Sexual Violence, Media and Feminism:
A Local and Industry-Wide Perspective
By Anonymous
Various
local media outlets, including the student publication The Cornell Daily Sun, covered a sexual assault[1] that
occurred in spring 2013 and was reported to the police. The details of the
story itself as well as the consequences of insensitive media coverage were
explosive. Beyond the individual harms such stories can cause the victim,
flawed media[2]
coverage of sexual assault can serve to perpetuate sexist understandings of
rape and oppressive gender norms. A significant portion of this paper will
outline a set of feminist criteria by which The Sun’s sexual assault reporting
should be judged. It will also consider explanations for bias in such reporting
and propose feminist solutions.
Background Information
Media sexual
assault coverage has been problematic even before modern times. Historically,
media only deemed violence against women worth covering in a racially biased context,
or when the rape of a white woman by a black man was named as the reason for lynching
(Benedict, p. 25). The mainstream press did not cover rapes diverging from this
racial stereotype until the 1950s (Benedict, p. 27), with consistent media
coverage of sexual assault only emerging in the 1970s (Kitzinger, p. 15). Even
then, sexual assault coverage was riddled with overtly gendered and racial
bias, with victims depicted as “the wives, daughters, or ‘coeds,’ symbols of
white America, ‘taken from their men by rapists” (Benedict, p. 39).
Feminist activism
has resulted in major improvements in the tone and framing of rape coverage in
recent decades, but biases still linger. Reporting consistently fails to
provide an accurate depiction of the most common types of rape (Simpson and
Cote, p.165) and the rapes media do cover tend to stereotype the victims and
create stories more in line with rape mythology[3]
than the crime’s reality (Benedict, p.14-18). Even reports that have been
praised for reporting on sexual assault in a proactive, in-depth way — such as
the Pulitzer-prize winning Ziegenmeyer-Schorer report in 1990, which described
a rape survivor’s first year of recovery— have come under attack for embodying
various biases about rape that are uncommon, like stranger rape (Simpson and
Cote, p. 157). The Ziegenmeyer-Schorer report thus shows that attempts to rid
media coverage of myths and stereotypes is a long road indeed, with “even the most
careful reporting … [running] afoul of biases” (Simpson and Cote, p. 159).
Feminist Significance
At
its most basic, feminism aims to end “sexism, sexist exploitation and
oppression” (bell hooks). Media coverage of sexual assault is anti-feminist when
it stereotypes female victims, manipulates their stories for mass appeal and as
a result, treats both the victims themselves and all women unjustly, impeding
their autonomy by placing blame for rape on their actions, not those of the
perpetrator. Rape is different from other crimes in that the way it is
perceived and interpreted reflects deep-seated societal beliefs about gender
roles and sexual relations (Benedict, p.4). The way media covers violence
against women both reflects public opinion — as well as public misconceptions —
about sexual assaults and shapes the way people continue to perceive sexual
assaults. This mechanism is primarily at play when media upholds and continues
to spread rape myths, which, through their dichotomous portrayal of rape
victims as either virgins attacked by monstrous perpetrators or as temptresses
who lured their rapists (O’Hara, p. 248), undermine the realities of the
pervasiveness of rape and the nature of the crime — it is a crime, one of opportunity,
not of passion or of sex (Benedict, p. 16). Far from being monsters or
deviants, male rapists are friends or casual acquaintances, known to the victim
than not (Simpson and Cote, p165). Rape myths also place the impetus on women
to constrain their independence to prevent rape — not to go certain places or
do certain things or stay out at certain hours — because male perpetrators are
monsters, not in control of their own urges, strangers in the night that could
be lurking anywhere. When media coverage of rapes emphasizes the victim’s
agency over the agency of the perpetrator, or through language and framing of a
story minimizes the damage the crime has incurred on the victim, it serves to
enforce what Meyers describes as “social structures and values that deny male
violence against women … a serious, systemic problem rooted in misogyny and
patriarchy” (Meyers, p. ix).
Feminist
scholars have concluded that the process by which news stories are selected by
media to be covered is inherently biased. Reporters’ selection criteria of
‘unusualness’ allows reporters to internalize societal gender, race and class
biases and results in coverage that focuses on crimes against whites over
crimes against minorities (Meyers, p.99-100). Black female victims of rape experience
this bias in media coverage in an intersectional[4]
way, subject to both sexism and racism. Media is less likely to cover the rape
of a black woman, and when they do reporters are more likely to question the
victim’s claims (Kitzinger, p. 30). In addition, when media does decide that a
black rape victim is “credible and worthy,” they portray her in such a way that
they erase her race, granting her “honorary whiteness” (Kitzinger, p. 31).
Interlocking sexism and racism in media coverage of the rapes of black victims
show us “society’s biases and prejudices. It tells us who is valued and who is
not, whose life has meaning and whose life is insignificant, who has power and
who does not” (Meyers p. 98).
Research Question
How
does the media perpetuate rape myths in its sexual assault coverage? “Alleged
Rape Victim Details Attack to IPD” by Kerry Close, an account of the rape of a
Cornell student as told to local police that was published in The Cornell Daily Sun on April 4, 2013,
is proof that when it does occur it is not deliberately done. Just six months
previous to the publishing of this article, the Cornell campus had seen a spate
of sexual assaults occur over Labor Day Weekend 2012. The campus was in crisis
over the issue of rape culture and the University launched several working
groups to combat what was seen as a widespread problem. The April 4 article was
the first sexual assault reported since the three sexual assaults that had been
reported the previous semester.
“Alleged Rape
Victim Details Attack to IPD” recounted how a Cornell student woke up at 4:45
a.m. to find she was being raped, as well as the sequence of events leading up
to the crime — the victim’s actions that night, the fact that the victim’s
girlfriend fought the rapist off, the way the perpetrator entered the building
(he was in the victim’s girlfriend’s house playing drinking games with some of
her housemates) and the way the victim’s girlfriend took pictures of the rapist
so he could be identified. Adapting media guidelines for ethical sexual assault
reporting to a feminist perspective on the issue (Garcia-Rojas; Simpson
and Cote p. 160; Benedict p. 259), [SH1] “Alleged
Rape Victim Details Attack to IPD” can be evaluated by five criteria.
1.
Contextualizing: promotes incorporating
broader contextual and statistical information into single-event stories in
order to portray institutionalized structures that allow for sexism and sexist oppression.
2.
Framing: emphasizes neutrality in the way
the story is told through focusing inquiry and investigations on the
perpetrator rather than the victim. This perspective allows for the correction
of media’s sexist focus on the victim’s actions, which frame the story as if
her actions played a role in her rape.
3.
Language: encourages using language that is truthful to the crime at hand, without
implying that rape or assault is sex or using words like ‘assault’ in a
way that detracts from the victim’s claims. This focus aims to focus reporter
attention on the gendered bias that has been entrenched even in our system of
language.
4.
Level of detail included: attempts to portray the extent of the crime
that was committed. Not including graphic details of rape in the same way as other
crimes is sexist, minimizing the suffering of predominantly female victims.
5.
Anticipate the impact of publication: ensures the published product does not harm
who have been rape victims; in particular, protecting the anonymity of the
specific victim in the case. This is crucial to allowing women the possibility
of choice — allowing them to heal and live a life defined beyond the status of
victim.
Feminist Analysis
Close’s
article could have been further developed to allow for a feminist understanding
of rape, both the specific rape at hand as well as rape as a reflection of
sexist norms. Firstly, the crime at hand — acquaintance rape — could have been
contextualized much better, adding information to demystify the myth that rapes
are perpetrated by a stranger emerging from the bushes in the night. An
important statistic that could have been included is the fact that half of rape
victims in 2010 were raped by an acquaintance (Garcia-Rojas, p. 31). Moreover, the article failed to address
the severity of college campus rape culture — the fact that one in four or one
in five women will be the victims of completed or attempted rape while in
college (Armstrong, Hamilton and Sweeney, p. 483). The article could have gone
on to explain the institutionalized sexism that allows for rape to occur, such
as the variety of “individual, organizational and interactional levels”
at college campus, including university policies that push drinking off-campus
and social expectations that college kids will drink and party (Armstrong,
Hamilton and Sweney).
Another
significant issue in media sexual assault coverage that can be seen in a more
minor form here is how the assault is framed. It is seen in The Sun’s coverage through the focus on
the victim’s actions the night of the assault — her going to a bar earlier that
evening, the amount of alcohol she drank (two beers, a shot of tequila, and a
whiskey and coke) and her state of intoxication (“moderately intoxicated”)
(Close, p. 1). These descriptions, while
not particularly important to the rape itself — since rapes are not caused by
women drinking or going to bars but by rapists wanting to rape women (Benedict,
p. 16) — serve to victim-blame by directing excessive focus on the victim’s
actions that night, implying that the places she went or the things she drank
contributed to her being raped.
For
the most part the article uses clear, simple language that serves to emphasize
the crime being a rape rather than referring to it by any terms implying
consent was involved. Yet there are three areas where language could have been
used more effectively and sensitively. One sentence of the article reads, “At
about 4:45 a.m., the victim woke up and realized she was being raped” (Close,
p.1). This passive formulation of the crime quite literally constructs the
sentence so that it conceals the rapist; it also serves to put the focus on the
victim in relation to the crime rather than the perpetrator (Garcia-Rojas, p. 15). Although the author likely
structured the sentence in this manner — in the victim’s voice — because the
reporting was based off of a report given by the victim to police, a better
sentence might have read “A man entered the bedroom and raped the sleeping
victim, which she woke up to at about 4:45 a.m.” In addition, the term ‘victim’
is used about 20 times throughout the article. Those who have undergone sexual
assault prefer the term ‘survivor,’ as it gives them more autonomy over the
trauma they have suffered. Moreover, though ‘alleged’ is used only twice
in the article, it is used in the most visible places in the article, the
headline and the first sentence. Because legal charges had been filed against
the perpetrator, Peter Mesko, at the time of publication, instead the same
concepts could have been attributed as “police say,” so as to not undermine the
victim’s words (Garcia-Rojas,
p. 11).
The
final criterion — considering the impact of publication — is also the most
troubling aspect of The Sun’s
coverage of the April rape. The level of detail included about the victim, her
girlfriend’s living situation and her girlfriend’s housemates’ group of
friends, allowed for the victim to be identified through the media coverage. This
is particularly egregious because privacy for survivors is an “essential
condition for taking steps toward recovery” and allowing them to be given the
choice whether to give or withhold their name is important, “profoundly” so (Simpson
and Cote, p. 163). Simpson and Cote write that the journalist who denies or invades
privacy of rape survivor interferes right to try to recover from assault
(Simpson and Cote, p. 164). Ultimately, while all five criteria are important
considerations in media sexual assault coverage, the issue of the victim’s
identity is the most crucial consideration — and is the area in which
insensitive coverage can lead to the most devastating personal impacts.
Issues raised by literature
Feminist media studies
analyses in this area have identified structural problems in the media
industry, arguing that the way news media apply standards of newsworthiness is
inherently biased. Although, when selecting stories to pursue, reporters cite valuing
audience interest, the degree to which the story affects many lives and the
timeliness of the issue, Meyers found that instead, the criteria of
“unusualness” seems to override those factors. This means in practice,
reporters only consider rapes newsworthy if they involve a serial rapist, the
rape of someone very old or very young, or what reporters consider unusual
circumstances (Meyers p. 93). Without a standard approach to evaluate
newsworthiness, unusualness allows reporters to rely on rape myths as well as
gender, class and race biases in selecting stories to pursue. As a result,
media coverage of sexual assault is skewed, with a disconnect between the
stories about rape that are being told and the realities of the pervasiveness of
acquaintance rape, the rarity of interracial rape, and so on.
Individual
cases of media reporting all-too-often fail to live up to the five criteria of feminist-minded
sexual assault reporting mentioned above. In addition, although police
spokespeople are often considered reliable, neutral sources, while advocates
for rape victims are seen as biased because of their close work with those
affected by the crime, such a perspective fails to consider the reality that no
person can ever be truly neutral. Much like the feminist concept of situated
knowledge, police spokespeople’s statements are as affected by their values and
assumptions as advocates for rape victims (Meyers, p. 100).
My own analysis
While
feminist media studies have reached a general consensus on the consequences of
biased media sexual assault coverage, they diverge in their analysis of why it occurs.
Some scholars argue that media reporting is a results of reporters internalizing
rape myths without even knowing it (O’Hara, p.247); other scholars more
explicitly designate it as a form of social control over women — dictating the
actions that are acceptable and the punishments for divergence (Meyers, p. 9). Some
point to the lack of gender and racial diversity in most newsrooms across the
country (Benedict, p. 202-203), in particular the lack of female writers
covering rape stories, which is likely due to the fact that rape is a crime
story and the crime desks are largely male-dominated (Benedict, p. 5). However,
dissenting scholars note that rape stories can still be flawed even when
written and supervised by female editors (Worthington, p.3). Though all of
these factors are play a role, the most compelling reason for rape myth-prone
media coverage is a variant of Meyers’ argument: although reporters go into the
field for a variety of reasons, ultimately they want to tell good stories —
stories that are captivating and universal, that will matter beyond the confines
of their locality. Stories that follow the familiar rise and fall of rape
mythology better fit the idea of a good story and capture the imagination than
the realities of rape, which are far more insidious and frightening. The trope
of the stranger in the bushes is more palatable than the uncle with the
wandering hands at family gatherings.
On
the whole, while media studies summarize the roadblocks preventing more
progressive media coverage of sexual assault, including the way competition,
deadlines and journalistic traditions inhibit divergence from rape myths
(Benedict, p.7), solutions are scarce. Educating reporters about feminist media
criticism (Worthington, p.2) and increasing their awareness about specific
reforms needed (Benedict, p. 259) have been some of the ideas bandied around.
But individual reforms cannot serve to target the structural inequities in
media sexual assault coverage, which hinge upon Meyers’ astute identification
of the “unusualness” criteria of newsworthiness as a methodology — or lack
thereof — exposing the process of story selection to biases.
Critical engagement with the literature
There
is no doubt that the media has a tendency to align rape victims into
stereotypes of female behavior, either blameless virgins or alluring
temptresses, “imposing these shared narratives … on the sex crimes they cover
like a cookie-cutter on dough” (Benedict, p. 24).
Yet rapes do occur that fit these
stereotypes, even if just partially, which presents a bind for reporters —
whether to alter reality to avoid a polarizing portrayal, or to report the
facts even if they play into Benedict’s virgin/vamp dichotomy. Although women
who meet a man at a bar and have one too many drinks are not culpable in a
resulting rape, the events of that night are part and parcel of how the crime
occurred. There is a distinction between reporting the truth of a situation and
claiming that women must not go out to bars or drink, and although it is a
tricky line to tread it is one worth treading. Suppressing true stories that
mimic rape myths is as damaging as suppressing true stories that are completely
at odds with rape myths, since both hijack public discourse about gender. Gender
bias can only be eliminated in sexual assault reporting by providing broad,
comprehensive rape coverage, to expand ideas of rape beyond rape myths and portray
the true terrain of such crimes.
Conclusion
Gender, race and
class biases and tendencies towards rape myths exist in sexual assault
reporting. One solution, a transformative feminist approach, requires local
media cover every sexual assault, including attempted rapes, reported in their
area. Since sexism is based on unequal valuation of people in society (bell
hooks), and news coverage shows whom society values in selecting stories to
tell, combating systematic institutionalized sexism in media requires such a
move. If combined with proper education about sexual assault coverage grounded
in feminist teachings, such a strategy will result in stories being told that more
adequately represent the true risk of sexual assault in one’s community.
Although such a move will still not truly represent the number of sexual
assaults occurring in that community, as over 80% of rapes aren’t reported to
the police (Simpson and Cote, p. 163-4), it will portray a more expansive,
nuanced picture of sexual assaults and help to combat rape mythology.
The second
solution, a reformative feminist approach, is similar to other proposals in
that it requires reporters to be aware of their own biases (Cote and Simpson
p.223-5, Meyers p.124, Benedict p. 251), but does not ask them to suppress
information that backs up virgin/vamp stereotypes or rape myths, since asking
such a thing is sexist — suppressing the validity of women being virgins or
vamps. Feminism does not ask for women to not be either; rather, it asks for
women to have the possibility to choose a wider range of possibilities of
being. This feminist perspective can be applied through reporters drawing out
the contradictions inherent in these stereotypes. This means subverting rape
myths — the victim as both a loyal friend and a flirt — and questioning them —
asking, like one reporter did, why women who consume alcohol are to be blamed
for the rape (O’Hara, p. 254).
Only by expanding
the conception of who gets raped — not the virgin or the vamp, which most women
wouldn’t identify with, but the friend, sister, pet-owner — can we as a society
combat the misconception that rape is about passion, lust, the actions of the
victims or the perpetrator’s mental or drug/alcohol-related incapacities. Once
rape mythology is revealed as farce and rape is understood as an act committed
by friends, family and acquaintances, once victims are understood as having no
culpability, can we move closer towards eliminating sexism, sexist exploitation
and sexist oppression.
Works Cited
Armstrong,
Elizabeth, Laura Hamilton, and Brian Sweeney. "Sexual Assault on Campus: A
Multilevel, Integrative Approach to Party Rape." Social Problems 53.4
(2006): n. pag. Web.
Benedict,
Helen. Virgin or Vamp: How the
Press Covers Sex Crimes. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.
Crenshaw,
Kimberle. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and
Violence Against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review 43.1241
(1993): n. pag. Print.
Close,
Kerry. "Alleged Rape Victim Details Attack to IPD." The
Cornell Daily Sun[Ithaca] 4 Apr. 2013, 129th ed., sec. 120: 1+. Print.
Hooks,
Bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Cambridge, MA: South
End, 2000. Print.
Meyers,
Marian. News Coverage of Violence against Women: Engendering Blame.
Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Print.
O'Hara, Shannon. "Monsters, Playboys, Virgins and
Whores: Rape Myths in the News Media's Coverage of Sexual Violence." Language and Literature 21.3 (2012): 247-59. Monsters, Playboys, Virgins and
Whores: Rape Myths in the News Media's Coverage of Sexual Violence. Web. 27
Nov. 2013.
"Reporting
on Rape and Sexual Violence: A Media Toolkit for Local and National Journalists
to Better Media Coverage." Ed. Claudia Garcia-Rojas. Chicago Taskforce on
Violence Against Girls and Young Women, n.d. Web.
Ross,
Karen, and Carolyn M. Byerly. Women and Media: International
Perspectives. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Print.
Worthington, Nancy. "Progress and Persistent Problems:
Local TV News Framing of Acquaintance Rape on Campus." Feminist
Media Studies 8.1 (2008): n. pag. Web.
[1]
The term sexual assault will be used to refer to any type of sexual contact
occurring without the recipient’s explicit consent, as defined by the
Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. The term will be used
interchangeably with the term rape, and both will refer to rapes that are
perpetrated against women, the scope of this paper. Although rape occurs within
relationships, such as marital rape, this paper focuses exclusively on
acquaintance rape — rape by a person who is known to the victim — and stranger
rape, rape that is committed by someone unknown to the victim. Rape is
understood in this paper as a forced violation of another person’s body, an act
that is antithetical to sex and, in fact, can best be understood as sexual
humiliation for the victim (Benedict, p. 254).
[2]
Media, although it can refer to a wide array of mediums of mass communication,
will in this paper only apply to newspaper coverage.
[3]
[3] Rape
myths are a variety of “prejudicial, stereotyped or false beliefs, prejudices
or stereotypes about rape, rapists and rape victim[3]s” and
encompass a variety of ideas about how rape occurs, including scenarios in
which — through their actions that night, the drinks they consumed or the
clothes they wore — victims are framed as liable for the violence they
encounter; whereas the perpetrator is framed as being crazy and therefore, less
culpable (O’Hara, p.247).
[4]
Intersectional feminist activism studies the way in which systems of oppression
are interlocked and thus how oppression can be suffered through multiple
aspects of identity (Crenshaw, p. 1243). For example, black women experience
oppression uniquely to the way a black man or white woman would.
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