German media privacy: pixels and no last names

Our title today indicates one aspect of reporting that we really like about German media. They do not publish non-pixelated photos and full names of average people as a matter of routine.

If you get hit by a reckless driver, your door won't be beaten down by an ambulance chaser lawyer.
If you complain about graffiti, you won't bring down the Wrath of the Paint Can on your family.
If a juvenile gets caught shoplifting a 50 cent bag of candy, no photo or full name will be made public, thus allowing the kid to get a job and leave the incident behind.
Even more serious events, such as the arrest of an abusive husband, with a photographer in attendance, get the same treatment.

Confusing one John Smith with another John Smith can easily ruin your life if you make headlines in the U.S.-- the German policy makes it much less likely. Though not impossible, as a sports reporter realized when German domestic intelligence confused him with a right wing extremist of the same name.

When you are deemed a figure of public interest, your face is not pixelated, your last name is stated. This is, of course, a job opening for lawyers, which can become the subject of debate in its own right.

Recently, the ex wife of a former German president was featured in an article of a German celebrity magazine. Notwithstanding pixelated face and upper body, she or a lawyer felt the need to write a threatening nastygram to the magazine.

One major area where these generous protections are not applied is foreign reporting. Faces and delightful other areas of minor nobility are fair game, so are the photos and full names of everybody whose personal details have been published in the U.S. media.

There is one current series of events, though, in which we saw the courtesy of not publishing the full name extended to a U.S. person: that would be the officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.
While most German media gave his last name once the name was made public, we saw an article in Der Spiegel where the officer is called "W."

Maybe not newsworthy but an opportunity to describe media reporting differences between Germany and the U.S.

The name and photo policy at the K-Landnews goes even further than that. We use no real first names of average folks - ever. The names are made up. We even use the names of major public figures much less frequently than other publications, but not necessarily for the same reason. Our odd TheEditor believes that over-use of a name can distract and that it makes posts too ad hominem. You can often do decent satire, maybe not great satire, without name slinging, it* maintains.

* TheEditor insists on neutral gender quotes. Certainly one aspect justifying the adjective "odd".