Abstract #6
The first article I read this week was “Before you publish a rape victim’s name…” from ASNE. I think the author highlights some key points related to the media’s coverage of rape or sexual assault. I do agree with her that these are serious crimes that rarely get the coverage they deserve. Because of the sensitivity associated with reporting such stories, I can see why some journalists would shy away from covering them. However, this is an area where much improvement can be made. As she discusses toward the end of the story, more effort needs to be made to tell a more encompassing tale of these tragic occurrences. Finding victims brave or comfortable enough to be named can help put a human face on these often distant stories. Still, care needs to be exercised so that the victim is not pressured to reveal his or her identity or that the victim is not named except out of extenuating circumstances.
And yet I sometimes agree with critics of such a policy who argue that by not naming alleged victims, they are providing someone with a veil of anonymity behind which to throw out allegations. I recently read “Until Proven Innocent” for my fact finding class, which provides details about the Duke lacrosse rape case. In this particular case, it turns out a woman was doling out baseless accusations of rape by innocent members of the team. The media generally followed its policy of not naming victims, but was more than willing to prejudge and vilify the accused lacrosse players without any sort of independent investigation of the charges. Because of cases like this, I think great care must be taken when reporting about rape cases and deciding whether or not to name victims.
The latter is something that is brought up in the Connecticut Post’s ethics policy, which I think addresses some of the common issues we should be concerned with as journalists. In the policy, a case is made for exercising caution when identifying victims of sexual assault. It says that this should be relegated to “especially prominent or well-known” people and that by doing so, public awareness of the crime can be raised. I think this is an interesting idea, but I’m not so sure it would justify the naming of famous people, regardless of how popular they are. The fact remains that they have most likely been through a horrible ordeal and would probably not want their name plastered all over the news – probably especially more so because of their prominence. I think in such a case, it should fall on the individual person whether or not to use their celebrity to raise awareness of the issue (which, hopefully, they eventually would). I think the Post’s ethics policy contains a lot of useful guidelines that seem to be consistent with most other policies I have seen and with what we have been discussing in my ethics class.
One interesting part of the policy is the refusal to print profanities or obscenities. I think this is an interesting aspect of journalism in general. I know it’s a pretty accepted policy to avoid printing obscenities, which for the most part I understand. I guess it goes along with the professionalism associated with traditional print media, but as the CJR article, “What the F-k Are They Driving At?,” discusses, sometimes when a person uses profanity in a quote it is important to its overall meaning. I know that most editors would exercise caution when deciding whether to print a profanity, but I think that most times it needs to be included, in some form – even hyphenated, to keep the meaning intact. I thought it was interesting how The New York Times deleted the word from its version of the quote and how much I feel it changed the general’s meaning. I agree with the article in that it changes the man’s high frustration with the official to mere annoyance. Although publication of profanity should be a careful process, I think often times it is better to keep the information as intact as possible to give readers the most honest and accurate version of the story.
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