Press Council reprimands 20 Minuten: Picture of glued child was unnecessary

20 Minuten reported on the incident both online and in the print edition. The lead read, "18-year-old Jayla Hamm and her 19-year-old boyfriend Corde Honea from the U.S. state of Nebraska thought it was funny to tape their two-year-old son to the wall. The judge disagreed." The print edition's article was illustrated with a picture of the child taped to the wall. Online, 20 Minuten published three more photos. The case had come to light after the mother posted the pictures on her My-Space page and a friend then called the police. In all the pictures, the child's face is covered.

The Press Council has approved a complaint it received. It pointed out that it was not necessary to show the full extent of the horror in order to inform the public. Media representatives must ask themselves with pictures just as with texts: "What do I have to show?" and carefully weigh up between the information of the public and the protection of personality and the human dignity of the persons concerned, it says in the statement. He considers the publication of the pictures of the abused child to be disproportionate.

By the way the parents treated the child, photographed her and exhibited her on the Internet, they had degraded her to a defenseless object. And the disproportionate reproduction of the pictures by 20 Minuten perpetuates this exposure of the victim and her reduction to a defenseless object even more. In the specific case, the publication of the pictures also appeared unnecessarily sensational precisely because no photo was needed to imagine the crime. 20 Minuten had argued, among other things, that the pictures should enable the readership to get an idea of the crime. According to the Press Council, the same argument could generally be used to justify illustrating court reports on violent crimes with anonymized crime pictures - except in the case of particularly shocking images.