And suddenly everything is different! Like what?

The country's Muslim enemies will remain calm. The criminal trial against Anders Behring Breivik begins next week in Oslo. Last July, he detonated a car bomb in the Norwegian capital and killed eight people, then attacked a Social Democratic youth camp on the island of Utøya and executed 69 people. The trial is scheduled to last ten weeks, and two psychiatric reports will be presented on the first day of the trial, each prepared by two experts. A neat achievement: even in the case of a "common" homicide in Switzerland, the first court hearing takes place three/four years after the crime; the preparation of an expert opinion alone takes a year or more. Although many politicians and some media often cry out for swift and harsh punishments, the justice system is not funded to provide the necessary positions.

The country's Muslim enemies have remained calm. Even after the attacks by Mohamed Merah, who shot three soldiers and - in front of a Jewish school - three children and a father and rabbi in Toulouse. The soldiers who were shot were the sons of immigrants and Muslims like the Islamist-motivated perpetrator. A detail to work on: even before the identity of the perpetrator was known, the German-language media focused on the extreme right-wing trail, while the French media still left all possibilities open, from al-Qaeda or other Islamists to extreme leftists to extreme right-wing perpetrators or apolitical psychopaths. Why did the German-language media decide so early on? The decision of an individual who was on duty at the agency? I don't know, at most it's conjecture. For example: If it wasn't a coincidence, was it compensation for the recklessness of reporting after the Breivik mass murder?

Reality is too diverse and too contradictory for daily and campaign journalism. Technology makes real-time reporting possible, publishing managers scream "market" and want exclusive speed, good journalists insist on their craft and demand time to classify. They know: If a disaster is still unfolding, slowness can become a journalistic virtue. The question is: who will prevail in everyday editorial work?

However, not all commentators resist the temptation to settle political scores prematurely. When things go badly, journalistic reputations are ruined forever. After the Oslo attack, an editor of the Fuldaer Zeitung, a newspaper in the north German province, experienced this. In the hours after the first agency reports, he claimed that terror was "back in Europe", but then admitted that although the perpetrators were not yet known, "there are many indications of an Islamist background". This was supported by the fact that Norwegian media had reprinted the "Danish Mohammed cartoons" (media in many other countries have done the same). As a NATO member, Norway is "involved in the Afghanistan mission" (Norway is not alone here either) and around a year ago an "Islamist terrorist group" was exposed (this also happened in other countries). He concludes: "So we were warned." (Isn't that always and everywhere a right-winger?) The commentator also wanted to set the political agenda for the coming days: In "contrast to neighboring Denmark", the Social Democrat-led government would have "backed a liberal policy on foreigners and a dialogue with Muslim immigrants". In other words, a rejection of freedom and dialog, especially for Muslims, but not only! Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg took a different view. At a memorial service, he called for "more openness, more democracy, steadfastness and strength".

Disasters are exceptional situations per se and it is almost impossible to plan their editorial treatment, unlike criminal trials. The German-language daily and weekly media have not yet given much coverage to the upcoming trial. Or will all titles broadcast the same agency or correspondent reports? One thing can be predicted: as with other journalistic disasters, the TV stations will almost all show the same pictures, a reporter in front of the barriers "working through" an agency report in interview form together with the presenter. After the first days of the trial, they will leave - until the verdict is announced, probably at the end of July. At least the Islamophobes in the country will keep quiet.