

Sado-maso: "Blatant" violation of privacy
In the case of a young woman who works as a municipal employee and has herself photographed in sado-masochistic poses in her free time, the tabloid was no less squeamish. "Sado-maso in the social welfare office" was the Blick's headline and it printed photos of the woman as a sex slave. Blick had downloaded the images from the Internet. Although the editors pixelated the woman's face, they mentioned her first name, the municipality and the private website with the photos. "Blick thus blatantly violated the woman's privacy", the Press Council stated. It has approved a corresponding complaint.
This is because the report made the woman recognizable beyond her immediate environment, while she appeared on the Internet under a pseudonym. For the Press Council, there is "no public interest whatsoever" in printing such photos from a private website and thus making them accessible to a larger and completely different audience.