{"id":3453,"date":"2014-12-01T14:10:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T20:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjr.jour.umt.edu\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2015-11-01T21:22:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T03:22:59","slug":"shifting-perspectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mjr.jour.umt.edu\/shifting-perspectives\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Perspectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Story by Gwen Florio, photo by Sarah Chaput de Saintonge, illustration by Kristin Kirkland<\/em><\/p>\n

Missoulian crime reporter Kate Haake is thankfully free on weekends from checking the police blotter and court schedules that are the go-to sources for stories on her beat. But habit is hard to break. She still skims Twitter, keeping on top of the news so as not to face any Monday morning surprises.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, April 27, 2014, a tweet from her newspaper snagged her gaze. \u201cUnarmed teenager shot, killed in Grant Creek garage; resident arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, shit,\u201d Haake clicked on the story.<\/p>\n

The victim, Diren Dede, was 17. \u201cThe male resident of the house reportedly found the intruder in his garage after an alarm went off, and shot him with a shotgun,\u201d the story said. The homeowner was being held on suspicion of homicide. In a city that averages fewer than five murders a year, this meant automatic front-page news. Factor in the death of a teenager, and the story\u2019s impact heightened exponentially.<\/p>\n

Several thousand miles away, in Washington, D.C., a different combination of words on Twitter grabbed Karin Assmann\u2019s attention: German and shot. As a correspondent for Spiegel TV, affiliated with Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine with a circulation of 880,000, Assmann\u2019s job is to report on U.S. news of particular interest to Germans. The death of a German teenager far from home fit the bill. And, just as with Montana news organizations, the manner of death made the story even more compelling.<\/p>\n

Gun ownership is strictly regulated in Germany. The Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based international research project, found there to be one gun-related death per 100,000 residents in Germany in 2013, compared to 10 in the United States. Germans are keenly aware of, and fascinated by, that difference. Thus stories involving gun culture in the United States \u201care always stories that an editor will take,\u201d Assmann said.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d already worked her maximum number of days for the pay period. But with a story of this magnitude, it didn\u2019t matter. Der Spiegel needed a magazine story, and Spiegel TV wanted her to produce a show. Assmann was going to Montana.<\/p>\n

\"\u201dThe<\/a>
\u201dThe Lost Son\u201d is the title of an article about Diren Dede\u2019s death in a German magazine, Der Spiegel. The subtitle reads, \u201cAn exchange student from Hamburg is shot in Montana. The perpetrator that committed the act says he had to defend himself. The death of Diren Dede also shows the lack of understanding between Germany and America.\u201d Later on in the story, Diren\u2019s father said that if it had been up to him, his son would have never gone to America. To Celal Dede, America means violence and crime. The article was published by Der Spiegel in May of 2014.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Monday after the shooting, local reporters still had the story largely to themselves. They listened at Markus Kaarma\u2019s initial court appearance as his attorney invoked Montana\u2019s Castle Doctrine, which gives legal immunity to someone who kills an intruder as long as he is afraid of being harmed or losing his life.<\/p>\n

By Tuesday and Wednesday, reporters from national and international publications\u2014among them Assmann and Spiegel colleague Marc Hujer\u2014hit the ground in Missoula.<\/p>\n

They began the tap dance familiar to reporters who \u201cparachute\u201d into unfamiliar places to cover breaking stories, working out of motel rooms and rental cars, tapping information into their phones and laptops between interviews. They sought to capture the story\u2019s essence in just two or three days, resulting in the sort of sleep deprivation that benefits local coffee shops.<\/p>\n

The competition for interviews can be daunting, with sources already besieged with calls from local reporters. Given the choice of calling back people with whom they\u2019re on a first-name basis, or responding to requests from publications several time zones away, sources frequently opt for the former.<\/p>\n

The reverse is true when working the international angle. Even before leaving Washington, Assmann sought the German embassy\u2019s help in reaching Dede\u2019s father, Celal. That groundwork helped Der Spiegel pull off a scoop. Assmann and Hujer were the only people to snag an in-person interview with Celal Dede when he came to Missoula to bring his son\u2019s body home.<\/p>\n

The interview with Celal Dede had not yet been granted when Assmann arrived in Missoula. She, Hujer, and local photographer Lido Vizzutti spent a grueling day interviewing one of Dede\u2019s soccer coaches. They also sought\u2014unsuccessfuly\u2014interviews with the Big Sky High School principal and guidance counselor, setting up interviews with students they met at Big Sky while trying to reach the administrators, and finally, at the end of their day, getting the call to meet Celal Dede.<\/p>\n

The right interview can also be a matter of luck. None of Assmann\u2019s telephone calls to Dede\u2019s host family had been returned. But when Der Spiegel\u2019s team went to the family\u2019s neighborhood for photos of the home, the host parents were outside arranging a memorial on the lawn. Often, people are more apt to speak to a reporter standing in front of them than a voice on the other end of a telephone, and that was the case for Assmann. \u201cThey were very open to talking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Assmann said she did not, as some national and international journalists do, try the shortcut of contacting local reporters and seeking their sources. Instead, she read local stories and figured out the sources for herself. Not that it did much good. \u201cI spent some time trying to get law enforcement, etc., to go on the record,\u201d Assmann wrote in an email, \u201cto no avail.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Missoulian newsroom, Haake and others got plenty of calls from outside reporters trying to take that shortcut. Haake patiently directed them to the Missoula Police Department and the County Attorney\u2019s Office. Several of the callers, she said, also focused on the subject that so intrigued Der Spiegel\u2019s readers.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuns,\u201d said Haake. \u201cThere\u2019s that stereotype that has life in Germany and the rest of the world\u2014that this is the Wild West, that we love our guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Haake juggled those requests with her own work, she tried to convey some perspective to those callers, pointing out \u201cthat a lot of gun owners are really responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overseas, though, puzzlement reigned.<\/p>\n

Basak, Dede\u2019s older sister who lives in Hamburg, asked the reporters from Der Spiegel: \u201cHow can you shoot someone just because he comes into your garage?\u201d<\/p>\n

It was, said Der Spiegel, \u201cthe question that nobody has an answer for.”<\/p>\n

In Missoula, it seemed nearly everyone had an answer.<\/p>\n

Debate raged over the shooting\u2014over guns themselves, and the Castle Doctrine, too. Stories about the case routinely logged dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to Montana, where the residents have the right to defend themselves! Please don\u2019t threaten us because we will shoot! I LOVE MY STATE!\u201d a woman calling herself \u201cbuckshot mama\u201d posted on the Missoulian\u2019s site.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis law is mostly working for bullies. It is doing more harm than good,\u201d responded someone with the screen name \u201cAvalanche Creek.\u201d<\/p>\n

Missoulian Editor Sherry Devlin began to notice something else in the comments. German residents logged onto the Missoulian website to express their own opinions in a discussion that moved away from guns.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver time, it devolved into Germans arguing over the fact that he was Turkish.\u201d (Dede\u2019s family emigrated from Turkey to Germany, and he was buried in Turkey.)<\/p>\n

In Germany, that ethnic issue, which barely surfaced in Montana papers, got personal. Der Spiegel reported one of Hamburg\u2019s soccer clubs had to turn off the comment function on its website after a multitude of xenophobic postings.<\/p>\n

\"After<\/a>
After the death of exchange student Diren Dede, the Missoulian newspaper had to pull from German news organizations to cover certain aspects of the story. On May 2, 2014, it ran an Associated Press article based on a German reporter\u2019s interview with Diren\u2019s father, Celal. Like many Germans, Celal Dede was bewildered by the Montana legal system. \u201cI didn\u2019t think for one night that everyone here can kill somebody just because that person entered his backyard,\u201d he said.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Missoula journalist Mike Gerrity has seen the gun story from both sides. In 2010, he freelanced a long-form story on gun culture for Die Tageszeitung, the German daily newspaper commonly referred to as taz.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the concept that 9 of 10 people have guns is not that impressive,\u201d Gerrity said. To his surprise, his German editor thought otherwise. \u201cIt really got me to pull myself out of this geographical box.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the story, Gerrity bought a .38-caliber handgun and took a firearms safety class. The longer he had the gun, he said, \u201cthe more I found myself preoccupied with what kind of scenario might arise where I\u2019d have to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fascination ended when he needed money for a security deposit. He sold the gun.<\/p>\n

The foray into Missoula by the overseas reporters covering the Dede case was equally short-lived. Der Spiegel\u2019s team left town after just a few days. Their report, translated for the magazine\u2019s English-language website, made the rounds in Missoula. Then the magazine\u2019s coverage moved on to other news.<\/p>\n

Just as the Missoulian ran an Associated Press story crediting a German news outlet for quotes from Diren Dede\u2019s father, overseas media sourced its occasional updates to Montana news organizations that continued to cover legal developments in the case.<\/p>\n

In an era of global information, local and international media often borrow from each other with only the most spectacular events likely to bring the full diversity of journalistic voices and perspectives. After all, whatever happens with Kaarma, and no matter how much reporting is done by journalists on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, it will not resolve the issue that brought the overseas reporters here in the first place.<\/p>\n

As Der Spiegel noted in its story: \u201cThe tragedy sheds light on a side of America that will likely always remain foreign to many Europeans. It reveals a country where freedom is more important than anything else. And that includes the freedom to defend one\u2019s own property\u2014with violence if necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Longtime journalist Gwen Florio has reported breaking news stories around the country and the world. She is now a novelist and an adjunct professor at the University of Montana\u2019s School of Journalism.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sidebar: Montana Makes Headlines<\/span><\/h3>\n

The Diren Dede case wasn\u2019t the only major news story from Montana to grab space in newspapers across the country in 2014. In February, a deadly avalanche rolled down Mt. Jumbo in Missoula, hitting a residential neighborhood and burying three people. Glacier National Park was the site of two major stories, including a close encounter between a hiker and a bear, and the saga of a newlywed who pleaded guilty to pushing her husband off a cliff.<\/p>\n

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