ARCHIVE: Disappointing Press Coverage on Sexual Assault
Originally published on Facebook, June 5th 2016.
TW: Rape, sexual assault, misogyny, graphic language
I'm no reporter or expert on journalism but I am a human being so I've got some thoughts on how NOT to report a rape trial:
1) "All-American swimmer found guilty of sexually assaulting unconscious woman" is a TERRIBLE title. In one fell swoop, it manages to dehumanize a woman who has been violated already while lauding a man's wholly unrelated athletic achievements. While many All-American swimmers would never sexually assault anyone, being one doesn't make him any less of a perpetrator and suggesting otherwise is inappropriate.
2) When the first mention of the woman is how intoxicated she is and the first mention of the perpetrator is a dazzling paragraph on his swimming record, those are unfair introductions. Tell me about her high school accomplishments too if we're going to go dive into that.
3) "Suddenly, he was accused of rape" is overly dramatic. There's nothing sudden about the accusation. I mean, did he expect to get away with assaulting an unconscious woman? Unfortunately, many men do so I can see why he may have thought so.
4) Featuring a completely unrelated commenter's statement saying “Of course Turner made some terrible mistakes, but I will always wonder if consent happened or not" is just kind of creepy. Like really sir, you will *always* wonder if consent happened? If you followed the trial that closely and saw how upset her family was and how she was completely dragged through the mud and yet she still insisted that she never consented, you still wonder forever??
5) A poetic lamentation of the perpetrator's lost swimming career spanning six paragraphs is a bit excessive. When you do terrible things, there ARE supposed to be consequences. If you sexually violate someone, you should be labeled a sex offender and if your career suffers because of it, reporters don't need to go drumming up sympathy for it in their readers.
6) Out of the woman's entire testimony, cherry picking the part where she says she was acting "silly" with her sister doesn't really give a full picture of her experiences. It doesn't capture the horror and confusion and frustration that her testimony did.
7) Saying that he started "screaming for help" when two bystanders intervened, paints him more like a victim than a perpetrator. That is not okay.
8) Concluding on the Muhammad Ali quote he lives by and his hopes to be a surgeon one day juxtaposed tragically beside him potentially being in jail literally makes me want to vomit. Again I (and many other readers) ask, what about her? Where does she want to be in ten years? What's her life motto?
Time and time again, terrible journalism reflects our larger society's stance on sexual assault. We give perpetrators the benefit of the doubt, humanizing them and celebrating their accolades and trying to relate to them while holding survivors to an incredibly high burden of proof. We demand evidence, but when faced with it, we write it off as "pressure from female activists" (real quote from this article y'all). For what other reason would women subject to their integrity and character and families being questioned before the entire world? Their most intimate histories, private feelings, and horrific moments cast out for all to see unless they're pursuing justice? We must train ourselves to identify with survivors instead of perpetrators (and I use those terms because I realize that sometimes "women" aren't the only ones affected by violence and sometimes "men" aren't the only ones causing it).
So SMH to the Washington Post for your disgusting display of misogyny in your coverage of Turner Assault Case. Unfortunately, you're not alone but we must hold our media to a higher standard and demand better.
(And if you're still not convinced, read this in its entirety and then tell me otherwise: https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.uo9BAy14g#.nlR0Eo3am Somehow, Buzzfeed seems to be the most reliable news source in this mess.)
TW: Rape, sexual assault, misogyny, graphic language
I'm no reporter or expert on journalism but I am a human being so I've got some thoughts on how NOT to report a rape trial:
1) "All-American swimmer found guilty of sexually assaulting unconscious woman" is a TERRIBLE title. In one fell swoop, it manages to dehumanize a woman who has been violated already while lauding a man's wholly unrelated athletic achievements. While many All-American swimmers would never sexually assault anyone, being one doesn't make him any less of a perpetrator and suggesting otherwise is inappropriate.
2) When the first mention of the woman is how intoxicated she is and the first mention of the perpetrator is a dazzling paragraph on his swimming record, those are unfair introductions. Tell me about her high school accomplishments too if we're going to go dive into that.
3) "Suddenly, he was accused of rape" is overly dramatic. There's nothing sudden about the accusation. I mean, did he expect to get away with assaulting an unconscious woman? Unfortunately, many men do so I can see why he may have thought so.
4) Featuring a completely unrelated commenter's statement saying “Of course Turner made some terrible mistakes, but I will always wonder if consent happened or not" is just kind of creepy. Like really sir, you will *always* wonder if consent happened? If you followed the trial that closely and saw how upset her family was and how she was completely dragged through the mud and yet she still insisted that she never consented, you still wonder forever??
5) A poetic lamentation of the perpetrator's lost swimming career spanning six paragraphs is a bit excessive. When you do terrible things, there ARE supposed to be consequences. If you sexually violate someone, you should be labeled a sex offender and if your career suffers because of it, reporters don't need to go drumming up sympathy for it in their readers.
6) Out of the woman's entire testimony, cherry picking the part where she says she was acting "silly" with her sister doesn't really give a full picture of her experiences. It doesn't capture the horror and confusion and frustration that her testimony did.
7) Saying that he started "screaming for help" when two bystanders intervened, paints him more like a victim than a perpetrator. That is not okay.
8) Concluding on the Muhammad Ali quote he lives by and his hopes to be a surgeon one day juxtaposed tragically beside him potentially being in jail literally makes me want to vomit. Again I (and many other readers) ask, what about her? Where does she want to be in ten years? What's her life motto?
Time and time again, terrible journalism reflects our larger society's stance on sexual assault. We give perpetrators the benefit of the doubt, humanizing them and celebrating their accolades and trying to relate to them while holding survivors to an incredibly high burden of proof. We demand evidence, but when faced with it, we write it off as "pressure from female activists" (real quote from this article y'all). For what other reason would women subject to their integrity and character and families being questioned before the entire world? Their most intimate histories, private feelings, and horrific moments cast out for all to see unless they're pursuing justice? We must train ourselves to identify with survivors instead of perpetrators (and I use those terms because I realize that sometimes "women" aren't the only ones affected by violence and sometimes "men" aren't the only ones causing it).
So SMH to the Washington Post for your disgusting display of misogyny in your coverage of Turner Assault Case. Unfortunately, you're not alone but we must hold our media to a higher standard and demand better.
(And if you're still not convinced, read this in its entirety and then tell me otherwise: https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.uo9BAy14g#.nlR0Eo3am Somehow, Buzzfeed seems to be the most reliable news source in this mess.)
Comments
Post a Comment