2009, almost any image would suffice. British tabloids inundated their readers with photographs of Elisabeth as she was before her imprisonment,7 and even featured voyeuristic images of her older sisters when Elisabeth was some ten years old.8 The Daily Mail in particular proved itself willing to publish portrait shots of the “upstairs children”, sometimes with the same photograph used for both Lisa and Monika, and on at least one occasion – on the same day – with Monika repre-
sented by photographs of differ-
ent children.9 “Frenzy” is indeed not an inappropriate word; the desperation is palpable in a Sun story as early as 1 May 2008, which helps shed light on the media siege that would grip Amstetten–Mauer psychiatric hospital within days: together with quintessential tabloid pop-
ular vernacular, the red-top printed an artist’s sketch, “from witness reports”, of a “haunting image of cellar mum Elisabeth”.10 Thus, it is not surprising that a note of indignation and outrage is discernible in a Sun story two weeks later that announced the removal of Elisabeth and her children from the psychiatric hospital to a “secret location”: the caption below the

oft-printed image of a fifteen-year-old Elisabeth described her as “hiding”.11

Although the Fritzl children’s location obviously did not remain a secret for long, at least not as far as the Sun was concerned, a few weeks after the red-top’s spread, on 11 March 2009, the UK mid-market national tabloid, the Daily Mail, revealed the name of the village where Elisabeth and her family were living; the area was soon “crawling with photog-
raphers”, which led Austrian officials to “plead…with the media to stay away” and the family’s therapists to pronounce that publishing photographs of the victims “could make a full recovery impossible”.12 The trial of Josef Fritzl was due to begin on 16 March; Elisabeth and her children were forced to move back into the psychiatric hospital where they were treated after their liberation. During the trial, police imposed no-fly zones over the courthouse and over the hospital to prevent photographers using helicopters to obtain aerial shots.13

In giving evidence to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 23 April

2009, the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, pleaded an absolute ignorance of the news feature that named the location of the Friztl’s new home, but neverthe-
less referred to the pressures of modern mass-media production. Dacre subsequently sent written evidence to the committee out-
lining the circumstances of the offending news feature; in this evidence he took it upon himself to speak not just for the Daily Mail, but, explicitly, also for the entire British media in alleging a lack of awareness “over the sensitivity of this matter”.14

Dacre’s statement was extra-
ordinary considering the high international profile of the Fritzl story, the prominence and the consistency of the sensationalist coverage his own newspaper had given the story, and Josef Fritzl’s impending trial at the time of the feature in question. It was also extraordinary considering Dacre’s position as the chairman of the UK Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, the body that produces the Editors’ Code of Practice, a document that is meant to govern the ethics and professional behaviour of the British press industry. Together, the Sun and the Daily Mail, among

other British titles, appear to have committed multiple violations of the Editors’ Code, particularly those clauses dealing with privacy, harassment, intrusion into grief or shock, children, children in sex cases, hospitals, and reporting of crime.15

Undoubtedly, the media had bestowed a dark celebrity status

on the Fritzls with no motivation other than a commercial one. While UK tabloids, and tabloids
in general, were not the only offenders, those who relentlessly pursued the Fritzls displayed what can be termed “classic” tabloid behaviour in sparing little expense or device to clinch the scoop that would earn their title or media organisation wide-
spread international exposure and extremely lucrative returns.16 They were prepared to do this