There was a high profile rape trial in Ohio you might have noticed. You might have watched some media coverage that was sympathetic to the attackers. Perhaps you saw some of the news media shared the victim’s name — likely an honest error which nevertheless breaks an unwritten rule of this type of coverage.
I doubt you read this:
It’s a misplaced anger that will do nothing but further confuse the public about issues of rape and sexual assault, particularly as the crime affects children and teenagers, who make up 44 percent of rape victims.
[…]
Here’s the problem: Rape and other forms of sexual assault are incredibly common. (For more information and statistics go here or here.) Researchers estimate that one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually assaulted before age 18.
That means there are a lot of rapists out there. Sure, some rapists are responsible for multiple attacks and some are dangerous predators. But that many victims suggests profound confusion about rape on the part of both men and women, boys and girls.
Portraying all rapists as monsters and refusing them any sympathy creates a dynamic in which it’s impossible to acknowledge how many ordinary and common rapists live among us. (According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, “approximately 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim,” and “38 percent of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.)
To media ethicist and Poynter Institute faculty member Kelly McBride, it seems we can’t characterize the familiar types as monsters. Just the strangers, one supposes.
When your premise starts out as “Railing against CNN’s Steubenville coverage is a waste of time” and moves to shakier ground from there you should reconsider your point. Otherwise you’ll conclude there are plenty of ordinary rapists right there in your hometown. Maybe on your city council! Or church or street! You know, just folks.
Maybe we should treat that as an extraordinary thing.
McBride sees this as “an opportunity to have an honest conversation about the sexual assault of children and teenagers, and about misguided perceptions of healthy sexuality and the role of sports culture.”
So sports turned the young men into rapists. Or maybe it was just that good old fashioned healthy American sexuality.
Poynter, which is a school “dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders” does fine work. This might be one of the most highly trafficked pieces they’ve published for some time, and you should read the comments. There McBride attempts to answer some of the criticisms:
I wish that some of the news orgs that are spending so much space on the CNN controversy would find some survivors to tell their stories.
This is a huge huge international problem. Yet, I think we will be more successful convincing the men who hold these views to see women as fully embodied humans and endowed with clear rights that should not be violated by approaching them as humans, not monsters. Tell someone he’s a monster and he’s not likely to hear you out.
I don’t believe having sympathy for an offender precludes me from being shocked at their sentences, especially when I compare them to the sentences that some teens receive for drug offenders.
(W)hat I would love to see is more news orgs taking the opportunity to explore how confused people are about consent.
Alternately, “You’re doing the wrong story, media” or “You aren’t seeing the right forest because of the wrong trees, society” or “They shouldn’t go to jail for too long because they aren’t monsters and many former victims are able to lead fruitful lives. Also, look at drug sentences.” or “People don’t understand.”
Gotcha.
If I may: Life is choices and consequences, with each meaning something. One choice can make you a gentleman or a braggart or a person who preys on other human beings.
It is troubling that there are so many in that latter group. Being critical of our media doesn’t diminish that. Praising our media for good coverage doesn’t either. Finding shades of gray within that group — as McBride seems to do — is problematic.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of opportunity to discuss both culture and media because, so often, media effects culture. McBride is missing that.
Her last graph:
Railing against missteps or an imbalance in coverage makes us less likely to take up powerful stories that will change the way we as a society understand the extent of the rape problem and the power we have to change it.
Do not share your indignation about “missteps or an imbalance in coverage.” That will … do something or other and you won’t like it.
It has to mean something when the media talks about cultural issues, preferably the right things, in the modern cultural context — yes, your mileage will occasionally vary. When the media strays they deserve a public course correction.
McBride is a media ethicist, a field where right and wrong would, occasionally, be a good thing. But this isn’t about the media for her, rather about some poor put upon teenagers. Did they get the proper messages? Did they know right from wrong? Who taught them that? Could the jocks with the promising grades and a modicum of athletic potential know any better? Or were they mired in some larger, dumber, ignorant problem? Just how backwards is your typical Steubenville teen scene anyway? Maybe it was their coaches? Teammates? Anything, anything but created, complimented or exacerbated by media, except that the larger problem was nurtured by media, which doesn’t deserve criticism, but should, in fact, change “the way we as a society understand the extent of the rape problem and the power we have to change it.”
The circular distraction is maddening.
@michaelsmith thank you.As a parent of teenagers, both boys and girls, I see the mixed messages they get on this topic. And I worry.
— Kelly McBride (@kellymcb) March 19, 2013
But it isn’t the parents’ problem, apparently:
@michaelsmithNow is when it counts. By the time they get to be teenagers, you can no longer influence them.
— Kelly McBride (@kellymcb) March 19, 2013
One wonders who she’s willing to blame. Maybe that’s the problem.
(200 words wasted on an ethicist’s logical fallacies)
Wow. Just, wow.
I’d almost be tempted to re-read her column, looking for signs of meta-irony. Is she trying to make a point about the thick-skulled “not getting it” culture, with a wicked parody of their thinking?
My point of agreement with her is that coverage of these cases does tend toward the shallow. Focus on a few lurid details to titillate the copy, be obvious in your gymnastics about deftly keeping the victim obscured, because then part of the story is your heroic protection of the innocent. There is a much larger realm of interesting observations a real journalist can make about the contributions of culture and upbringing.
Then she exposes this startling insight:
Um, no, Kelly. Just no. If you’ve lost your ability to influence them, please don’t project that on the rest of us. Please don’t destroy your whole sordid justification for your “introspective cultural sidebars.” If you really believe kids can’t be influenced, then the whole narrative of your Scared Straight “good kids gone wrong” cautionary tale is neutered as a non-starter.
I think she has separate good intentions which are conflated, and the tenor of this particular essay is doing neither much good.
But, yes, when you’ve given up on teens as unreachable, that is illustrative of quite a lot. Maybe we should have cultural conversations about that, too.