The 'Tabloidization' of the Media

Many years ago, during the William Kennedy Smith sexual assault trial, many news agencies chose to name the alleged victim and to publish details of her life. Even the New York Times chose to publish her name. The so-called "mainstream media" defended this conduct by reciting how it would somehow remove the stigma from sexual assault if victims were no longer treated as being in special need of protection from the public, or by claiming that it was somehow "unfair" that the accused was publicly named when the accuser's identity was suppressed.

But to me it seemed rather obvious that it was a colossal attempt to cash in on the story, and publication of the woman's name was not done out of concern for the greater good of victims of sexual assault, but was motivated by desire to compete for sales with the "lesser" tabloids who never pretended that their motivations were anything but commercial. (Some cynics suggested that the mainstream media was acting in complicity with the Kennedy clan, and named the woman to damage the prosecution case and perhaps even to "let people know what would happen" if they went after a Kennedy in the future.)

And then the trial ended, and the "noble experiment" to destigmatize sexual assault yielded to the traditional approach under which alleged victims were again permitted to be anonymous. (But you can still read how proud NBC News was for its decision to name Smith's accuser.)

There was an element of this salacious, pandering coverage in the first Michael Jackson molestation incident, where we received far too much detail about the police investigation, and enough information about the father of his alleged victim that, had Google been around at the time, it would have taken seconds to figure out his name.

More recently, the mainstream media appears to have been somewhat more charitable to the alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant case, leaving the publication of her name, picture, and the more salient details of her background to the "tabloid media". (Please excuse me if I missed some exceptions - I have been following the story only to the extent that I am unable to avoid it, due to wall-to-wall media coverage.)

But now there's what has already been billed as the "Trial of the Century" (for the new century) - accusations that the one-time "King of Pop", Michael Jackson, sexually abused a twelve-year-old guest on several occasions. And the child's name, along with details of his life, medical history, and the lives of his parents, is already creeping into the mainstream media. And I think we're spiralling down the same path we saw with William Kennedy Smith, where by the time this goes to trial the child's name will be routinely and prominently displayed in mainstream media coverage.

Fair or not, there is a stigma attached to being the victim of a sexual assault. I recall a case from a number of years ago, which gained only regional media attention, in which a child of about the same age as Jackson's alleged victim was sexually abused by his church minister. It didn't take the public disclosure of the child's name for all of his peers to know who he was, and he was viciously and relentlessly teased and ridiculed in the manner one might expect from junior high school boys. Whatever the merit of the "fairness to the defendant" argument or "this is an experiment to remove stigma" argument, adults are much better able to extricate themselves from the situations which result from the public disclosure of their names. Children can be expected to be trapped - and in the case of Jackson's alleged victim that trap is extending itself on a national scale. Should that probable history repeat itself in this case, this child and his family will likely have to move and change his name in order to even have a chance of future anonymity and normalcy.

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