Slut shaming in the Buffalo News?

True.

Some people seem to recover quite well from such accusations.

Juanita Broaddrick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wrong. The question is whether she conveyed consent, not whether she conveyed non-consent. The default position has to be that the woman does not consent unless and until she conveys consent (according to the reasonable person standard).

Your contention that the man can know whether a rape was committed, while the woman can only believe it was committed, is absurd. A man can believe consent was given, but the woman knows whether it was given. Unless, of course, one looks at it strictly from a male perspective.

I'm completely in agreement on this point.

 

It's not at all absurd. In each of those examples, assume the woman knows that was raped. She's convinced of it. Category 2 woman is no less convinced of it than Category 4 woman. In real life, I understand that there are levels of knowing: I don't have any doubt that some women go to the police and say, "I think I was raped." Or ask around to friends if what happened was rape.

But for the purposes of that model, weed those out. They're uninteresting. What I'm analyzing is the continuum in which a group of woman are equally confident that they were raped.

 

But you disagree with the Buffalo News running the quotes, right?

Why?

 

There's a huge difference between using the quotes with appropriate context (even after the lousy reporting job that somehow produced no follow-up questions to challenge Croce's assertions) and running 15 grafs of his slut-shaming version of events. Croce's comments were worth a paragraph or two (in which his relationship with Kane is clearly indicated) as part of a follow-up story in which five or six patrons offer thoughts.

 

Right. And as I think we've established, I'm largely in agreement with you. I think there are others who don't think the quotes should have run under any circumstances.

 

Because they don't know the identity of the woman flirting. It's pretty simple.

And the defendant doesn't have a right to have an acquaintance quoted in the newspaper. The defendant has rights to due process in court. They are separate issues.

 

The defendant doesn't have a "right" to have an acquaintance quoted in the newspaper, but if it's going to be potentially relevant to creating reasonable doubt in a charging decision or trial, then it's news worthy, whether or not you like the tone.

It's troublesome to me that no one (Cranberry excepted) seems to have an issue at all with anonymous sources running roughshod over Kane:

• Bite marks and scratches;
• "Overpowered";
• Accuser is an amazing human being, according to friends and colleagues - all quoted anonymously;
• Afraid to go home with Kane.

The police don't have the "right" to have their evidence quoted in the newspaper. They have the right to have the prosecution present that evidence in court.

 

The fact is, people don't like the quotes from Croce, or from the off-duty police officer, because they feel that they set back the rape advocacy movement. They feed into the idea that a woman can be "asking for it." There is a noble mission to reinforce to people that "no means no," and that consent is the woman's to grant, withhold, or withdraw at any point.

Croce's comments undermine those aims, because they so closely resemble the "asking for it" rhetoric we all cringe when we hear, because we fear that it implies - and it has implied - that a woman can deserve to be raped.

But if Croce saw what he says he saw, it's legally relevant to Kane's defense. Quite legally relevant. And it's not the Buffalo News' job to worry about how what he saw might affect the rape advocacy movement writ large.

 

So where's the threshold for when the defendant's side of the story should be included?
Moving past the issue with the story in terms of IDing the person, and just thinking about reporting on rape accusations in general. Because I think that's the interesting question that Dick's raising.
We know there's a non-zero chance that anyone accused of rape is innocent.
In a case that's going to come down to he-said, she-said over consent - do you: Not report the story ever? Only report the victim's side? Report both sides either way? Is there some threshold that needs to be passed? (My guess in where most people land), and if so, what's the threshold? (The interesting question in my opinion).
I think "at least make sure the person you're talking about is the victim in question" would be involved in the threshold? But then, what else?

You could take Dick's stance on mass shooting (that there's newsworthy information that should be not reported on for a greater societal good) with these types of cases. That could be your logic in not reporting it at all (hard to do when the accused is as high-profile as this case), or only showing the victim's side (based on a deemed "societal good" in creating an environment where rape victims feel comfortable coming forward with their accusations). The problem with the latter stance is that Dick's stance on mass shooting doesn't leave any party potentially harmed, while such a stance on cases like these would leave an innocent accused person as the harmed party. You could still decide the benefit outweighed the cost. But there's a more obvious cost.

Anyway, I'm typing it quickly between juggling other tasks at work, so I'm sure this isn't necessarily phrased as well as I'd like. But I want to acknowledge the underlying journalistic questions Dick's raising, and I'd like to hear people's thoughts, if you fall into the "there's a threshold" camp, on where that threshold is for you. What gets reported and what doesn't, and why?
(EDIT: I want to add, I'm not just asking you, pern, to respond. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on where they think the line should be drawn on cases like this for what gets reported and what doesn't.)

 

JFC.

 

We don't know if the flirting woman is the accuser. This isn't hard. Without that very specific and key piece of information, the quote is worthless from a journalistic perspective.

"Potentially relevant" is different than relevant. We know there is, at a minimum, a 50/50 chance it's not the same woman. Which means that, at best, there's a 50/50 chance it's at all relevant to the case. Those are terrible odds, particularly given the stakes.

We know the police report will be used during the trial, so I accept the newsworthiness of reporting on what is contained in the document. I don't think quotes about what a nice girl the accuser is are newsworthy.