Reality Meets Theory
Posted on April 16th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
After all the discussion on this blog about when and whether it’s appropriate to name alleged victims of rape, here comes a terrible incident which makes me reconsider: the horrific rape and attack upon a student at the Columbia Journalism School.
This young woman was tied up and raped by her attacker, who then set fire to her apartment and fled. She survived by using the fire to burn through the rope, or whatever it was, that her attacker had used to tie her.
After all that I’ve said about the Duke case, I can’t imagine any reason for printing this woman’s name in the newspaper…..
Which leaves us where? With the idea that one should also avoid printing the names of the accused? Or the idea that, if an accusation turns out to be clearly false, then it’s appropriate to name a false accuser?
3 Responses
4/16/2007 11:30 am
“Which leaves us where? With the idea that one should also avoid printing the names of the accused? Or the idea that, if an accusation turns out to be clearly false, then it’s appropriate to name a false accuser?”
The latter. Because the former implies a moral equivalence between 1) being falsely accused of rape and 2) being falsely accused of making a false accusation of rape. #2 is in fact much worse because it reprises the victimization to which the un-false accuser has already been subjected.
#1 is just garden-variety journalistic malpractice: cf. Wen Ho Lee, if you like, or that security guard at the Atlanta Olympics.
Standing Eagle
Still can’t log in on this computer
4/16/2007 11:39 am
Standing Eagle,
I think we agree, but you lose me with this sentence:
âBecause the former implies a moral equivalence between 1) being falsely accused of rape and 2) being falsely accused of making a false accusation of rape.-
4/16/2007 11:48 am
The worst-case scenario for a journalist in either case is to have been wrong. What happens as a result in each case — the printing the name of the accused, the printing the name of the accused? Both choices imply that the identity of the person is important because their status before the law is about to be adjudicated (i.e., by entering the legal sphere they have become a public person whose status is up for grabs; their name is news because it might be in the process of becoming mud or making someone else’s mud; once it’s clear which is the case, the name becomes old news).
If you as a journalist accuse, or imply an accusation of, someone wrongly under #1 (of rape), their reputation is harmed, quite seriously.
If you as a journalist accuse, or imply an accusation of, someone wrongly under #2 (of making a false rape accusation), they are harmed much more deeply, and in a way that precisely parallels and significantly worsens their initial victimization.
Does that help? I’m drilling down as far as I can into the idea of the public sphere here, and how the courts interact with it.
Fundamentally this means defining ‘news’ in a way most people seem never to bother to do. All credit to this blog for creating a space in which that conversation is at least relevant.
For what it’s worth, along those lines, on Meet the Press yesterday Tim Russert apparently said that they were focusing on Don Imus’s firing for the show ,rather than the DOJ scandal they had planned to cover, because it was “much more important.” As the kids say, wtf?
Standing Eagle