Press Council: Complaint against Tagesanzeiger and Blick Online rejected
The Swiss Press Council has rejected a complaint that reports by Tagesanzeiger and Blick Online violated journalistic guidelines. The issue was the identifiability of a child in connection with a criminal trial.
At the end of 2010, a 44-year-old man and a 62-year-old woman stood before a Zurich jury. They had to answer for severe child abuse. The victims were the 44-year-old's two young daughters. The younger one had died in May 2006 at the age of five. Her three-year-old half-sister was placed in the care of a foster family.
Tagesanzeiger and Blick Online named the girls' first names in their trial reports and mentioned that the surviving child was now living with a foster family. Blick Online illustrated the report with a picture of the two children, on which the face of the surviving girl was made unrecognizable.
According to the association Espoir, which works for children in need, this reporting made the child identifiable. All the more so because the girl's name was rare and her current age could be easily deduced.
Journalist guidelines violated
The association turned to the Press Council with a complaint. The two media outlets had violated the regulation on identification and special protection needs of children in the "Declarations of Duties and Rights of Journalists," it claimed.
The Press Council took a different view. Neither the mention of the first names, nor the information about the current living conditions, nor the several years old pictures with the face made unrecognizable in addition allowed an identification "beyond the circle of the already initiated". The two media had thus not violated the guidelines. (SDA)
