Journalists have been talking about rape a lot this year. And we’ve been talking about rape a lot here at Poynter.
The discussion began last summer when two teenagers were kidnapped from their boyfriends’ cars in Lancaster, Calif., and rescued 12 hours later, physically unharmed. Ultimately a sheriff revealed the abductor raped both girls. The Lancaster kidnapping lead to a lot of soul-searching about how we cover rape in the American media. But it hasn’t stopped there.
The clergy sex scandals and the resurrection of the Central Park jogger case continue to challenge journalists to balance telling the truth against harming the victims. Journalists instinctively know that reporting on rape in America has been inadequate. That may be changing. The New York Times and other newspapers are using the Central Park case to examine the way class and race are entwined with public perceptions of rape.
Recently, The Boston Globe’s front page included a story about a 14-year-old who was raped by her classmates at a party. A large portion of the Globe‘s story discussed the growing trend among rape victims to go public as a strategy for combating the stigma and shame associated with the assaulted. The story on this teenager first appeared in the Portland Press Herald.
My favorite story was on the Nov. 24 front page of the Dallas Morning News. In this article, a father and a journalist, Mike Kelly, writes about his daughter’s recovery from a shooting and rape. It is unusual for its insight and candor.
DMN features editor Tom Huang commissioned the first-person story last September. Both Huang and Kelly attended an October conference on rape here at Poynter. Kelly said he personally received more than 250 e-mails after the Dallas story, “all supportive and many very gripping.” This came after an overwhelming response from the columns Kelly wrote for his own newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald.
There have been watershed moments on rape for journalists and society in the past. The most striking one was in 1990, when the Des Moines Register published the story of one rape victim. That series went on to win a Pulitzer. It’s possible we are experiencing a similar watershed moment now. We should make the most of it.
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Rape and American Journalism
Tags: MediaWire, Poynter Ethics Journal
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