How much do we really need to know?
When it comes to the details of what bad people do to other people, how much is too much? The Col. Russell Williams sex-and-murder case ignited a predictable debate over the release of graphic evidence.
Did we really need to see pictures of this depraved man dressed in bras and panties?
Did we need to know about his unique masturbation preferences?
Did we need to hear quotes from his victims begging for their lives?
I say no, others say definitely.
There was no legal necessity for the prosecution to get into all that. Williams pleaded guilty to break and enter, sex assault and murder. It’s unclear to me why prosecutors decided to go ahead and release the stuff anyway.
Equally complicit is the judge, who could have excluded most of it.
I got a call one evening from Derek Cook, a political science prof at TRU. His view was that the media should pressure Stephen Harper to step in and stop the publication of details around the Williams case because it was giving a black eye to our military.
I’m a big fan of our open court system and its independence from political interference, so I don’t buy that approach. But I do believe some discretion was called for.
Those who say we needed to read and see every lurid detail of Williams’ behaviour suggest we wouldn’t know what a monster he is otherwise. To which I say, why wouldn’t we? Isn’t it enough to know that he is a man of rare cruelty who raped and murdered?
Are we really so bereft of intelligence and compassion that we need to be assaulted with what borders on visual and written pornography to understand the man must never be allowed on the street again?
One of our editors agreed wholeheartedly that the coverage of Williams given by some media was thoroughly disturbing, but confessed he felt compelled to watch it.
Kind of like stopping to gawk at a car accident, I suppose, but nothing is stopping us from looking away. Since we as information consumers aren’t all that good at turning off the radio or TV, or closing the page on a newspaper, how about the system and the media taking some responsibility?
Media decisions on such matters almost always involve some democratic discussion but ultimately come down to someone’s decision. My decision was not to run any pictures of Williams wearing the underwear of his victims, to substantially tone down the details of Canadian Press stories (to the point where another editor remarked that I’d reduced it to being “like any other murder story”) and not to run the evidence portions of the story on our front page.
I don’t feel all sanctimonious about it; I just feel the media can do their job without hitting us over the head with brutal detail. Most media went that route with Allan Schoenborn and Robert Pickton; Williams should have gotten the same treatment.
Bottom line: are we better off for knowing all about how Williams’ victims were tied up and how they were brutalized, tortured and, in two cases, heartlessly murdered?
I say no. The only benefit is that Williams has been humiliated about as much as any one man can be. But that isn’t enough to justify us being subjected to such gruesome fare.
PARTING THOUGHT for a blustery October weekend: Maybe Carole James should adjust her criteria for booting people out of the party to include MLAs who say stupid things. Harry Lali, our NDP member from down south in the Nicola Valley, mused this week that the Basi-Virk corruption case must be all about racism. Lali’s reasoning: the three men accused in the scandal are “all brown and happen to be Indo-Canadian.” Never mind that Dave Basi and Bobby Virk pleaded guilty. By the end of the week, Lali was sheepishly apologizing for engaging his mouth before his brain, but he might be a bigger burden for James to bear than Bob Simpson.
mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca
ArmchairMayor.ca 
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