Last but not least: Heal with time
«Heiler von Bern» couldn't wait 20 minutes for the verdict to be announced and, once again, was one step ahead of everyone else.
On Friday, the High Court of the Canton of Bern not only confirmed the sentence against a former music teacher, but made it more severe. The court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for deliberately infecting 16 people with the HI virus. The fact that the man described himself as a "healer" impressed the media so much that they have been calling him the "Healer of Bern" ever since the case came to light. They differentiate, putting the final punctuation mark after "healer" rather than after "Bern". With so much harm that the accused has done to his victims according to the court ruling, this is probably the least they could do.
20 Minuten Online provided some amusement in this otherwise rather disturbing case. At a quarter past eight - around two and a half hours too early - a "Breaking News" banner greeted us from the homepage. Four characters were reserved as a placeholder for the number of years to be added - did the editors assume a dramatically higher sentence? Better safe than sorry.
The message, which was probably published too early in the zeal of online time pressure, disappeared again shortly afterwards. And the worst traces were also soon removed from the mobile app (see below). That's how they are, the online media: fast, dynamic, flexible - and sometimes more up-to-date than the police allow. (hae)
