The case of Elisabeth Fritzl, the Austrian woman kept in a cellar for 24 years by the father who abused her and fathered seven children by her, is both horrific and extraordinary. The manner in which it has been reported, though, is entirely predictable.
“Sedate town is stunned by news,” a headline in The Times said. The story underneath began: “There was an eerie silence in this sleepy town yesterday as its 23,000 inhabitants learnt from the television news of the horrors said to have been perpetrated in their midst for almost three decades.”
Why are the towns in which such things happen always “sleepy”? And, given the frequency with which “sleepy” towns provide a setting in the media for atrocity, how do reporters still manage to find anyone who is “stunned” any more by anything that happens in them?