(Newswire.net — April 3, 2015) — During the Islamist attack in a Paris supermarket on January 9, six people found a place to hide inside the large supermarket’s refrigerator. After gunman Amedy Coulibaly stormed into the Casher Jewish supermarket killing four and held others as hostages, one of the employee managed to hide along with five customers in the supermarket’s food refrigerator.
The minute they found out, the media covering live the hostage situation, broadcast the information that some hostages were hiding in the refrigerator. Allegedly, that was during the siege, putting in danger the lives of the hidden hostages in favor of higher ratings, the Daily News reported.
The live coverage by certain media, “lacked the most basic precautions and endangered those still alive inside,” said Patrick Klugman, a lawyer representing the group.
“The working methods of media in real time in this type of situation were tantamount to goading someone to commit a crime,” Klugman told AFP Thursday.
Different French news agencies reported about the hostages hiding in the refrigerator, however, Klugman singled out French 24-hour news channel BFMTV, the Daily News reported.
Reportedly, they revealed live on the air that the group — including a three-year-old child and a one-month-old baby — was hiding from Coulibaly in the cold room, where they were taken by one of the supermarket’s employees. Klugman said that BFMTV revealed the hideout while the hostage crisis was still ongoing and it was the pure luck Coulibaly was following another station at the moment which didn’t disclose the hiding locations of hostages.
Hyper Casher in eastern Paris came two days after the Kouachi brothers shot 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, before they were killed by the antiterrorist police forces. With the supermarket killing, the death toll rose to 17 people revealing that fighting the Islamist radicals is a global problem.
At the time people unite wearing “I am Charlie” signs, there were ones who tried to cash in the ‘moment’, which was judged by all media, BFMTV included. Ironicaly, endangering the lives of the hostages in pursuit of the higher ratings, is exactly the same if not the worse.
The lawsuit charges media outlets with endangering the lives of others by deliberately ignoring security protocols, which carries a maximum penalty of a year in prison and 15,000-euro ($16,300) fine, according to the Daily News.