David's World

December 22, 2004

Missing public outcries, or: how to get our priorities right.

For the first time in 17 years, Brandon Moon can call himself a free man. For 17 years, the guy had been doing time at some prison in El Paso, Texas. Now, they found out that he's innocent. What's the first thing he's doing? He's praising the judicial system. When the local District Attorney apologized to him for the mistake, he gladly said, "Sir, I accept your apology." If there's something that people learn in jail, I think it must be humility.

Moon's story goes down as a little 'human interest piece' in most American newspapers. We're happy about the achieved justice, the world has gotten a bit better. What people forget is what cases like Moon's tell us about injustice. Do people get locked up just because they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?

Thousands have been incarcerated by the Bush administration for more than a year now in a camp on Cuba. No lawyers, no phone calls. A russian billionaire is arrested and his company broken in pieces by Putin's government, either because he failed to pay taxes, or maybe because he wanted to run for president.

A public outcry? Political consequences? An enquiry? One would expect so, but the sad truth is that nothing like that is happening. People get excited about an American president who is human enough to fancy his intern. Other people have to step down because they had been getting a golden handshake from their former employer before they took a political (well: partisan) office.

Without wanting to defend the wrongdoing that's going on there, I wonder if the public perspective isn't skewed here. We're seeing outrage only for a selection of what's really going on. If this is supposed to change, we will need more sensible journalism. We will need reporters that get their priorities right.

I felt reminded of another guys story - a geography student, let's call him G., whom I losely knew from the days when the Internet was still in its infancy, when we were both active in the German BBS (mailbox) scene. One day, his house was searched by some armed special unit, and after he turned himself in a day later, he and his girlfriend were locked up in a high-security prison as terrorism suspects. He happened to have rented an apartment in Madrid, into which one of Spains top-notch ETA terrorists had moved lateron. G. and his girlfriend spent a year in prison, had their pictures as 'terrorists' in the papers. Only then both were proven innocent in a three-day trial.

By the way - G. works as a reporter now.