Macedonia Security guard from Rashche raped his own daughter

May 25, 2008

Comment: The selected article from the daily paper Dnevnik serves as an example of a badly written piece which violates all the basic principles of journalism. In order to achieve higher sales of the newspaper, the author simply forgot about ethics and ethical reporting. By disclosing the photo of the father of the victim, the photo of the family house, the father’s place of work and the name of the village, the journalist absolutely violates the right to the protection of identity, the principle of confidentiality, and personal integrity. The article does not yield positive, preventive effect, but simply disgusts the public; it also does not offer an alternative means of prevention of this phenomenon.

What the article does reach is that the reader can learn about the identity of the victim, stigmatizes her, and some even condemn her. In addition, to make things worse, the article makes provisions for the victim to be further traumatized and taunted if she came by this article. The fact that the victims kept silent and did not report the rape for so long indicates that they did not want anyone to know what was going on in their house and they had severe fear of the consequences.

In conclusion, such a detailed explanation should not be given to the general public but strictly to the professionals, who are able to solve the problem, such as: police officers, social workers, psychiatrists, etc. At one point, the journalist became oblivious of the code of ethical conduct and ethical reporting. In my view, the article can cause more damage than bring about positive changes in the curbing of this deviant phenomenon.

(This Press review is under the framework of EIDHR funded project, implemented jointly with Open Gate-La Strada)