AUSTRIA: Berlin chequebook journalism could take on a whole new meaning if lawyers for Austria's Natascha Kampusch have their way.
After offering up to €750,000 - without success - for the first exclusive interview with the woman held hostage for eight years, newspapers including Britain's Sun could now be forced to pay damages of €20,000 each for breaching Austrian privacy laws.
"We have two fat folders filled with breaches of media laws committed by Austrian and international media," said Gerald Ganzger, lawyer for Ms Kampusch, to Die Welt newspaper. He has declined to confirm or deny the rumour circulating in Vienna that the first publication on his list is the Sun, which alleged that Ms Kampusch had served as a "sex slave" and was impregnated by captor Wolfgang Priklopil, charges Ms Kampusch denies.
Another target could be the Austrian weekly magazine News. It published what it said were extracts from Ms Kampusch's first sessions with investigators, which allegedly hinted at a sexual relationship between prisoner and captive.
A week later, News was one of just two publications successful in their bid for an exclusive interview with Ms Kampusch.
This week, she is planning to sit down with her lawyer to review the press coverage of her case and decide which media organisations, in her eyes, went too far.
Dr Ganzger said his client is "not a compensation chancer" and that they hope to avoid court action by settling with the media organisations for a payment of €20,000 or an apology or, in some cases, both.
The payments would be made to the Natascha Kampusch Foundation, a newly established organisation which, depending on who you ask in Vienna, will either help young women in similar situations to Ms Kampusch or else finance Ms Kampusch's new independent life.
Austrian privacy laws are extremely clear on media intrusion in the lives of private individuals. Paragraph seven of the media law gives individuals the "right to compensation against a medium-owner/publisher" if "the most personal areas of life are discussed in a way that leaves that person exposed to ridicule".
The victim is entitled to €14,535, rising to over €36,000 if "insult, mockery or slander" are judged to be at play.
"Under Austrian media law, someone's sexual life is always personal and speculation about it can be pursued in the courts," said Michael Pilz, a Viennese lawyer specialising in media affairs. "Just from what I read in the papers, I'd say that a large part of the reporting - particularly foreign coverage - breached Austrian media law."
The law applies equally to domestic and foreign media, even to newspapers and magazines in foreign languages that are not widely available in Austria.
There is a further suggestion even newspapers that didn't print the salacious rumours about Ms Kampusch could be hearing from Dr Ganzger.
He has suggested any media outlet that reproduced screenshots of Ms Kampusch's September 20th television interview without permission could be charged with breaching her right to privacy and her right to control of her own likeness.
