Mirror apologises to model for serial killer photo error

On Saturday, the Daily Mirror used - without permission - an image of the model Morgana in its 'Women Who Kill' pull-out, to illustrate the story of Vera Renczi.

Today, the paper has apologised:

APOLOGY to Patricia Belda Martinez.

WITH Saturday's Daily Mirror we distributed a supplement entitled 'Women who Kill' which we trailed on the front page of the newspaper with a picture of the front page of the supplement.

One of the women whose story featured in the supplement was Vera Renczi who lived in the former Yugoslavia between 1903 and 1939 and who killed 35 men. Unfortunately due to an error the picture we used, both inside and on the front page of the supplement, was not of Vera Renczi but of Patricia Belda Martinez, who is otherwise known as Morgana and who is a fashion model. The picture we used belongs to Ms Martinez.

We apologise unreservedly to Ms Martinez for our error in wrongly using her picture in the supplement which she, of course, has no connection with and for the considerable embarrassment caused to her by our actions.

UPDATE: Morgana's own blogpost on this is here.

Mirror uses model's image to illustrate serial killer story

Yesterday - the day before Mother's Day - the Daily Mirror came with a free 'Women Who Kill' pull-out. A 'Mirror special on women with no mercy'. It was trailed on the front page:

But which 'female with no mercy' is that in the bottom row, to the right of Myra Hindley? (apologies for image quality)

In the actual pull-out, she appears on the centre pages, under the headline:

35 male bodies all in labelled coffins in her wine cellar, and in the 12th, her son

The photo on the front page is used again inside (image from Patricia Belda Martinez):

The text is about Vera Renczi. But the woman in the picture is not Renczi, or indeed any other murderer.

Instead, it's a model called Morgana, who tweeted:

As Aaron Jacob Jones points out, the image used by the Mirror has had Morgana's copyright cropped off the bottom.

If you search Google Images for 'Vera Renczi' the first result you get is from the Killers Without Conscience website, which used Morgana's image - with the copyright cropped - on a tale about Renczi in September last year.

Was that the extent of the Mirror's research? Didn't they think the image was suspiciously high-quality given Renczi was - apparently - born in 1903?

Morgana added:

you would think newspapers would know better before printing a double page spread with a pic they don't own.

(Hat-tips to Patricia/Morgana, Aaron, Matt and benjymous)

'Flattery'

Gaming website Kotaku has claimed that a Daily Mail story by Allan Hall has 'flattering' similarities to two of their articles.

Brian Crecente writes:

You can't imagine how flattered we were today to discover that the Daily Mail doesn't just read our little gaming site, they even like to sometimes "repurpose" our news.

Take for instance their story this evening headlined: Jewish groups slam violent 'blast-the-Nazis' Auschwitz uprising video game.

Under the tantalizing headline we found a surprisingly familiar group of quotes. Quotes from interviews we conducted with the Anti-Defamation League, interviews with the Simon Wiesenthal Center (though they spelled their center with a fancy misplaced R) and quotes from the game's developer saying things he says he didn't share with anyone else.

The Kotaku articles appeared on the 10th and 11th, the Mail's on the 16th.

Here's a few 'similar' passages. Kotaku:

Sonderkommando Revolt project lead Maxim "Doomjedi" Genis says his team of artists, coders and writers is simply trying to make an action game only for the challenge, for the fun, to entertain.

Mail:

Maxim Genis, the brains behind the game, says his team of artists, coders and writers is simply trying to make 'an action game only for the challenge, for the fun, to entertain...'

Kokatu:

Genis wrote via e-mail that he was partly inspired to create Sonderkommando Revolt based on his spiritual convictions. The game maker believes that, in a previous incarnation of his life, he was imprisoned as a Jew by the Nazis, served as a Sonderkommando in a concentration camp and died before the events of 1944 that prompted the creation of the mod.

Mail:

Genis wrote via e-mail that he was partly inspired to create Sonderkommando Revolt based on his spiritual convictions. The game maker believes that, in a previous incarnation of his life, he was imprisoned as a Jew by the Nazis, served as a Sonderkommando in a concentration camp and died before the events of 1944.

It is especially poor practice for the Mail to say that Genis wrote 'via e-mail' and then fail to name who that email was written to - or pretend it was written to them.

In related news, the Press Gazette is reporting that the Daily Mail is being sued for $1m in the US over copyright:

Mavrix Photo, a company based in Florida but with offices in Los Angeles, is seeking damages over the use of ten sets of images of celebrities it says the Mail published online and in print without the appropriate authority.

The agency, though Californian legal firm One LLP, filed papers last month at the Central District Court of California in Los Angeles claiming that it offered pictures of actress Kate Hudson in a bikini by a pool to the Mail for use in print only upon payment of a fee.

Despite "prominent warnings" the Mail used the pictures of Hudson without prior payment or authorisation both in print and online, the court papers suggest.

In addition to the Hudson images, the court papers claim the Mail repeatedly used its Mavrix images without prior consent and then would occasionally send "a check [sic] for a trivial, insubstantial sum of money which was never agreed upon as the appropriate fee".

The article continues:

The court papers accuse the Mail of having a history of copyright infringements, saying: "The pattern and practice of the defendant is to ignore the demand of photo agencies or photographers to agree rates before use and to simply take the pictures and use them without compensation or to then offer token compensation."

This 'history' is highlighted in several articles from the British Journal of Photography and at the Russian Photos Blog.

The Press Gazette says Mavrix:

...is seeking statutory damages of $150,000 (£96,195) per infringement, legal costs and a declaration from the court preventing further unauthorised use.

The Daily Mail has yet to respond to a request for comment.