"The sight of the public reactions to the tragic double murder in Borsod county is enough to make anybody sad. If the affair were not enough to wipe the smiles from our faces, we would have to laugh at the awkward way in which some people have tried to shape the matter according to their own preconceptions.It is quite clear that the problem is not with the people who have been working their way through different accounts of the tragedy. The problem is with the mentality that adjusts the facts to suit a politically-derived set of assumptions, overriding any doubts in the process. At such times, politicians speak to suit their own interests.
They wonder who to lay blame on in their press release. How to gain more votes? Should I present this as a criminal affair or should I label it an attack by extremist forces? Biased journalists sharpen their pencils. This approach does not make the police's work any easier. And it just accentuates the population's hysteria.
Look at the facts: unknown arsonists killed two people in a village in Borsod county with firearms. Work is underway to establish their motivation, and evidence is being gathered. Of course, from the point of the view of the investigation, it matters whether the motivation for the murder can be established. At the same time, from a moral point of view, it is unimportant whether the two deaths were ratially motivated or whether money was the core of it.
The perpetrators are crazed sociopaths who deserve to spend the rest of their days in prison. Because the dead will not be comforted by knowing that they were killed not because of the colour of their skin but for "normal" criminal reasons, and vice versa. Death is no less terrible for being the result of a poisonous world view rather than financial greed. And if brutal gangsters attack a gypsy, then our unfortunate compatriot will certainly not sigh with relief, saying: "At least they're not skinheads."
No surprise, then, that in the US juries in criminal trials are isolated from the world after being sworn in. It's not right for them to be influenced by articles speculating about the affair. But the relatives of the deceased, possible witnesses and the police investigating the affair cannot be isolated from the media. And the relatives' and the witnesses' accounts affect the social expectations surrounding the affair. If public opinion continues pushing its own accounts of the affair, then the witnesses will, as average conformists do, unconciously modify their accounts to suit the grand narrative about who the perpetrators 'should' be.
The pictures in the minsd of witnesses are very fragile. Now that the press is insisting that the murder was a racist attack, local residents are only too glad to start dressing the silhouettes of the perpetartors in fascist uniform. And if one of the tabloids publishes a mock-up of the features of someone it believes to be the certain perpetrator, one of the villagers will claim first-hand knowledge of what he only knows second-hand, insisting that one of the victims borrowed money from someone.
It's a disaster if the investigator starts looking for a criminal with a ready-formed picture in his mind. Especially if his assumptions have been shaped by the government and the opposition. Police are people too, far from immune to pressure. Especially if they are under political pressure to produce a suspect.
We're just helping the murderers. If criminals kill for money, then, seeing that the racism story is spreading, they can start placing false evidence to shore up the latter theory. Fascist terrorists can crate the impression that "gypsies are killing each other," and that there is no ethnic motivation. In order to protect ouselves from falling victim to manipulation, we have to be careful not to exclude any variant. We should bear in mind that the murder could have been motivated by different, as yet unknown, factors. We should focus on the facts. We owe this to the dead."
Source: HVG
20.11.2008