It is my contention that there are no baddies in balladry, just hapless protagonists - victims and perpetrators - pitched into the maelstrom of a narrative derived, to whatever extent, from experience, or else life, by way of an entertainment made more effective by the sheer lack of any sort of moral preaching or two-dimensional moralising. The tragedy is thus made more real and at least allows for a more rounded view of the characterisations which would otherwise be too wooden to be in any way believable. The effectiveness lies with the portrayal of circumstance as believable, and the capacity for humans to fuck up at any level, otherwise there'd be no ballads, or soaps, without allowing for the possibility of redemption.

In life there are no baddies, and certainly no goodies, just circumstance, with context and causality. In the news we always get the details of the crime, but never the full story behind it. There are no random acts of violence; each has a story, a narrative, and a context, and only by knowing this can we effectively deal with the wider trauma of the crime. Ballads do this, soaps likewise, I'm thinking it's about time the news media did it too.