Murder as a way to fame

The world of 24/7 news, YouTube and other Internet platforms has made it somewhat easier for talented people to be recognized and for some not really talented people to claim some measure of the “fifteen minutes of fame.” With their images onscreen, however briefly, they can claim gaining that brief passing glance, that inchoate public recognition that can be mined for bad or good. Thus, we have had a surfeit and surplus of minor celebrities, of vaguely recognizable personalities and we are never quite certain given the fecundity of media and the abundance of these images, why we even remember this or that face.

The fifteen minutes of fame is a seductive concept. Most people think of this as permanent, which obviously it is not. Misconceptions prevail. And the cost can be tragic indeed. Consider the serial killers and mass murderers, who have been “celebrated” by the same exposure that the media give to public officials and showbiz stars.

Last Monday, I was settling in to try and learn more about the troubles of the US economy, troubles which affect the rest of the world, on Fareed Zakaria GPS (Global Public Square). As the discussion picked up with President Barack Obama’s key economic adviser, CNN interrupted the program to provide a live feed of the arraignment of the Norwegian mass murderer who attacked a youth camp, taking the lives of so many. The massacre was a big story and of course the trial would be of wide interest. I felt the rude interruption as a close up of the accused, standing silent and looking straight at the camera as he stood and surrounded I presumed by his lawyers. There was really not much to report, as the court proceedings were only at its most initial stages. The anchor tried to fill the news void with review of facts that had already been dealt with in earlier reports. No new motion was reported, no significant step taken that needed to have the audience back on the scene. The break revealed nothing that could not have waited. And there was certainly no need to for anyone to remember the face.

I am not questioning the news worthiness of the case. The loss of young lives will be a story that strikes a most responsive chord even as time moves us away from the tragedy. But we do not need the kind of live updates on the trial if it takes us away from what was clearly a significant and current discussion. I did not think it right to give the accused so much media time.

My quarrel is with the exposure given to a mass murderer and the call to a global audience to become more familiar with what he looks like, making him recognizable, as a famous person is often recognizable. Dressed in a suit, his face is clean shaven, the clips showed nothing to suggest the violence he had wreaked. He has claimed quite preposterously that he did what he did as self-defense. And later, he said with little remorse, that he would do it again.

Should the news media and the rest of the world have to see his face or be made to remember his name? When the news does this, doesn’t it “celebrate” the crime in some way, promote the capacity of cold-blooded killers as setting them apart, their murderous cruelty somewhat awesome? Doesn’t this kind of coverage make them champions as it were, stars perhaps, in the dark firmament of evil?

The policy of following newsworthy events must be weighed carefully, for the kind of impact that such news can have on the public mind and the moral neutrality that such news coverage may cast. Everyone takes from it what they will. I am afraid that for some, hopefully, a very very few, there will always be the kind of “wow” moment in thinking how evil someone so ordinary looking can be.

In an old episode of NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), the story of a serial killer who puts up the murder on a video channel, issuing a warning about his next victim, Jethro Gibbs and his team move from one false lead to another, until they zero in on a previous contact, a young musician who had transformed a garage into a studio where he recorded his band. The team gets to him as he sets up to upload his next murder, as his victim, the female soloist he had decked with explosives, waiting to be blown up. With their guns aimed at the murderer, they press on him to confess. And they catch him looking into the camera, with a look of fulfillment, as if his wish were finally granted, a wish to be known, to be set apart, beyond the video channel purveying violence and mayhem. He is finally going to be in the real news.

The story has a most satisfying ending. The police, the FBI, and NCIS all agree—there will be no pictures, no names, no identification of this serial killer. He will remain un-known and un-celebrated, as the fate of such seekers of fame should be.