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'Times' Rape Story Gets Sternest Language Available from a Public Editor
Just FYI: Gang Rape Story Lacked Balance is about as strong a condemnation as you'll get from the Times public editor. I mean, it's not like he's going to print "That Story Was a F'ing Shit Show, Am I Right?" It's not his way; they are exceedingly old world and genteel. Also, interesting that no editor or reporter interviews took place. (As of yet! That we know!)
Service journalism-journalism!
Eventually the NYT is going to vanish up it's own ass.
It was a journalistic abortion.
(I know, I'm going to Hell).
In positive(ish) rape-related news: the guys who raped my friend about 7years ago were just caught by the Boston Police and are going to trial. I almost started crying when she told me.
@HiredGoons: I'm going to just call that a net win for this week and shut off the Internet now.
I'm incredibly confused that such a bungled story could make it past the editors of the New York Times in the year 2011. It's an almost perfect Journalism 101 illustration of how not to write about a rape. Which I think everyone read in a textbook 20 years ago.
In all fairness to the editors, McKinley's first draft of the story opened with "I think we can all agree that 11 is one of the sexiest times of a girl's life…."
STC, followed by "…and there is nothing she looks forward to more than her first gang bang".
@kitten: McKinley's conclusion that
"Statistically, 18 out of the 19 people involved in this story enjoyed themselves. So how can you call that a bad thing?"
It seemed well-grounded in numbers but lacking in certain sense of sympathy.
"Gangbangs: a Utilitarian Approach"
My journalistic studies began and ended the first week of my senior year in 1995. I am pretty sure that, were I assigned a rape story for the Weatherford High Melon Vine, my emphasis would not be on the perpetrator's future, aside from his future love interests in prison. The story stops short of blaming the victim, and I suppose it could be lauded for that by some, but it does dabble in victimizing the perpetrators of an unfathomably heinous crime against a defenseless victim.
How not to wite about rape, indeed.
Prison rape jokes, however, are always in good taste!
@sidandfancy: Well played, and deserved. though I made no mention of rape, only a mutual admiration between two incarcerated men.
Not to be an ass, but this is hardly the first story I've seen that describes rape in this way, and though it's not happening on the Awl per se, everywhere else this story is covered I see boys going, "He was just providing "journalistic perspective, ladies! Don't you know how journalism works?" All of which to say I don't think your position is all that widely shared, even among the uh, edumacated.
I haven't seen that or my brain would surely have exploded over my keyboard, but I have no trouble believing if this can happen at the Times, it is certainly happening in not so enlightened newsrooms, far from the madding somewhat-educated crowd.
It's fair to note that the alleged perpetrators are just that — alleged — but I'm stuck wondering how such a political approach to writing made it into something that's more of a crime story.
This is the problem with a lot of straight-laced journalism these days: the inability, whether through writing or editing, to say in an article whether something is outright wrong. Writing about U.S. politics has infected everything else.
Sure, it's fair to note that the offense is alleged. It's also fair to note that one of the alleged participants filmed it, so I doubt the "alleged" qualifier is going to stand up for long.
What I thought was interesting about the Public Editor's piece was the assumption that a good article is one that backs up truth with quotes. I suppose this is a commonly-understood rule for journalism (at least daily journalism), but it never made much sense to me: truth is what truth is, and how does it matter if the reporter can track down someone to say it or not? Really, as a general matter, what meaning is there in a quote from an uninvolved private individual? (I suppose if the quote reveals something, there might be some meaning. The original article could have been written mostly with the same quotes by taking such a revealing tack, but wasn't of course.)
(Please don't think I'm insensitive to the underlying tragedy by focusing for the moment on principles of journalism. Others have already written about the tragedy better than I ever could.)
I think a lot of this is really weird too. Like "balance" is NOT THE PROBLEM with this story, yet that's the highlight of the criticism from the public editor.
@Choire: The Times can only respond to criticism by framing it in terms of the criticism to which it most recently responded (in this case, "lack of balance").
It's like if last week you had to ask your neighbor to turn his music down, and then this week you run into him and you ask "oh hey, could you also not leave your bike in front of my door" and he's all "oh, am I being too loud when I bring my bike in?" and you're "no, it's that I have to move your bike to get into my apartment" and he's "wait, I don't understand, I thought this was about me being noisy" and etc. etc. etc.
Exactly. To suggest that all the story needed "for critical balance" was for the reporter to phone a mental health professional to supply the 11 year old rape victim's perspective IS kind of astonishing.
“Wow,” said David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the work.
"For/From the Times, a Rebuke"
A Gang Rebuke
"forlorn Christmas decorations"
An 11 year-old girl could've written a much better account of this atrocity.
What really gets me is how the public editor thinks the AP handled the story "more deftly." Seriously? Here is what was linked to:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEXAS_GIRL_ASSAULTED?SITE=SCGRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Specifically, these two paragraphs:
"Residents who live nearby told The Associated Press this week that they had seen the girl, dressed provocatively and in makeup, hanging out near the area both before and after Nov. 28. Some in the town expressed doubts about the case, even suggesting authorities should consider culpability on the part of the girl.
"Maturity or not I'm pretty sure she knew what she was doing," Robin Smith, 24, a cashier in Cleveland, said as she shopped this week."
SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY?
Oh yes, that's much more "deft." I mean, sure, to US it seems like "gang-raping an eleven-year-old is a truly horrible crime," but the neighbors could tell she was the skanky kind of eleven-year-old, so: who you gonna blame? The original hed on that story: BOYS WILL BE BOYS
Jesus Christ. The original AP reports I read merely referred to her as "troubled" and that some residents had expressed concerns about her – I never read the linked ones they had. What the fuck.
I keep trying to figure out whether literally everyone McKinley spoke to expressed sympathy for the alleged rapists and not for the victim, and it didn't occur to him to try to find someone, anyone, to "balance" it out — or, he decided "sympathy for the rapists" was the angle to go with and didn't bother to write down the obvious "what a horrible thing to happen to a child" stuff. (In that scenario I imagine him actually prodding the interviewees to say something sympathetic about the rapists. Like, anonymous source says, "Who are the parents who raised all those boys to be so horrible?" And McKinley says, "What about the victim? Is it possible a lack of supervision meant she was basically asking for it? Could you say that into my dictaphone?") I can't decide which is more plausible. I prefer version two, since it means only one person is guilty of complete awfulness, instead of an entire town.