Supplementary written evidence submitted
by the Daily Mail
We have investigated the suggestion that it
was the Daily Mail which revealed the location of the house
where Josef Fritzl's daughter has been re-housed.
On 11 March 2009 there was one single mention
of the village in the middle of a 2,000 word feature on the
impending opening of the Fritzl trial. It was written by a Berlin-based
freelance journalist (he is also the author of a book on the case).
It is regrettable that the reference was not
removed by the sub editor concerned but as the article referred
to the daughter being re-housed there "in a house provided
by the authorities" the freelance's words could have given
the impression that this was general knowledge.
The reference was made in passing and certainly
there was no intention by the author or the Daily Mail to
claim her whereabouts as any sort of revelation. Equally no-one
here—or I suspect in the British media as a whole—was
aware over the sensitivity of this matter.
It is perhaps worth noting that the name of
the village had also been given widespread media coverage when
the story first broke as another member of the Fritzl family lived
there.
The village was well known to Austrian media
and it was named in Britain in a feature in the Independent.
Neither the author of the article, the Daily
Mail nor the PCC have received any complaint relating to this
reference.
We have immediately removed it from our website
and marked our cuttings accordingly though unfortunately the fact
that it was raised in the public forum of your Committee has meant
that extra attention was briefly focused on it.
Nevertheless I have used this instance as an
opportunity to send round a further reminder to our writers and
sub editors on the need for constant vigilance on these matters.
April 2009
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