I am talking to you here about an article published in The Press which caused real discomfort.
We were talking about a 14-year-old young man, Medhi Moussaoui, who, with a 16-year-old companion, fired a gun at motorists. He was, according to police sources cited by The Press, in a stolen car. He was chased by the police, before crashing into a tree and dying, along with his partner.
You will learn all this in the first paragraph.
Then you won’t learn anything anymore.
Tragic
Except that the 14-year-old thug who randomly opened fire on people was in fact, in his own way, a little angel, and that his death caused immense sadness in his parents. We learned elsewhere that his parents want to bury him in Algeria.
It is obviously a tragic death: the death of a teenager always is.
But in the circumstances, the article is frighteningly complacent.
We are told the story of a tender, kind, polite child. A child who opened fire on passersby randomly, I feel obliged to recall here. It’s not a detail, right?
The Press adds: “A child who could be anyone’s son.”
It’s wrong. Many of them today fall into crime at a young age, but to say that this is “a child who could be anyone’s son” is an excessive generalization.
It is also a way of disempowering oneself and blaming Medhi Moussaoui’s sad fate on chance or society.
The Press comes close to telling us that the young man will ultimately have been a victim, without taking into account for a moment the fact that he could have caused victims by shooting at them.
Nazar Saaty, a volunteer lawyer at the Muslim Burial Association of Quebec, states in the article that “if a young person who could be their son experienced this end, it is because we, as a society, have failed”.
May Mr. Saaty allow me, as a member of this society, not to judge myself responsible for what this young man did. Responsibility is first and foremost individual. It is then family, and perhaps community, if we want to dilute it at all costs.
But blaming the world as a whole for one’s personal misfortunes is intellectually and morally wrong.
Disempowerment
I note that this is a mistake also committed by The Presswhich takes up this vision on its own, even if it means doing so by adding nuances.
You only need to take a quick stroll through social media to see the accusation of systemic racism arise. Again.
I say it again: the death of a 14-year-old boy is always tragic.
But the media treatment that we occasionally give it shows a serious inversion of values.