Russell Williams is a really, really bad man

What more can you say about the serial killer? And how much more space can newspapers waste saying it?

There's a similarity between the media’s coverage of two very different stories that have captivated national attention recently. While the story of the Chilean miners has shown the best side of humanity and the trial of Russell Williams has exhibited the worst, both reveal the relative futility of commentating on stories about which there really can’t be much diversity of opinion.

As the National Post’s Chris Selley pointed out last week, editorialists struggled to find variations on the theme “That was awesome!” when the Chilean miners emerged unscathed from their horrific ordeal. Today, as Williams’s prosecutors continue to detail the murders of Jessica Lloyd and Marie-France Comeau with unprecedented candour, news outlets have tasked their writers with finding different ways to say his acts were terrible, he is a horrible person, and we all hate him.

It’s difficult to see what these headlines add to the conversation: “Lloyd was excited about the Olympics” (important information this is not), “Brave women tried to prevent their murders” (no kidding), “Russell Williams is the new Paul Bernardo” (or, evil is the new evil), and “Col. Williams, you are a bastard” (coming soon: "Dalai Lama, you are nice" and "Kitten, you are cute").

A day after running a front-page full-frontal picture of Williams in lingerie he stole during a break-in (clothing that was probably all too familiar to one unlucky reader), the Toronto Star pauses to ask “Do we need to know all the details of Williams’ crimes?” The paper shouts said details on its front page again today, with a headline quoting the heartbreaking last words of one of his victims ("If I die make sure my mom knows that I love her").

Newspapers are in a bind of course because they have to report these stories, and there's an appetite for them, but faced with a set of facts that spell out their own conclusions, there’s little they can add. One of the few insights has come from the Ottawa Sun’s Peter Zimonjic describing the many ways in which the media’s coverage offends. Apparently the military doesn’t like pictures of Williams in full military dress. Him in lingerie isn’t any better.