Call me hypocritical, but people need to stop talking about Anders Breivik. By people, I am of course referring to news outlets. While it is a fascinating case of the ugliest side of far-right ideology, it is the extensive coverage that the trial has been given that is worrying. Whatever your views on immigration and multiculturalism, there is no excuse for giving Breivik’s ultra-extremist beliefs such a far-reaching platform. Serial killers never should have that kind of opportunity. Never. Doing so only perpetuates more serial killers and more victims. It makes them famous when they should be infamous, better still, forgotten. Erased from history. Incidents such as these can’t be totally ignored yes, but they should be localised as much as possible, and dealt with in a responsible and sensitive manner. Otherwise, insecure people prone to such atrocities feel like they could be the next nihilistic anti-hero. The drama integrated into modern news reporting means that these kinds of stories are all the more intense. It is so much more detrimental when they have a cause, and in the case of Breivik, the media attention has only furthered the view that one callously unstable individual has the ability to shock the world. What is so achingly frustrating is that the news media are giving him exactly what he wanted.

As extreme as his views are, some people no doubt will use the ‘freedom of speech’ get-out clause to defend his right to express them. This is a severe misjudgement of the term. It does not, never has, and never will, mean that anyone can say whatever they like without any consequence at all. This is particularly true in broadcasting and the press, who have a self-proclaimed responsibility not to cover such outlandish and hateful opinions in any great depth. Scrolling down to read YouTube comments on any video regarding immigration and multiculturalism makes me despair as it is. Let alone hearing their irrational concerns voiced on the news by a murderer. Of course, total censorship is not the answer to changing perceptions of race. Only a change in attitude across generations will stem overtly racist views. For instance, how many people today would challenge the view that slavery is wrong? How many would have thought that possible before emancipation in the nineteenth century? I wonder.

Even if you disagree with me, the news media has lost all sense of responsibility in this instance. The Daily Mail, with predictable immorality, exploited the trial for some kind of pro-capital punishment propaganda, declaring, ‘if the single-mother benefit encourages single motherhood and the unemployment benefit promotes unemployment, then by the same token it’s the crime-fighting activity of the modern state that makes the crime rate climb.’ Rolling 24-hour news hardly helps the situation. On the BBC’s breaking news twitter feed, there were regular updates of what Breivik was saying during the trial (with a hash tag of course). One of them read, ‘#Breivik went to Prague to buy weapons: Kalashnikov, grenades, armour-piercing ammo and flamethrower. Failed to get anything there.’ It’s not in the public interest, however entertaining and intriguing the audience finds it. The worst, and most pointless, of the lot however was, ‘#Breivik: "Some like to sail the world, some play golf. I played World of Warcraft. It had nothing to do with my attacks". How is that necessary?! The press even reported how he played Call of Duty, practising assaults on policemen. Of course, because it was a video game the news media went mental. All of these things are just so trivial and inappropriate. There is a fascination of the man that he does not deserve in the slightest.

All this only supports his ‘cause’. It is one which has little grounding in any concrete evidence, other than an increased immigration, and the last time I checked, immigration and invasion are two completely different things. Furthermore, the sources he uses in his manifesto are more than questionable. 25% are from Wikipedia. Now I love Wikipedia as much as the next person, but it hardly screams someone who is academically supported by mainstream thought. Even though 20% of sources are from mainstream media, these can be easily manipulated to support almost anything you want it to. He has no credibility, even in spite of his upper-middle class background, so why give him the ultimate pedestal to spew his deluded and evil prejudices? Norway is moving on, showing admirable unity and racial tolerance since the attack. In fact, the exact opposite of what he had envisioned happened in the immediate aftermath, as was seen in the ‘rose march’ in Oslo. What I wonder is, why couldn’t the international news media do the same by denying him the satisfaction of excessive, unmitigated coverage?

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