Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 who crashed it into the French Alps on March 24, has made rounds in news headlines. As fairly strong evidence emerged of his deliberate crashing of the plane, I took note of the word choice used in reports: depression, suicide, illness, stigma and treatment.
These words have increased our sympathy not just for the families of the victims on board, but also for the killer himself. While his struggle with depression was clearly very upsetting, the news coverage of his mental health has been extraordinary. His signs of instability have been factored into our consciousness in complete disproportion to any other recent killer. The Boston Globe, among others, called it a suicide, but if he intentionally killed 149 innocent others along with himself, it is, in no intricate terms, murder.
When Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller during a church service for performing late-term abortions, he was labeled a “murderer.” When Jim David Adkisson opened fire on the audience of a youth musical seeking to attack liberals, he was labeled a “shooter,” his most famous portrait portraying him smiling with an American flag. When Daniel McGowan set fire to the offices of Superior Lumber as a member of the Earth Liberation Front, he was labeled an “activist.” Although these three violent criminals terrorized their victims, they are killers, not terrorists. As Americans, they are angry, radical, lonely killers, yes, but terrorists they are not.
Lubitz’s crime does not point to terror according to the State Department’sdefinition of terrorism: “Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”
As far as we know, his crime was not politically motivated. As far as we know, he was not trying to influence any kind of audience. As far as we know, he was lost and desperate and needed help. But we ought to question all that we know about him and why we know it.
Lubitz searched Google in German, not Arabic, he was born in the West and ran half-marathons with his father. This 27-year-old pilot is pictured, in most of the coverage about him, with earphones and a Lufthansa-labeled runner’s bib. Let’s analyze some of the headlines so far: “Andreas Lubitz, Who Loved to Fly, Ended up on a Mysterious and Deadly Course” from The New York Times, “Germanwings Co-Pilot Andreas Lubitz Was Treated for Suicidal Tendencies” in The Wall Street Journaland even an opinion piece in the LA Times titled: “Mental illness made the Germanwings co-pilot a victim along with his passengers.” The photos paired with these stories are, respectively: Lubitz smiling peacefully at the Golden Gate Bridge, Lubitz running in a race and Lubitz running in a different race. We know him as a man who loved to fly, who loved to run, who was suffering and seeking treatment.
As Gary Greenberg wrote in The New Yorker, “It is comforting to think that Lubitz was mentally ill.” Indeed. We can easily label Lubitz as an aberration, a worst case, an exception. We can easily believe another such crime will be preventable, if only Lufthansa Airlines steps up its psychiatric evaluations. But the harder question we need to ask is if Lubitz and his crime deserve an explanation that is almost sympathetic, whether or not he deserves all this careful consideration. According to the American Psychological Association, mental illness is not usually linked to crime. For news outlets to so explicitly focus coverage on his mental health status is reinforcing stigma against those suffering from depression and also distracts from the fact that although he was suicidal, he did not only take his own life. It is understandable that journalists are seeking to deconstruct a killer’s motives; it is not understandable, however, that he is getting such an unbalanced, sympathetic explanation. Why are we posthumously giving Lubitz a chance at complexity? It’s almost as if the news is trying to explain and even forgive him for his crime.
If Lubitz were Arab, we might have started out calling him a terrorist; it is the deeply upsetting reality of modern journalism. I do not think Lubitz is a terrorist by definition (he lacked political motivation or intended audience of influence), but this is just another factor that highlights the special casing we seem to be giving this murder. The inconsistent accusations and attitudes about which murderers are “complicated” or “suffering” is the root of the problem: all killers are victims in some ways, too. It is not wrong to feel sympathetic for a criminal; it is wrong when news coverage that might inspire it is unfair and unequal. The problem is not sympathy, but shifting standards of sympathy inextricably tied to the skin color of the guilty.
It is terrible when someone’s inner demons desire the end. But if Lubitz, an unequivocal mass murderer, gets coverage about his running hobby, former lovers and browser history, the news needs to rethink how they report, or don’t, the complexity of every killer.
Azza Cohen is a history major fromHighland Park, Ill. She can be reached at accohen@princeton.edu.
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