Innocence

Innocent women and children... Whenever there is a suicide bombing or, let's say, an air strike or a missile strike going on, the victims seem to include women and children. The media is very quick at telling us that “innocent women and children“ have died in the incident. Although the statement is made quite often, no one seems to realize the implicit statements. In the following, I would like to show the views expressed by the “innocent women and children died” statement for the purpose of showing that people need to be aware of the (often implicit) values expressed by other people and “society”.

Innocence

Innocent?

In our suicide bombing scenario, the first question every journalist should confront himself with is: If the women and children are innocent, they are innocent with respect to what? If a journalist claims that somebody is innocent, he must be able to identify in which respect such person is innocent. Or, to pose the question in a different way: Guilty of what? Guilty of the bombing/air strike? The war? Climate change? Today's weather? We do not know the answer, the journalist would not tell us what he believes the victim is not guilty of. But since the answer to that question is not self evident, every journalist should provide his audience with his answer to it. In addition, the claim is usually made quite soon after the incident happened, usually at the very next day. But how does the journalist know that the victims are innocent? The exact identity of the victims might not even be known at the time he writes his article. And even if, do journalists really read the victims' biographies before claiming their innocence?

Does innocence matter?

Once he have answered the first question, we may proceed to the second one: Does it matter whether the dead are guilty or innocent? Let's assume that these women and children are guilty, that they caused the war, the climate change, today's weather. Does that make the killings any better? Is it better to kill guilty people? The journalist who expressly states that the killed are innocent implies that killing guilty people is different (otherwise, he would not have stated the innocence).

Women and children v. men

That leads us to the third and last question we have to pose: Is it important that women and children have been killed and not men? In the classic ship wreckage scenario, the “women and children first” policy might make some sense since men are considered to be stronger and therefore better equipped to rescue themselves. In suicide bombings or air strikes, however, it seems to me that men are as vulnerable as women and children. If that is true, why is it that journalists still explicitly mention the death of women and children? Again, by telling us that women and children have died, the journalist wants to tell us something. Is it that the death of a young human being is worse than the death of an old person (or, for that matter, an old man)? Or shouldn't we assume that each human life is worth the same, that we cannot balance one human life against another?

Journalist's purpose and impact

What the media does here is changing the world using words. In my view, journalists are implicitly expressing at least two opinions: First, it is better to kill guilty people than innocent people. Second, it is better to kill men than women and children. Since these statements may be controversial, they are not expressed explicitly. They are well packaged and transmitted indirectly. However, there is a good chance that the reader will consume this viewpoint and internalize it. Most consumers are not asking the questions I just raised above, they prefer to accept the views (implicitly) expressed. The journalist helps the consumer in his passivity by not expressing his point of view directly.

That being said, I am not quite sure whether every journalist actually knows what he is doing or whether the reference to “innocent women and children” is a mere reflex: suicide bombing automatically entails innocent victims. (Whenever the German government promises monetary help to the victims of natural catastrophes, such help is necessarily “quick and unbureaucratic”).

As you might have guessed, the attitude just described not only applies to journalism, but to everyday life – we are surrounded by implicit views, opinions and values every day. Most people however do not seem to realize this fact (or did you ever question the “innocent women and children” statement?). Be it gender stereotypes perpetuated in television (in the news, TV ads and TV series) or other political or moral statements portrayed by society. Why do so many women still chose to stay at home and look after the children instead of pursuing their professional career (and having the man staying at home)? Is that due to a completely conscious decision or is it due to internalized and unquestioned traditions and views shown in almost every TV series?

Conclusion

It is not my purpose to suggest answers to the questions raised above. I am not saying that the death of innocent people is worse than the death of guilty people. I am not saying the the death of children is worse than the death of men. I am not saying that women should not stay at home and look after their children. What I would like to say is that we should be aware of the fact that many views and opinions are not expressed explicitly but much in a much more subtle way and that everybody should be careful to identify and recognize these views and to question them. Furthermore, I suggest that everybody treat the views offered by others very carefully and think even about the most simple proposition. Certainly, this applies all the more to lawyers.

• The first response I found I had to the piece was the recognition that its premise was wrong: the news sources I see and hear every day, like the NY Times, the Wash Post, the Guardian, NPR and BBC, do not report the deaths of innocent women and children, except to quote the politicians who do editorialize in those ways (as in calling bombers "cowardly"). The recognition of implicit biases in all sorts of communications is as important as you say in building social awareness for lawyers. But it's hard to know what to make of the fact that most of the essay's time and effort seems to be spent twisting backwards ad forwards a non-existent insight.