Posts Tagged ‘rape’
The double standards of rape reporting — and outcry
Lots of folks have been outraged by the NYT coverage of a gang rape in Texas. The coverage veered often and unnecessarily into blame-the-victim territory. The NYT has defended their story, saying they were just reporting what victim-blamers in Texas were saying, not blaming the victim themselves. I won’t rehash the many sensible objections to [...]
Silly women and their sexual assault. Don’t they know it’s complex?
At a small school in Pennsylvania, students staged a sit-in to protest the way their campus handles rape reports. This piece, from the Philadelphia Inquirer, says that on a campus of 2400 students, there were five sexual assaults reported last year. Any woman will tell you that’s got to be a case of underreporting. The [...]
Reporters and Rape II: Readers’ trust and trauma stories
But first, a quick news update: A Congolese colonel is going to jail for his sex crimes. It’s the first such conviction — and about damn time. Two thousand people attended the verdict and sentencing, and 49 women had braved testifying against him in court, according to the BBC. I applaud you all. If you’re [...]
On Reporters and Rape: Three ideas worth rising above the cacophony
There’s been a bevy of people with opinions on Lara Logan’s unfortunate trauma in Egypt. In case you’ve missed it, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS, was sexually assaulted in Cairo while reporting on the uprisings there. A lot of the response I’ve seen has been pretty mindless. There’s Nir Rosen, of course, and his [...]
Now crowdsourcing: Best & worst journalism about rape
If you’re a regular here, you know I manage to find myself mired in commentary about journalism on rape once every three or four months… though it rarely attracts the attention it did a month ago. I’m working on an essay that’s going to bring a lot of my thoughts, and a lot of what [...]
In Congo, another way of looking at a crisis
There are so many bits of reporting that never make it out of my notebooks, so many interesting things I learn that I can’t use in the space I have. Sometimes, one of those bits just keeps pestering me. Right now, it’s this one. Earlier this year, I did a pretty massive report on the [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [