NCJ Number
160241
Date Published
1995
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Television news' reporting of especially horrific incidents of violence against women and children is sensationalism; the broader, more important issue of violence against women is rarely covered, and this neglect of women victims promotes violence against them.
Abstract
There is a sick, symbiotic relationship between violence and the news media. Conflict, the more dramatic and lethal the better, is one of the fundamental criteria for whether a story is newsworthy. The proliferation of guns provides the news industry with an assured supply of stories. So does violence against women, so long as the violence is public, the woman is white, and there is a rape, mutilation, or murder involved. This does not mean that all, or even most, journalists are opposed to gun control or that they condone domestic violence. It does mean they are implicated in a system that seeks to profit from a prurient and sensationalized representation of the victimization of women. More often than not, reporters focus on the woman who is battered, not the batterer, and ask why she does not leave instead of why he beats her. Individually, stories about women victims of violence are welcome drama for news, but collectively, violence against women and children, as well as the causes of it, are ignored or minimized by news pundits as comparatively unimportant.