Thai media rebuked over Facebook killing

BANGKOK - Thai media came under fire on Wednesday for publishing images of a man killing his infant daughter in a Facebook Live video, a grim case that sparked outrage and raised fears of copycat killings.

The video, filmed on Monday on the resort island of Phuket, showed Wuttisan Wongtalay hang his 11-month daughter from an abandoned building before taking his own life.

The footage was online for hours before it was removed on Tuesday, prompting cries for Facebook to move more quickly to take down clips of grisly crimes and killings.

At least one major Thai daily also printed images of the suicide on its front page on Tuesday.

A media body has since slammed some news outlets, which it said showed graphic and "inappropriate" images of the crime.

"The News Broadcasting Council of Thailand received complaints about reporting on a man who killed his child and himself via Facebook Live," the organization said.

"Those reports were inappropriate," it added, warning channels and newspapers against giving graphic coverage to similar crimes because they "may lead to copycats with the understanding that those actions will draw attention".

Police said they believe the killing was motivated by a "family feud" and that the father was unhappy with his wife's child from another relationship.

"His wife has a boy aged about four years old from her previous relationship," police officer Jullaus Suvannin said.

'Appalling'

In a statement on Tuesday, Facebook described the incident as "appalling".

"There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook and it has now been removed," the social network said.

The killing was only the latest grisly crime to be published on the social network.

Last week Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed to work to keep the site's live-streaming function from being used to propagate harrowing acts after a man in the US state of Ohio broadcast footage of himself shooting a stranger dead.

(China Daily 04/27/2017 page12)