Caught some Scandinavian true crime documentaries and a lot of the people involved had hidden names and blurred faces. I’ve also noticed this in newspapers when there’s been some story and the faces have been blurred, but the news outlets reporting the same story outside of Sweden haven’t had any issues reporting facts. I’d get it if it was someone in witness protection or something to that effect. I tried googling the matter and found a Swedish news report about a seagull getting rescued and they blurred the bird’s face! I’m completely puzzled.

36 comments

  2. Pretty sure you’re not allowed to show peoples faces unless they’ve given their consent for it. And I doubt they’re gonna ask every single person just walking by if they can use their faces, so they simply blur it out.

  10. The serious answer is that you are innocent until proven otherwise by a court. The american tradition of mugshots being available online is so fucking horrible.

  11. We love criminals, and want to protect them. Even though there’s literal video evidence, EVIDENCE, we somehow think that the real proof is whether someone is found guilty in a court of “law”. I’ve completely lost confidence in our judicial system. I had a colleague that was convicted for a crime that he physically couldn’t have commited, he had technical evidence and everything. The court doesn’t care about the truth or evidence, they care about protecting their own ruling class and not exposing the flaws in their own organization.

    *edit; hittat en av nyheterna om fallet: https://www.hn.se/nyheter/varberg/j%C3%B6rgen-broth-d%C3%B6mdes-f%C3%B6r-fortk%C3%B6rning-trots-fartsp%C3%A4rr-p%C3%A5-lastbilen-1.42316280

  15. Because criminals that comit horrible crimes deserve to be unknown so that once they get back into society they can cause more trouble without anyone being wary of them.

    Yeah I’m swedish and i think this is dumb as hell too.

  16. You should try watching Japanese TV. There we can talk about blurring for real. It’s about privacy. How is it going to help someone who’s made some stupid mistake or is abusing drugs to have their face on TV?

    Then you watch these American shows, the cops stop a car, tell their dog to sniff for drugs, when the dog doesn’t show any sign of finding anything, they tell it to search again until it indicates. Now we can search your car for drugs. Only thing they find are your sex toys in the trunk, and now your face is on TV with that.

  17. Well I’d say it’s probably because of the innocent till proven guilty, but also to protect the family and relatives of the person in question. Sadly, a lot of the time, they will get sent a bunch of hate and threats and stuff like that and it can very well ruin their lives, even if they had nothing to do with the committed crime

    Also, the seagull thing was probably a mistake or a joke lol

  18. Privacy because some of the people on this media do some stuff that will probably anger a LOT of people so it’s just so they don’t get hurt or anything

  20. the worst part is when it’s like “the police are looking for this person and they want all the info they can get to find them” and then the image is blurred

  21. Yeah that was funny when I saw it👌.

    But to answer your question the face is really important in the Swedish culture. It comes from back in the days when people would say the face represents the soul. An old medieval torture method was taking the guy to a large crowd and publicly making fun of the flaws in his features (it was mostly used by the church).

  24. varför pratar alla engelska?
    när det uppenbarligen är flest människor som bor och lever i sverige som kommenterar ett svenskt inslag?

    och vad innebär Eli5?

    mig veterligen är det mest i USA man använder det uttrycket

  27. Because you just cant put random peoples face on national TV? Criminal or not.

    Also tunnelbanan true crime haha

    -Edit-

    Dont know if this is true or not, but Tesla cars are not allowed to use their “automode” in Sweden since the cameras record eveything which is not allowed in Sweden since they can record random people without blurring them or something. I could be wrong but yeh. You are not ‘allowed’ to film/record random people.

  29. It’s because they believe those criminals have more rights than people like you. If you are a middle class, employed, heterosexual male with a common skin complexion, then they don’t care about your privacy.

  31. Sweden has a thing called “offentlighetsprincipen”
    That means a lot of information is available to the public; adress, first and last name, first 6 social numbers, if you have a registrered car.
    Because of this it’s important to protect suspects identities because there is a chance that they are innocent.
    People’s lives have been ruined because they’ve been falsely accused and exposed meaning everyone knows where they live, who they live with, cars and pets.
    The damage that can be done with that info is catastrophic.

    Picture is a seagull btw, the blur is for fun

  33. I think they blurred the Seagull because it was injured from the stress and bumping into the subway walls and doors trying to get out.

  34. In order to publish or broadcast recognizable faces of people who are not considered ”public persons” (people famous for one reason or another, particularly politicians, public officials and others in public positions of trust) you ”need”* to get their written consent first.

    In reality TV such as this, with dozens of people in every episode, often drunk, rude and/or suspected of crimes, it would be impossible to get them all to consent. Hence, they blur their faces and alter their voices instead.

    *technically you don’t ”need” it, it’s all right to broadcast it anyway. But you run the risk of civil lawsuits, so you might as well get the consent or blir the faces.

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