Second Hand Victims

So as I sat down to watch the evening news tonight, (This time without moustachioed conservative father, who was out, doing something, presumably) I paused over my pasta (Assonance, for all you English nerds) to wonder what on Earth had been happening in the big wide world outside my little bubble.

Murders! I thought. Kidnaps, rapes, robbery, madness and mischief! And then, the calming voice of an journalist narrating a rather innocent vegetable patch at a local school interrupted my to do list.

But among the homely local articles on projects and charities that very usually inhabited the local news there was also the ghostly presence of another similar item. I know I've mentioned it in a previous article (See 'What's New about the news?')  but the way that the local news holds us the prisoner of local issues is something I dislike, to say the very least. But today's post follows a different line of thought.

Take this hypothetical scenario for example. John Smith, happily married to a beautiful women with two kids and not a care in the world disregarding the junk mail that comes through his letterbox. John Smith then decides to get involved with the local organised crime community, and commits several murders for them. The wife, who later finds out hands in her husband to the police. And so, with the information that the news would have reported, I ask you a 'simple' moral question. Who was the victim?

Was it the people killed? Perhaps they took an involvement with the group and took the consequences? Maybe Mr. Smith who suffered in prison for the rest of his days? This is when I cleverly pull out the 'Trick Question' card.

Because what this non-existent news report did not actually report, was what happened to his beautiful wife and two children. They were taken away on the witness protection programme. They were taken from their home for their own good, placed in a different city far away, a different name, leaving all their friends behind to 'make new ones'. They are the second hand victims of the scenario.

Chin up Jozie-San.

-Lewis