Newspapers Fined Over Photo Mix-Up

Several Austrian newspapers must pay tens of thousands of euros of damages to a Slovakian student studying in Bratislava after mistakenly publishing her photo, found on the Facebook social networking website.

One of the victims of a brutal series of killings of prostitutes across Austria was one Lucia Rehakova, a name which newspapers appear to have simply looked up on Facebook. Instead of printing photos of the actual murdered prostitute, the newspapers mistakenly ran photos of the Slovakian student with the same name.

The photo was also used in many Slovakian media outlets, causing the student Rehakova to become depressed and concerned for her future as a teacher.