For further evidence that outrage feminists believe gender trumps all else, a new report from the Women’s Media Center bemoans the fact that more articles about campus sexual assault in major newspapers were written by men than by women.
Forget the content of those articles — women should write about rape, and men should write about whatever the modern feminists tell them they can write about.
WMC limited their search of gender bylines to “top-circulation” U.S. newspapers and wire services. One wonders what the byline breakdown would be had they included other media outlets. The list did not include Slate (which discounts Emily Yoffe, who often writes on the topic), the Daily Beast (which discounts Cathy Young and Lizzie Crocker), Salon (which discounts Amanda Marcotte), Cosmopolitan (which discounts Jill Filipovic and several other women), Reason (which discounted Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Linda M. LeFauve), nor did it include the Washington Examiner, which discounts me.
WMC also limited the articles they counted to 940 between Sept. 1, 2014, and Aug. 31, 2015. I can only easily search back as far as June, but I have personally written 165 pieces on rape and sexual assault in the last five and a half months. If the women writers I mentioned above had been included, we certainly would have doubled the number of articles to count.
WMC claimed that the gender of the writer skews the content.
“Furthermore, our research shows that the gender of the writer had a significant impact on how stories were covered, with women journalists not only interviewing the alleged victims more often than male journalists, but also writing more about the impact of the alleged attacks on alleged victims,” WMC wrote.
“A higher share of women journalists covered university policies and the prevalence of rape on campus, while a higher share of male journalists focused on campus proceedings and sports culture on campus,” they added.
WMC doesn’t look at how those articles were actually skewed. The coverage this past year on campus sexual assault has been overwhelmingly skewed toward accusers, with due process rights only slowly creeping into the national dialogue.
WMC also didn’t like that more men were quoted in the articles than women. The nature of the quotes was only studied to determine whether they raised the issue of the accuser’s mental health. But many of the top anti-rape advocates and lawyers hired by accusers are men, including Brett Sokolow of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. Men have proven again and again on this issue that they are more than willing to accept the accuser’s story without addressing the rights of the accused.
Accusers were used as sources nearly three times as often as accused students, according to the WMC’s own report. Even if more men were writing the stories, that still a pretty heavy focus on what accusers have to say.
Three out of the four high-profile cases written about and mentioned by WMC bear this out. Coverage of the Jameis Winston rape accusation skewed toward the accuser. Coverage of Emma Sulkowicz’s rape accusation and mattress project focused solely on her. It wasn’t until months after her mattress project was first reported that the student she accused had his story told. And until some began questioning the gang-rape accusation in Rolling Stone, the coverage centered on supporting the accuser.
Those who have been voices of dissent in these stories have been shouted down as “rape apologists.” To suggest that coverage is somehow unfair because fewer women (at the publications and in the articles selected by WMC) are writing on the issue ignores the one-sided manner in which this issue is usually covered.
Finally, WMC suggests that “Stories that primarily affect women are not being told by women in equal numbers, according to our research.” This completely ignores the impact that these accusations have on male students. When someone’s being accused of a crime, even without criminal charges being filed, then fact checking and getting the other side of the story are crucial.
“The voices of those who say they have been victimized and are willing to speak out — often a difficult decision, and one that can result in open mudslinging, shaming, and trolling — are not being given the space and consideration they deserve,” WMC wrote. “The public does not receive the kind of information that can lead to meaningful change in how we perceive these cases.”
This is false. The public is almost exclusively receiving information from the accuser’s perspective. Good articles from the top news outlets are giving a voice to both sides, but most start with the assumption that the accuser is telling the truth (before any evidence is presented) and that the accused is guilty. I’m not saying we shouldn’t trust accusers, I’m just saying evidence is needed before we malign the accused.
In response to a Washington Examiner request for comment, Cristal Williams Chancellor, director of communications for WMC, wrote that “To tell the whole story, the demographics of the journalists must reflect the demographics of society.”
But this seems like an assumption, not a conclusion based on what’s actually written on this topic by both men and women — coverage that tends to skew toward the accuser, assuming guilt in the absence of all the information.
Because in so many cases – Winston, Sulkowicz, Rolling Stone, Duke Lacrosse, Patrick Kane and even Owen Labrie – the facts of the case have not fully or even at all supported the accusers’ story. And certainly none of this depended on the writers’ gender.
