The Guardian has named the suspect held for the murder of Anna Lindh. It’s a very typical Swedish name. Other wire services are also reporting the name. In fact, some Swedish government agencies who carry these wire services have now also unwittingly named the suspectUpdate 2003/9/24: Svensson is released, and no longer under suspicion for Anna Lindh’s murder. A new suspect is arrested..
Everybody who works in Swedish media knows the name, and trades it like the hot gossip it is, but nobody here publishes or broadcasts it. This is as hypocritical as it is futile; human nature abhors an information vacuum, so Swedes will turn to foreign media to get the information they need.
Aftonbladet and others have taken this ridiculousness to its logical conclusion, printing full-page blurs that could be a snapshot of just about anyone. The only message being rubbed into readers’ faces is “we know who he is and we are not telling you.”
Can Swedish media please step into the 21st century? There is no point in being ethical if you are irrelevant. In any case, you are not being unethical if you publish names of suspects. They are innocent until proven guilty, sure, but still suspect and hence newsworthy. I don’t understand how the police are expecting to get tips from the public if they do not want to tell us who the tips are supposed to be about.
I think they’re doing the right thing. What if he’s innocent?
But the rules that govern this news “cartel” have become so outtdated as to be useless. Granted, it’s selfimposed censorship, but what happens if a local news organization decides to flaunt it? Does it get ostracized? What qualifies for Swedish media these days? Erik’s Blog, with his Swedish ISSN number? Yours, because it’s in Swedish? Mine, because I am in Sweden? Sweden.se posting an AFP newsfeed? What if the newsfeed was in Swedish? What if a Swedish freelancer does a report for FoxNews that gets broadcast via cable into Swedish homes? Should the edition of the Guardian sold here at Wayne’s be removed?
The Swedish media establishment really needs a Drudge to shake things up a bit.
Swedish media really needs bloggers with more courage…
But most Swedish bloggers cannot think outside of the box their own media has fashioned for Sweden.
I never understood the point of these kinds of voluntary blackouts either. Even better example is the blanking of names of sex-assualt victims, while the accused gets no such protection.
Media is global in anoher way today, the Internet changed it’s conditions pretty drastic. However, I still don’t see why a yet not convicted man should have his name in the paper, let it be Swedish or Spanish.
“The rules” are not binding, no one can be taken to a real court because they broke them. The paper or tv-channel might be “convicted” in Pressens Opinionsnämnd which is the voluntary “court” that handles media ethical problems like this.
Stating that a specific person is a Nazi sympathizer is not newsworthy/interesting under normal circumstances, though I would have no problems publishing his name in a feature on, say, Swedish football hooliganism it if it is true (and hopefully, the Nazi sympathizer would not object, if he has the courage to stand up for his beliefs).
But the fact that a specific person is a Nazi sympathizer becomes very very interesting/newsworthy when he is the chief suspect in the murder of a foreign minister. If he is innocent (and it is distinctly possible) we’ll know that, as well as that he has Nazi sympathies with a history of violent behavior. Those things were true before, and remain true.
It’s Sweden who is the exception in this case. Almost all other countries’ media publish names of suspects in newsworthy cases, usually only in their own country, but also from abroad if the murder is as notorious as that of a foreign minister.
He is in a way already convicted, even if he is found innocent by the court, and I’m just not very found of the idea of a mob trying to do their own justice.
It’s not clear to me how revealing the name of a suspect before trial necessarily precludes the possibility of that person receiving a fair trail through the traditional judicial system. In fact, more often that some would like, cases are actually tossed out of court because they’ve been prejudiced by media coverage. If I were him, I’d be lobbying hard to get my name in the paper.
A capitalist, free-market democracy is a society that thrives because it takes risks. The role of the state is diminished, and that of the marketplace is given the greater focus. Such a society is willing to emphasize the power of individual initiative; conversely, it also is willing to deal with the violence of the individual, – of course, the punishment for such violence will be severe…
A social welfare state, of course, justifies its existence on the premise that all human behaviour is environmentally determined. Eliminate the negative elements in a social environment: poverty, war, lack of human rights and civil liberties – and you will get rid of all the social ills that plague a modern society.
Anna Lindh’s murder proves otherwise. It simply should not have happened if the social welfare state is a success. But it did happen. The question is, will the Swedes, will Scandinavia draw the obvious conclusions…?
Most likely not, since the social welfare state ideology is too deeply imbedded in the state, academic, and media establishment of all the Nordic states to ever enable the necessary dialectical examination.
Because the truth might simply be too embarrassing: the emperor has no clothes.
Markku,
maybe an outside perspective can cheer you up. The Lindh assassination is tragic and horrible, but it is also remarkable because this sort of thing never – well, almost never – happens in Sweden. Particularly in comparison to violent crime rates in countries such as the US, Britain and Australia. So while a socialist welfare state cannot remove all the bad elements, which sometimes do simply reflect errant DNA, one could argue its filter works most of the time. Without judging whether an Anglo-American or a Scandinavian model is superior, I would say that the Lindh murder shouldn’t mean Swedes throw in the towel.
Matthew>> Revealing his name won’t necessary prevent him from getting a fair trial but that wasn’t my point. I was talking about the situation that we might get to, if he is found not guilty by the court. Namely a mob seeking a perpetrator, no matter if it’s an innocent one.
Markku et al.
Lars von Trier’s Dogville is precisely about this question. To what extent do we as a society punish in order to ensure compliance to the social order? Von Trier seems to first reject the policy of tolerance — the Swedish model of seeing perpetrators as victims of corcumstance — as proving to be unworkable, a fertile breeding ground for parasitic behavior. But at the end of the movie, the main character is given the opportunity to practice the lethal kind of divine retribution we know from first-testament morality, and it’s not pleasant, nor is it particularly redeeming for the audience.
So perhaps neither the American nor the Swedish extreme is workable, according to Von Trier.
Personally, my position is that different legal systems fit different countries and national psyches better. The Swedish model would not fare well in the US, and the American model would be complete overkill in Sweden. Different countries should find model that suits them, as they seem to be doing quite well.
I was chatting with a colleague who is Dutch and who lived and worked in Sweden for years. He had a much darker interpretation of the Lindh murder similar, if I understand it, to what Markku was suggesting:
Rather than being anomolous, it’s an example of the fault lines in a Swedish society that values conformism and equality over all else. This, as a result, devalues any sense of individualism and stamps out all initiative. And this isn’t just the welfare state, but the whole apparatus of Swedish society, from the lack of grades in high school to the snippy attitude towards those who make fortunes in business. In that context, you might see violent outbursts from frustrated individuals (Lindh, Palme) as an eruption that comes naturally out of such a rigid structure and not something to be written off as an isolated incident.
Thoughts?
Matthew, the only problem with your theory is the fact that such outbursts are much more frequent in countries like the US. It IS an isolated incident. Every murder in this country, population 9 million, makes the evening news. Your analysis of what is wrong with Sweden may or may not hold water, but the evidence is that it is NOT leading people to violent revolution.
Violent revolution is not the issue. The issue is the viability of the social welfare nanny-state. It exists based on some Scandinavian ideological assumptions which are usually designed in opposition to the capitalist, free-market model. One of these assumptions is that anti-social behaviour – common in the free-market model is assuaged by the social security given by cradle-to-grave welfare. The welfare states thus pre-empt violent behaviour. This justification for the welfare state is a constant in Scandinavian discourse.
The Lindh murder flies smack against this assumption. But don’t go looking for Scandinavians to delve deeper into the significance of this murder. Already the murderer is being marginalized through neo-Nazi branding: an anomaly, a freak, an extremist who’s been tainted by the wrong ideas.
Nobody looks upon him as a normal Swedish guy, who’s just sick of the the nanny-statism that Anna Lindh so completely represented. Because, as far as Swedes are concerned, there’s nothing wrong with nanny-statism.
Surely a normal Swedish guy who is sick of the nanny state can find a better way to express himself. It is a democracy, right? If there isn’t something like Germany’s liberal FDP, then someone could try to create one, or simply pull of a lot of silly and annoying pranks, or start a blog – whatever. OK, so it’s hard when you’re not part of the Borg. But knifing the foreign minister does seem like something a freaky extremist would do.
Jame>> Frihetsfronten (the Freedom Front):
http://www.frihetsfronten.pp.se/Frihetsfronten/index.html
I’m with Steffanie, but also with Matty, becaue I think he’s really with Steffanie underneath. The problem isn’t in the court. Presumably most of the jurors/others in court will work out that the person in the defendant’s box is an accused murderer or whatever. If not, the prosecution may want to reconsider its strategy. The problem is the stigma attached to ‘accused’ by everyman. That’s why I’m with you, Matty, that publishing the names of people accused of sex crimes is scary. It is an incitement to break any number of laws. Certainly, even if they are never convicted, the accused sex criminal is going to find it hard to live the same life after the accusition. Look, for example, at how the entire population of Belgium suffers.
Yes Charles, Matty IS right on this one, but only in the sense a stopped watch is right twice a day.
There’s also a public interest argument in favour of letting people know as much as possible about how criminal trials are conducted: justice being done and seen to be done. If you selectively keep stuff back, it’s the thin end of the wedge and suddenly “bling”! you’re in iraq.
Much more interesting, is Steffanie a real person or is Stefan in fact the delusional schizoid transvestite a lot of us suspected he was?
So, do you think a stopped watch is left the rest of the day? Presumably only if you forget to bring it with you. Steffanie’s website, helpfully linked in Stefan’s next post, suggests that if this is his alter-ego (nom de bloom?), he has filled in a lot of back-story and got way good at Swedish. Far beyond musings on whales.
Hmmm. People seem to be more concerned about the Stefan/Steffanie conumbrum, than Sweden’s lack of interest to look at the failures of its social welfare democracy. I suppose that’s indicative of Sweden, and Europe, as a whole…
Markku>> I think it’s possible to connect the failure of the social welfare state to the murder of Anna Lindh but not the way you suggest. 10-12 years ago they shut almost all the psyciatric hospitals in Sweden down and because of that, many people don’t get the care they need. Since this reform, the number of inmates in Swedish jails who have psyciatric problems has increased rapidly.
Eurof>> I promise I’m a real person and I even have my own blog to prove it: http://www.steffanie.net/blog 🙂
Markku– Surely your socio-narcissistic over-reaction in using Lindh’s death as a reason to debate and/or celebrate the end of the welfare state must be swedo-trolling? Speaking as an overseas observer, I would be more comfortable with you, the Swedish net community, expanding the use of your connectivity to foster sex in very public places than using it to troll. The first fits so much better with the positive international image of the Swede (polite, good looking, willing to strip in public).
I think, Markku, you also need to understand that Stefan’s friends live in a perpetual state of worry about his mental state. The idea that he’s become a girl wouldn’t probably come as a shock but if true it’s something we’d like to know and also ridicule. The rest of the serious stuff about death, murder and the euro can surely wait.
Matty– Isn’t the ‘death’ in your last post a bit redundant? Although I suppose that last posts are usually about death. And given that you’ve seen Stefan dressed up as a Steffanie, you know there’s good reason why the Swedish Code of Trans-Gender Conduct (sadly unenforcable like every other regulation ever because of the Internet, apparently, but still a good guide to living) specifically bans Stefan from putting on a skirt.
also, markku, we may not be able to do much about the swedish welfare state given we are few and divided. however on the subject of stefan dressing as a woman we are many and united.
“steffanie”: nice try but i’m not buying it. schizophrenics can go to extraordinary lengths to cover and justify their madness, and so how do we know stefan hasn’t fabricated that whole “blog” you linked to? i’ve seen “a beautiful mind”, though never thought i’d use that phrase in a discussion about stefan. the fact that your “name” is “steffanie” is too much of a giveaway, sorry.
Eurof– Would Stefan chose ‘Steffanie’ as his alias? Wouldn’t it be something tiringly not really more clever? ‘Fantesi,’ perhaps? No, I think you much malign Steffanie and her blog, which, even though I don’t speak a word of Swedish, makes more sense to me than the average Stefan post.
Charles>> Have you tried reading my German blog? It’s even better than the Swedish one 😉
http://www.steffanie.net/deutsch
Another proof that I am me and not Stefan, would be my entries in English which (sadly enough) do not reach the same high grammatical level as Stefan’s do 😉
Take a look for yourself!
http://www.steffanie.net/blog/arkiv/cat_entries_on_english.html
I hope I finally excist!
Look, stefan/nie, showing me more pages of a possibly fabricated blog isn’t going to convince me when the same sort of evidence (your earlier “blog”) didn’t in the first place. Making spelling mistakes or grammatical errors on purpose is far too obvious a way of pretending to be someone else, is in fact a very stefan thing to do; I can see him/you thinking “ha ha my english is so perfect if i pretend to make mistakes no-one will think it is me” wheras IN FACT stefan makes egregious mistakes in english all the time (masturbating priests, flounders in ireland), and how very convenient that you have a blog IN GERMAN, when we know stefan recently had a german girlfriend who could have written it for him. Better for you had it been in French, or Spanish or Italian, or other languages we know for a fact he can’t speak and has no access to.
You might have fooled charles, but a more discerning mind can see that the “proofs” you attempt to use merely heighten my suspicion you are stefan in a dress, blond wig and probably badly applied makeup.
Eurof>> I wish I made the grammatical errors on purpose but I’m afraid they are all authentical.
If i start a blog in “Götebosska” (local dialect in Gothenburg, where I come from)? Will you belive me then? 😉
steffanie eller stefan
Är jag egentligen Stefan Geens? Eurof och Charles är övertygade och ingenting jag säger verkar kunna få dem att ändra uppfattning. Hur bevisar man sin existens digitalt? 😉