Swiss Press Council reprimands Blick: Yes of the home director is not enough

Blick had reported on a home specializing in dementia patients, where Swiss retirees spend their twilight years. In addition to the rooms, the director and guests of the home were also pictured and identified by name and place of origin. The life partner of one of those pictured filed a complaint with the Press Council against the picture and identification of the woman: she had not consented to it. Her privacy was violated. Her human dignity had also been violated because she had been exposed for her illness and her stay in a home far away. The woman was no longer capable of judgement, she could not have validly consented to all this. Blick argued the other way around, that the director of the home had explicitly agreed to the report about the home and its inmates. The Press Council agrees with the complaint in essential parts: It holds that the right to one's own image and to privacy in general constitute a high legal right. The blanket consent of a home director is therefore not sufficient to abrogate the privacy of individual people entrusted to his care. The home director could only do so if he or she were expressly authorized to do so. The journalists would therefore have had to obtain either the express consent of the persons concerned. Or, in the case of persons incapable of judgement, the consent of the legal representative. The Press Council, however, does not consider human dignity to have been violated. (SDA)