Saturday, March 12, 2011

Pressuring the press to think about the victim

Two days ago I recounted the case of an 11 year-old girl in Texas who was allegedly gang raped by up to 20 men and boys. In particular, I decried the reporting of the case, which focused on a large number of people in the girl's local community blaming her for the attack, the report even implying they had some justification in doing so, while failing to include any hint of concern for the victim herself.

At the bottom of the blog, a link was included to sign a petition protesting to the New York Times about its victim-blaming angle on the case.

As a result of this and other outraged emails, the Public Editor of the NYT, Arthur Brisbane published a piece in the online section of the newspaper acknowledging serious faults with the reporting of the case.

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