Leading reporters and commentators, including The Crime Report’s Cara Tabachnick, comment on Lara Logan case in a discussion with Poynter.org. Most sexual assault cases go unreported in the media, except in sensational instances like the attack on CBS’s Lara Logan. Poynter speaks with a rape victim, media specialist and two editors to understand why.
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Online comments about CBS reporter Lara Logan's assault by an Egyptian mob offer many examples of what not to say, says Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute media think tank, citing freelance journalist Nir Rosen’s suggestion via Twitter that the attack on Logan ‘wasn’t that bad.”
McBride suggests some issues involving sexual assault that the news media might explore, such as that women are more likely than men to be victims, children are commonly victims of sexual assault, and sexual assault happens more often during times of war and civil unrest. It isn’t known why Logan’s attackers assaulted her, and the public may never know. Most of the time, journalists do not disclose the names of sexual assault survivors because the crime is such an invasion of privacy. CBS released details of the assault on Logan only after the Associated Press asked. Most victims appreciate privacy, says McBride, but some do not because “they feel that going nameless reinforces the notion that what happened to them wasn’t real, or wasn’t that bad, or was their fault.”
Read the article here.