In the last week, there has been a flurry of media attention surrounding the Penn State scandal. It seems that among such coverage, The New York Times has been criticized for referring to the incident as "sexual assault" instead of "rape". In an article for Poynter, Arthur Brisbane discussed the issue with Times sports editor, Joe Sexton:
"...[he said] the charges included a variety of acts, so the paper had used “sexual assault” to cover the range. Further, he said, the paper’s reporting on Penn State officials’ accounts of their actions required careful wording, as none of them besides the graduate assistant had acknowledged that rape was involved."Though I'm not sure if this is an issue of ethics of just plain terminology, I think that there is something to be said about reporting on such sensitive stories. How should journalists write when talking about cases of rape? Where is the line drawn between being hypersensitive and hardened? Like the article suggests, journalists should begin by using language that is as specific as possible. Perhaps such an accurate start will lay the foundation for the conscious reporting of tragedies.
In my opinion, this is a very specific incident that has much larger implications. But, I'm not sure where on spectrum of journalism ethics it lies. What do you guys think?
Boy, this is a term paper topic that I'd have to call an evergreen because right-thinking newspeople continue to agonize about all aspects of covering rape, from naming victims - this gets tricky when names are revealed in one publication but not in others - to describing the details of the crime. The argument in favor of providing detailed information centers, I'm thinking, on combatting the notion that rape is some sort of benign crime when, in fact, it is often a crime of great violence in which the victim is beaten into submission. (Rape is *always* an act of violence, I think, even when the method is drugging the victim.) Even the term "sexual assault" is a kind of euphemism, meaning as much or as little as the reader/listener wishes. Rape tells us more: in this case, anal penetration of a child by a man. This is one of those instances where, if I were doing a story on proper news vocabulary, I'd probably ask a few experts and a lot of women what they think, even though, as this case shows, men and boys are raped more often than we realize.
ReplyDeleteThe abuse of a child. It's upsetting and probably a moment when it's all the more important to talk about reporting ethics, since raw emotion can take over, either unthinkingly to say too little or too much. *What information does society need about the specifics of a particular crime, or of the defining characteristics of a type of crime, to come to the most reasonable conclusions about what the appropriate laws are and what the appropriate punishment is?*