There are probably few people who have been able to avoid the news about the Austrian case which has horrified so many recently. However, this post is not about him or any of his victims. This post is about a young reporter whose introduction to it was how she doubted the story. Despite all her many years of life experience (about the same number of years as this man's daughter was locked up for his amusement), she began her trip to this town to report on the story with the preconceived idea that it was made up, lies.
Maybe her article originally had more and an editor cut it. Maybe an editor cut out a lot of the article. I would hope so because I found it to be lacking. I would hope that a journalist would be able to write better than that. She did not tell why she was so sure that it was false--was her childhood that idyllic? did she not believe that there are no bogeymen in the world?--or maybe she is so naive that she cannot grasp the concept that man can be so depraved. Would that we were all that naive, and that there was no need for us to have our eyes opened to the cruelty that exists!
Maybe she could not imagine the daily torture of living in such cramped conditions for a seeming eternity.
She did not share what changed her mind, what made her realize that it was indeed a true story. Fact. Or maybe she didn't change her mind--she never said.
She tells of spending only four days in the village and yet being glad to leave it, how she cried when telling her own father about the story.
That article has bothered me a great deal since I read it. Many people already know how people want to look the only way when there is wrong being done; it doesn't involve them, it's none of their business, there are oh so many reasons why getting involved would be inconvenient for them.
All this young woman had to do was her job. She went to the town on assignment with an attitude of doubt, and left it apparently (it was never stated in the article, another omission/edit/?) no longer in doubt that the horrible events had really occurred. She cried when telling her own father about it on the telephone.
So what was the point of the article? What was it supposed to have added? Was it really worthy of being published?
Or am I expecting too much from a field that has lost a lot of its luster anyway? More tabloid than news source?
Did I expect more from this reporter because she's a woman? I don't think so. I think it's the way the article was written. The title is used to highlight her disbelief, and the article states her initial disbelief. So the purpose was to grab our attention--which it did. But what strikes me is the utter pointlessness of the article. And why a well-known news service would publish it. I'm at a loss for what was supposed to be accomplished.
And maybe it's easier for me to focus on that than to focus on the true "story" behind her article--the people who have lived what is only a news story for reporters.
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4 comments:
I've been following this story. I've not seen that article - can you point to a link for it?
JIP (linked from my blog) has another story along the lines of denying horrific things ever happened.
We get a lot of sensationalist stories here; trying to come up with a new angle.
I pick and choose what papers I read and stations I watch just because of that.
Enola, here is a link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24442614/
Let me know if the link doesn't work for you. I was not wanting to point her out but reading it does help to understand my point.
I can certainly understand your post and the questions you pose about this article. I think the horror is too much for MANY people. Look at how many of us had parents or other adults who could not face the truth of the abuse happening in our own families/lives. Frankly, I envy the people who automatically doubt this type of story because, to them, this horror is inconceivable. I wish that I were not so easily able to empathize and start to dissect all of the steps of therapy these victims will require.
Her article, to me, is just one of shocking disbelief....like "how can such horror even exist in the midst of all this normalcy?" It's as if she's recounting it as a surreal experience. In fact, it reminds me of 9/11. I live fairly close to NYC and I remember the day it happened was so clear, warm and beautiful outside. I kept thinking....but it's such a perfect and ideal day....how on earth can this all be happening right across the Sound from me? I was able to look out from the beach point at the end of our street and see the smoke billowing off the island. There were helicopters flying low over our home. I was watching it on TV. Yet I still could not grasp the reality of the situation because it was simply too horrible to fathom.
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