When a 21-year-old former student opened fire inside his school in Austria’s second-biggest city earlier this week, killing 10 people, it didn’t take long for the Alpine country’s press council to call on journalists to show restraint when reporting about the victims and their families.
The appeal essentially reminded journalists covering the school shooting — the deadliest attack in Austria’s post-war history — to refrain from publishing names and other details about the victims.
Police also didn’t release any details about the victims other than their age, gender and nationality, in line with the country’s strict privacy rules.
Austria’s press council aims to uphold ethic standards during violent news events
The press council, a voluntary self-regulatory body for Austrian media that aims to uphold ethical principles and standards of journalism, argues that journalistic restraint is needed during breaking news about attacks because the publication of the victims’ personal details or pictures could cause additional trauma for the families.
“You should always think twice and three times about whether this could also be a burden,” Alexander Warzilek, the managing director of the Austrian Press Council, told the Austria Press Agency, even as he acknowledged that “there is a great need for information.”
The Austrian Press Council also reminded reporters to adhere to its media code which specifically states that “in the case of children, the protection of privacy must take precedence over news value.”
Protection of victims and news consumers trumps media ratings
In addition to protecting those affected by the tragedy, there’s also concern about those who consume news about horrific events, especially children, says Claudia Paganini, an expert of media ethics at Austria’s University of Innsbruck.
In the school shooting Tuesday morning at the BORG Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz, nine students were killed — six girls and three boys aged between 14 and 17 — as well as a teacher, police said. Another 11 people were wounded — some of them also minors. The attacker killed himself in a bathroom of his former school.
Paganini said consuming news about violent attacks can cause trauma and emotional overload for individuals as well as the brutalization of society in the long run.
“As opposed to the United States, where news are seen as a product and reporters are pushed to get all the details in order to raise the visibility of their news organization, journalism in northern Europe is seen as a service to society and to democracy that comes along with a lot of responsibility,” Paganini said.
In the U.S., reporting on victims is a way to put a face on the tragedy
In the United States, where news organizations have more experience dealing with mass shootings, reporting on victims is fairly standard and becomes an important vehicle to put a human face on the tragedy, said Josh Hoffner, director of U.S. news for The Associated Press.
“Many families are open to having those stories out there to celebrate the legacies of their loved ones and call attention to the failures that lead to shootings,” he said.
Some news organizations make it a point to minimize the names of the alleged perpetrator of such crimes. There have been public campaigns to encourage journalists to focus on victims, survivors and heroes instead of the people who commit the crimes, said Amanda Crawford, a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut who is writing a book on media coverage of mass shootings.
Whenever there is a mass shooting, a team at CNN is assigned right away to learn as much about the victims as possible, said Matthew Hilk, senior vice president for national news at CNN. They are important voices that help viewers understand the gravity of the situation, he said. Often, survivors and their families also become active politically in lobbying for gun control legislation or other measures to curb these crimes.
“We always approach victims and survivors, and people connected to victims and survivors, with extreme sensitivity and certainly never push anyone to discuss anything they don’t want to discuss,” Hilk said.
Reporters who break the press code are shunned by their colleagues
Of course, not all reporters in Austria and elsewhere in Europe abide by the voluntary press code to stay away from victims. Those who break the code — especially those from tabloid newspapers — are often shunned by media colleagues.
There’s even a German term to describe reporters who ruthlessly try to interview those affected by tragedy. It’s called “Witwenschütteln,” or “shaking widows,” which in journalistic jargon means pressurizing the families of victims until they give up quotes.
Germany and Sweden also expect ethical responsibility from journalists
The call for responsible reporting in the face of tragedy and the plea to withhold information that may interest readers isn’t unique to Austria.
Publishing intimate information about victims is also considered unethical in neighboring Germany.
When a German co-pilot intentionally crashed a plane flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf into the Alps ten years ago, killing all 150 people on board, the German Press Council received 430 complaints by readers and viewers who criticized the fact that the victims’ and their families’ rights to anonymity had been violated.
The press council reprimanded several media outlets based on the complaints. That usually means that the reprimand must be published in the publication concerned.
When 10 people were killed at an adult education center in Orebro in Sweden in February, in what is considered the Scandinavian country’s worst mass shooting, the country’s Professional Ethics Committee of the Union of Journalists, or YEN, specifically called out a reporter at Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet for interviewing a relative of the perpetrator after receiving several complaints about that report.
The right to anonymity also applies to attackers
The right to anonymity also applies to the perpetrator in Austria as well as Germany and Sweden.
When asked at a press conference Thursday why police did not publish a picture or release the name of the 21-year-old Austrian perpetrator from Graz who committed suicide right after his shooting rampage, the head of the Styrian State Office of Criminal Investigation, Michael Lohnegger replied that “we are not allowed to.”
He added that “if we publish photographs, it is for search purposes. There is no reason for a manhunt here. Therefore, as an investigating authority, we have no basis for publishing personal data or photographs.”
Lessons learned from the Nazi past
In addition to the belief that the protection of those affected by a tragedy should be more important than the right to information, Paganini said there’s also a historical reason for shying away from any abuse of journalistic powers.
“Especially Germans and Austrians still remember how irresponsibility and propaganda by the media during the Nazi times led to the brutalization of civil society,” she said.
