Conference
1983
The Public face of sexual violence:
The role of newspaper reports
by Sally Ruth
'(Sexual violence) is part of our culture. It is the way men
relate to women sexually. We see women's bodies plastered all over as bodies for
sale. Women are not people. They are objects. People have the right to say no
to sex and not be coerced. Objects do not ...'
'Men are brought up to be masculine, strong, aggressive, dominant and brave.
Women are brought up to be feminine, weak, passive and submissive. These
patterns of behaviour lead logically to rape.'
'By women fulfilling what society designs us to be, we will be victims. By men
fulfilling what society designs them to be, they will be rapists. This
leads to the power men have over women. Because women are too scared to walk at
night, live alone, be alone, hitchhike, be different, then men have control
over women's lives.'
'As long as there is (sexual violence) women will not be equal complete human beings .'
(Ann Mowbray, N.Z. Listener, March 27 1982)
'(In newspaper accounts) the concentration upon specific characteristics of the
individual rapist and the victim and the unnecessarily detailed description of
events immediately prior to, during and after the rape (or episode of sexual
violence), serve to create the impression that (sexual violence) is an isolated
event having no structural relationship to other social practice or phenomena,
or to the unequal and exploitative character of the relationship between men
and women in general. '
(Smart and Smart, 1979, p.99)
This paper is based on two scrapbooks of clippings taken from the
As well as the clippings themselves, I drew on Carol and Barry Smart's article 'Accounting
for Rape', Ann Lloyd's magazine article, 'Rape: An 'Examination of the Crime in New Zealand' and interviews
with editorial staff of the Star and Press, a lawyer, a Rape Crisis worker, a
senior policeman and rape victims.
It must be remembered that this is an examination of the public face of sexual
violence. It is important to note that the data available in newspaper
clippings can not be used to generalise about either offenders or victims. By
now it is well known that sexual violence is a grossly under-reported offence,
and studies have shown that offenders seen in the courts are not at all representative
of sexual offenders in general. There are three categories of newspaper coverage
of sexual violence. In order of frequency of publication these are: accounts of
court cases, as-it-happens accounts and social comment. This paper concentrates
on the former.
Media accounts of sexual violence re-present a portion of reality and create an
image for the public which both feeds off and fuels common myths and
stereotypes about sexual offences. These assumptions are then used to justify
the social control of wimmin, of their sexuality,
their behaviour, their labour power, and so on. Newspaper reports of court
cases, which are particularly frequent and widely read, function as an example
of this social control.
The re-presentation process
Journalists prize 'objectivity', i.e. the ability to distance your own self,
values and views while writing, in order to present a supposedly unbiased or
'true' account of what happened.
I myself believe that objectivity is both an unrealistic aim and an impossibility in most cases and is non-existent when
dealing with so-called 'social issues'. Newspapers do not present everything
that happens, or even every happening they know about. They do not print
everything that is written. The staff of a paper choose
aspects of social phenomena for re-presentation in their news reports; in doing
so they construct a social reality in accordance with that selection, which may
or may not reflect the actual reality initially observed. At each stage of the
process whereby an event becomes a published story, individual biases may
occur. Aside from the characteristics and beliefs that the particular
reporters, sub-editors and editors bring to their jobs, the process itself
behind the presentation of news stories negates any possibility of real
objectivity. The selection of what is emphasized, what is ignored, the use of
language and the ideas behind the judgement of 'newsworthiness' are all
individual and subjective procedures.
Both the style and the claims of newspaper journalism suggest a non-judgemental
re-presentation of what others have said or done. From this the public often
hold a view of media reports as the truth, and they construct their own
assumptions of reality around those presented by newspapers and other media
forms.
One of the determinants of the style of media presentation is of course the
legal constraints. Those laws which are relevant to newspaper publications of
court reports are as ignorant and open to subjective interpretation as are the
editors' conceptions of their function.
The first centres around 'statutory privileges' laid out in the Defamation
Act of 1954 which
'...gives protection to a newspaper
or other publication which merely relays*
to the public words spoken by someone else. ' (Burrows,
1980)
*(my emphasis)
This
privilege can be negatived by a judgement of malice
but
'... the report is to be judged by the intelligent layman's*
standard. (Burrows, 1980; p. 54)
*(my emphasis)
The other
major legal cautioning related to court reports is contained in the Indecent
Publications Act of 1963 (Section 2)
'It is an offence to publish indecent matter and it seems to
be no defence to plead that the matter was published as part of* an accurate
report of court proceedings. It then follows that if the evidence in a sex
(sic) case is of a particularly repulsive or detailed kind a newspaper which
reported it could be in trouble.. '
(Burrows 1980, p. 187)
*(my emphasis)
When the
Christchurch Highway 61 gang rape case was in the courts earlier this year,
neither paper seemed to take this law as a serious restraint.
'The judge told the jury that when the crown solicitor
opened his case he said evidence would be given by the woman relating to the
time when she was on the billiard table and an attempt was made to insert
billiard balls in her vagina.
The Crown case at that stage had been that someone hit her over the head in
order to overcome her resistance to the action being carried out on her.
However it is now clear that what she talked about as an assault about that
time actually occurred after the insertion of the billiard balls and after she
had fallen on the floor from the table,' the judge said.
The evidence did not therefore support that particular count.'
(Press, 22/11/82)
'Chapman had also denied charges of attempting to commit sodomy on the woman,
assaulting her with intent to facilitate the crime of indecent assault and that
being a male he assaulted a female.
Savage has denied a charge of being a male he assaulted a female.
The woman told of going to the party, of being raped by eight men, of an
attempt to sodomise her, and of being put on a pool table where an attempt was
made to insert pool balls into her vagina.
She also told the court Chapman cut pieces of her hair off and burned her
nipples and a shoulder with a cigarette.'
(Star, 16/11/82)
Court orders for suppression of names and/or other details can also be made and
it is then an offence for anyone to mention those details out
of the courtroom.
In order to move from this knowledge of the legal strictures behind the court
reports to an understanding of what actually goes on within the newspaper production
unit, I went to interview representatives of the editorial staff of both
Reports of court cases must always involve the selection of portions of admissible
evidence from the proceedings of the day. These are put together to form a
supposedly fair and representative summary of each case chosen as worthy of
publication from the large number of court cases which are heard in a typical
day in court. I asked the staff how decisions about this selection of
information were made at their respective papers. The men from the Star replied that there was 'no
suppression by this newspaper'; and that they print 'a summary of all admissible
evidence in order to get more information to the public' unless 'the details are
considered too unpleasant for a family newspaper'.
The reporter at the Press replied in
answer to the same question, that their court reports
are
'guided by good taste and the view that sexual violence
reports should not descend to the salacious or dwell unduly on details, because
we are very conscious of the fact that people are reading the Press with their
breakfast.' (!)
It appears
that both papers have at least spoken commitment to avoiding the possibility of
sexual titillation from reading court reports. However, the main concerns still
appear to be competition between the two, what sells papers and therefore what
creates profit. Even though the Press
representative said to me that 'the Star
reporters have to be more sensational, to catch tired evening readers', there
seems little to distinguish the two papers in the way court reports of sexual
violence are presented.
Selection of cases to be published hinges in both cases on 'newsworthiness'. Both
papers had different bases on which this criteria is satisfied. The person from
the Press was the most forthcoming on
this subject and consequently his comments are the most revealing. He told me
that any assault on children or the elderly is given prominence because
'.. . the public have a particular
abhorrence for these assaults (while) those cases of women in the middle age
bracket (18-50) are not seen as quite as serious'.
So in fact,
at the Press, newsworthiness is
determined on the basis of the victim's characteristics.
When I asked
for the rationale behind specifying the female's marital status and not the
male's (be he offender or victim), I got two answers which convinced me that
objectivity in these reports is a pipe dream. The Press publish the marital status of wimmin
'to cater for the public who really do think it's worse if she's married
because although it's a gross physical and mental intrusion on the woman, it's
worse if it intrudes on the whole family as well.'
'Besides which', he said, 'it may be relevant. There have been several cases lately
where the husband has been beaten up or forced to watch - then it becomes
more than just a simple crime of passion.' It is a pity this man does not read the
social comment reports in his own newspaper, as it has been well accepted by
people involved in this area that sexual violence is more an act of power and domination
than a crime of passion. It is obvious, both from this man's attitudes and from
reports of such cases in the paper, that when men are also involved as victims
the case is regarded much more seriously and treated more sympathetically.
All in all, the Press representative
thought the public (as usual undefined) made 'more of a fuss about sexual
violence cases than the media do! In fact he believed that
'The public often have mixed feelings about rape cases
because they think 'there but for the grace of God go I'.'
(I checked
this out with him and he confirmed that he did in fact mean men in this context!)
While this seems to say as much about his personal fears as his attitude
towards the public, it also indicates that he regards 'the public' as all men.
At the
The men from both papers consistently used a concept of 'The Public', without overtly
indicating who their reading public was seen to be. My (subjective) impression
is that they conceive them to be white males aged about 25-60 years. It was
clear that they did not seem to regard either sexual offenders, victims, potential
sexual offenders or potential victims as members of 'the public'
.
Examining
the Clippings
A composite picture of the clippings suggests overwhelmingly that the rapist/offender
who goes to court is young, working class or unemployed, a stranger to the womin and likely to be Maori or a Pacific Islander. The
victim is most likely to be attacked in her own home or alone at night in a
public place. She is presented as being either very young or very old. Most of
the assaults reported included some degree of non-sexual violence.
Such a picture, emerging as it does from a capitalist, racist patriarchy, should
not surprise the reader. It is unfortunate that few in fact recognise this for
what it is - the public image only of the many cases of sexual violence that
occur. Cases of sexual violence which fit the stereotypes are more likely to
result in prosecution. Male offenders who fit the stereotype are more likely to
be traced by the police. Where a case does not fit into such a picture, for instance
if the rapist is a white bank clerk, and the victim his best friend's sister
(and if she has or has had a boyfriend) the chances of being taken seriously
and 'justice' being done is minimised from the start. Attacks that include
non-sexual violence are more likely to be followed through. The police in fact
have insinuated that if you are being raped it is actually better for the
prosecution case if you make sure you get a black eye or cuts and so on as well.
A large number of the reports contain phrases claiming the womin
was not hurt, not injured, or had not suffered unduly. Aside from not being
true, such language and emphasis serve to maintain the common misunderstanding
and misrepresentation of sexual violence as just another form of physical assault,
and the idea that the possibility or actuality of physical violence is the most
damaging and deplorable aspect of the crime. Where non-physical consequences to
the victim are mentioned, words like 'upset' are used. This is both an
understatement and a term with belittling connotations. Rape Crisis workers
have said over and over that sexually violated wimmin's
non-physical scars can take a very long time to heal over (if at all). The
invasion of self, the disruption of lives, feelings of emptiness, soullessness,
guilt, fear, dirtiness and so on, and the often punishing attitudes of family
and friends, cause victims immeasurably more suffering than physical force.
These consequences, and their continuance are rendered invisible; they do not
appear on the public face.
Social
Control Themes: Newspaper accounts do of course include implicit
warnings to other wimmin, although the cautioning is
less blatant than that documented by the Smarts in the
I found an examination of the headlines used revealed the lack of fit between the
expressed concern of the newspaper men I spoke to and the practices of the papers.
Burrows' book on law for the media states:
'Extreme care must be taken with headings. They are not part
of the proceedings but rather are the comments of the newspaper itself. '
Headlines
are the responsibility of the sub-editor who quickly reads and summarises a
piece of copy into a few words. The speed at which sub-editors work was offered
as an excuse for poor headlines by both papers (e.g. 'Facial injuries to
woman'). I queried the basis for the use of words 'alleged rape' or 'a woman
claimed
she was raped' in headlines (and in the body of the story). Legally they are
required to use 'allege' etc. if the offender has pleaded not guilty, but this
does not always occur. The Star said
they sometimes make mistakes. The Press
news editor on the other hand said that if, for instance, 'logic' suggested
that a womin in that place at that time would not
fabricate a story of rape, then a headline like 'Hunt for
rapist' was permissable! The Press tends to use words like 'doubt', 'allege' and 'suspicion'
more often in their headlines than the Star.
. I felt the whole approach of the Press
representative was one in which the womin was presumed
guilty of fabrication until proven innocent; older people and children and so
on were seen as less likely to make up such a story. This is another common
myth - that wimmin often 'cry rape' - if the editor
of a major newspaper holds it so firmly then it is inevitable that this bias
will show through in published accounts of sexual violence.
Putting together a compilation of the clippings and taking some figures from it
confirms what we already guessed; that it is stereotypical and extreme cases of
sexual violence that actually make it into court and so into the newspapers to form
the public image of offenders, victims, and circumstances.
Although it is becoming more widely accepted that all wimmin
are at risk of at least attempted sexual violence, and that husbands and lovers
are more likely to be the offenders than a stranger the newspaper clippings
showed a clear image of offenders and victims which differs markedly from this.
Of 36 victims of sexual offences represented in the clippings, there were only
two who did not fit into the 9-23 years and over 50-years age groups.
Indications from 1983 papers are that these age splits have been even more
marked this year. For offenders, on the other hand, 28 of 49 offenders were
under 24. Of 33 rapists in court 18 were unemployed, two were beneficiaries, 11 were employed in manual or unskilled or semi-skilled jobs.
All in all it would appear from an examination of the clippings that it is men who
are powerless relative to other men who present as the public image of sexual offenders
- i.e. men who are economically less powerful (unemployed, unskilled workers)
and otherwise structurally powerless (Maoris, Pacific Islanders and gangs).
Because I accept that the cases that appear in these clippings represent only
the tip of the iceberg of national sex offences and are not representative of
sexual violence experiences in general, it must then be considered that these less
powerful men are more likely
§
to
be caught
§
to
be prosecuted
§
to
be penalised
and are not
more likely to be sexual offenders.
Summary
'Our understanding of (sexual violence) is based upon our
knowledge and experience of what might be termed 'normal' sexual relations between
men and women and also by folkloristic and journalistic accounts of actual
(sexual violence) .'
(Smart, 1976: p.93)
The role of
newspaper journalism in the formation of our understanding about sexual
violence in our society is what I have attempted to trace here. We can see that
court reports of sexual violence are not objective re-presentations but
subjective re-presentations fed by all the conceptions, preconceptions,
misconceptions, myths, prejudices and beliefs held by individuals working on
the newspaper story.
The fragmentation of the systematic and functional nature of sexual violence
ensuring continued scapegoating; the deflection of the focus of examination
away from the source of real power in society - these are some of the effects
of malestream journalism's approach to such reports.
Even recent trends towards an increase in articles including social comment on the
reality of sexual violence will not create significant change in the public
image as long as the two sets of information remain so contradictory and
newspaper placement of such articles ensures their isolation from each other.
Virtually nothing in the spoken and written experiences of rape victims (who
have not
reported to the police) coincides with the myths and stereotypes which are
generated and maintained by the media. It appears that the private reality of
sexual violence against wimmin is less dramatic but
far more insidious and widespread than the imagined social reality that is presented
by the written news media as the public face. This mask of sexual violence is
so tolerable in its lack of threat to good, decent and ordinary people that it
successfully disguises the reality that wimmin live every
day. The news media is at least partially culpable for the obscenity of sexual violence
by its very abdication of responsibility for the existence of this mask, in the
names of 'objectivity' and 'newsworthiness'.
Thus not only is the reality of sexual violence in our society distorted by
being largely hidden (unreported) but further bias is introduced both at the police
station (how many reported offences get to court?) and yet again in newspaper
accounts of actual court cases.
N.B. Throughout
this paper I use the words 'wimmin' and 'womin' for the more usual 'women' and 'woman'. Feminists
are becoming increasingly conscious of, and are seeking to change, a language
which has effectively either rendered wimmin
invisible, or made them appendages of men. Where 'women' or 'woman' are used,
this is because they are the words of someone else.
References
Lloyd, Ann.
'Rape. An examination of the crime in
Smart, Carol . 'Prostitution,
Rape and Sexual Politics' in Women, Crime
and Criminology: A Feminist Critique,
Smart, Carol and Smart, Barry. 'Accounting for Rape: Reality and Myth in Press Reporting'
in Women, Sexuality and Social Control.
Sally
Ruth is a committed feminist and
sociology M.A. student who has a particular interest in the issues of violence
against wimmin, and wimmin's
health, and will continue to do research and to act politically in these areas.