Imagine your daughter or son comes back from their shift at your local restaurant and stormed upstairs without talking to you or saying goodnight. You are offended and hurt by this rude behavior and rush upstairs to figure out the reason for this unprecedented behavior. Your daughter or son had just been sexual harassed by a customer, and you immediately took offense to their behavior before finding out the cause.
This is the small reality to a huge societal problem. In the modern world, news spreads faster using news media. Sexual harassment is a widespread social issue that affects individuals across demographics. The biased representation subverts to holding offenders accountable as well as inflicting unfair stigma on victims.
With the lack of accountability for the perpetrator, it often leads to the victim-blaming and minimizes the appropriate pursuit of justice. News outlets can twist and change the real story towards accountability and victim-blaming in sexual harassment cases.
The #MeToo Movement looked at how people's empathy predict belittlement of victims vs perpetrators. People who have less empathy towards either the accuser or the accused are more likely to criticize one or the other. There is less emotional understanding for people claiming harassment and they are more likely to dismiss the accusations. In contrast, if someone lacks empathy for the person being accused, they are more likely to criticize or blame the victim (Ashdown, 2023, pgs.575-576). There is emotional perception that viewers make when establishing blame for sexual harassment.
News outlets twist the case by creating a claim to influence others that the accusations are inaccurate using the emotional protection people make by themselves. If an article was posted about a high-profile celebrity and that celebrity was known to bring in views for the news outlet, they are more likely to make unrealistic claims for that celebrity to switch the blame to the victim. News outlets also use the emotional protection that people make to diminish the accusation. For example, if that high-profile celebrity is someone's idol than they are more likely to not believe the victim and news outlets can use pathos to feed into the emotional protection.
Sexual harassment and victim-blaming can correlate in variety of ways, one being physical appearance. Physical appearance can be made as an excuse for sexual harassment. Victims who are portrayed as more attractive (sexualized victims) are blamed more than victims that are less attractive (Spaccatini et al, 2023, pls 811-814). People are more likely to hold sexualized women more responsible for harassment they experience because they are more inviting to the perpetrator. This creates unfair stigma to the victims by putting false blame rather than reporting the real reason for this sexual crime.
Women celebrities have even fallen victim to this issue. Famous actress Jennifer Lawrence has experienced sexual harassment and the fear of victim-blaming. Lawrence detailed about how she was humiliated and degraded during a filming experience where she lost 15 pounds. Lawrence tried to speak up about the demands, but she couldn't find sympathy because the people that did this to her were of higher power (Park, 2017). Another example of a woman celebrity is Jenny Slate, known for her roles in "Gifted" and "Venom". Slate did not speak up about sexual harassment because she felt people would blame her from her sense of humor and personality, which they did (Park, 2017).
High-profile celebrities will get the news coverage in either a positive or negative way, that is known. However, in some cases these claims would get brushed under the rug because the accused is someone of high power such as an executive. Now think of someone who isn't a celebrity, someone who would not get their story told and have no sympathy from thousands of people. Someone that could be going through the same thing but because of how news outlets portray such a negative narrative for victims, they will never speak out.
It is undeniably true that sexual harassment is a serious issue for individuals of all demographics. However, some may say that news outlets are not always going to "twist" and "distort" the truth of sexual harassment for the benefit of themselves. News outlets are essential to bringing attention to sexual harassment cases, especially in high-profile individuals. The #MeToo Movement, referenced above, investigates how news outlets and journals control claims made on powerful figures in different demographics to create accountability. Many news outlets today have changed their editorial standards to prioritize accuracy, fairness, and ethical reporting to not feed into bias. For example, news outlets use words such as sexual predator to create emphasis of the crimes in children sexual abuse (Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, Volume 4, pgs. 1-20, n.d).
News outlets can bring attention to sexual harassment cases in an appropriate way, but these claims underestimate the significant role news outlets play in shaping perspectives of sexual harassment and victim-blaming. Even though news outlets have been changing their standards for editorial style, some outlets can still create bias, intentionally or not. This type of industry has profit motives that influence sexual harassment cases to make the accusation less serious. Headlines will focus on the physical appearance, as said above, establishes unfair stigma to the victims rather than spreading light to the issue.
News outlets coverage cannot be stopped--that is a fact. However, societal attitudes towards victims and perpetrator can be changed. Look at the facts at hand rather than falling to the schemes of news outlets. The damage done by these schemes can affect the victims and even the perpetrators. News outlets want the views, attention, and profits, no matters how false their information is.
Comments
Post a Comment