Media News - Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Photo mix-up in Austrian tabloids

Austria's tabloid newspapers are facing tough new regulation after they published a picture of a child who was allegedly killed by her father with an axe – only to find they had the wrong girl. Instead of pictures of seven-year-old Natalie Steinbauer, who is said to have been murdered by her father last Tuesday in Vienna together with four other family members, three Austrian papers – Heute, Österreich and Kronen Zeitung – printed a picture of a different girl that attends the same school. The story they were illustrating with the wrong girl's picture is about The second girl is not in the same class as Natalie, and is still alive. In the three papers, stories about the multiple killing were accompanied by the pictures purporting to show Steinbauer's seven-year-old daughter. As a result of the mix-up, the Austrian government has pledged to rush through tough new laws governing the press that will include higher fines for breaches of editorial standards. Austria's newspaper market has been livened up of late by the arrival of the tabloid freesheet Heute and the aggressive daily Österreich. These are competing with the more established Kronen Zeitung, which has a daily circulation of around 4m. The intense competition that has followed has been visible in the battle for exclusives in the recent incest scandal in Amstetten, which may lead to further punishment for Austrian newspapers for breaches of media and privacy laws. (The Guardian)

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