Too Much Information

Initially, I didn’t want to blog about this because it is too horrifying.  But then I thought that if I blogged about how I was feeling then I could move on.

I caution you when you click on the above link. Use it only for background information and refrain from reading the more graphic links. I say this because I don’t want you to be affected by its contents as I have been. My mind has been in a fog for the past week after following the trial. I could not get my mind to stop thinking about what happened to Col. Russell Williams’s victims.  Col. Williams is a deprave murder who carried out heinous acts devoid of any emotions. I wake up and go to sleep thinking about it.   Thankfully, Williams was sentenced to 25 years without parole yesterday.  He was also stripped of his military rank and dismissed from the military.  

I know, I really should not have read the live news reports from the Belleville Court but once I started reading I could not stop. It became an obsession. 

Before this I would often leave my house unlocked when I went out.   No more, I now alarm the house when I leave.  I double-check the doors and windows to ensure everything is locked when I go to bed.  I think about what it must have been like for the victims thinking that they were in the safety of their home.  One even calling her boyfriend to say she made it home okay.  Your home should be a safe haven.

No sooner did the court allow media to report from the courtroom, they were posting live. Which brings me the question of why the media released so much raw details about the crime.  Every horrific and despicable act was reported.  The reason this information was even available was because Williams himself compulsively videoed, organized and recorded meticulous copious details of his crime.

 If reading these news reports impacted me so adversely, a person, who is not associated to either of the victims or the perpetrator, makes me wonder how others are coping.  I can’t imagine how people closes to them have reconciled their feelings after becoming aware of the intimate details of the crime.  

What has become of our society?   The Internet has made news so readily accessible in real time, and often reporters upload information without applying any moral or ethical filters.  What may on the surface be considered good reporting because it is immediate can in fact be quite damaging and excessive.  Case in point, the Williams’s trial.  Should media be more cautious about the nature of their reporting, or is the responsibility ours to not read or watch the news we find objectionable?