![]() ![]() For example, as several of the guides point out, the once-ubiquitous use of “claim” (as in “ x claims y raped her”) conveys skepticism of x’s testimony “reports” is suggested as a neutral substitute. When reporters reach for familiar phrases in their accounts of sex crime, they may be using terms that convey disbelief or prurient interest. Why does this pose a problem? Historically, the guides explain, media coverage of sexual violence (as well as police reports and other legal documents) have tended to direct the balance of skepticism toward the victim, except in those cases-a minority of all assaults committed-in which racial and class prejudice could work in the victim’s favor. A good deal of their pages are devoted to advice about a particular kind of writing problem: how to describe the sequence of actions that constitutes an assault. The guides contain statistics about sexual assault, advice on ethical interview procedures, and discussions of the way that a reporter’s language-the very nouns and verbs, tenses and sentence constructions-can shape public perception of culpability. In 2013 the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault published “Reporting on Sexual Violence: A Guide for Journalists.” “Use the Right Words: Media Reporting on Sexual Violence in Canada,” a fifty-four-page guide put together by the Toronto organization Femifesto, was first published online in 2015. ![]() “Reporting on Rape and Sexual Violence,” a forty-page media “toolkit,” was issued by the Chicago Task Force on Violence Against Girls and Young Women in 2012. “Reporting Sexual Assault: A Guide for Journalists,” produced by the Michigan Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, came out online in 2004. In the mid-Aughts, advocacy groups for sexual assault survivors began to publish guidelines for journalists covering sexual violence. ![]()
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