The 19th (8/9/21) reported that a Washington Post editor equated speaking out about being sexually assaulted to having “taken a side on the issue”—presumably against.
When sexual assault allegations came out against then–Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Washington Post political reporter Felicia Sonmez expected to cover the story. But, according to a discrimination lawsuit she recently filed, editors said she couldn’t, partially because she had just made public statements recounting being sexually assaulted the year prior.
In the eyes of the Post’s top editors, her own experience was “too similar” to Christine Blasey Ford’s to ensure her objectivity. The ban ultimately ended up encompassing all of the #MeToo movement. It was not lifted until March 2021 after Sonmez spoke publicly about the publication’s actions.
Sonmez’s lawsuit accuses the Post of derailing her career because she is a woman and a survivor of sexual assault. And the Kavanaugh case is not the only instance she cites.
In early 2020, when basketball player Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna died in a helicopter crash, social media were flooded with fans mourning the tragic death of a cultural icon. A more shameful part of Bryant’s legacy—an ultimately dropped 2003 rape case that had physical and DNA evidence, and even a partial confession from Bryant—went largely unmentioned (FAIR.org, 7/14/20). Amid the collective mourning, Sonmez tweeted a link to a 2016 Daily Beast article (4/11/16) published before Bryant’s retirement: “Kobe Bryant’s Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story and the Half-Confession.”
Sonmez’s tweet resulted in trolls sending her death and rape threats, and demanding her firing. Someone shared her address online, forcing her to move from her home to a hotel. Rather than support and protect Somnez, Post managing editor Tracy Grant called her to say the paper was suspending her. Somnez was eventually reinstated after the Washington Post Newspaper Guild organized on her behalf.
Mistreatment common
The idea that experiencing sexual violence makes someone unable to fairly report on it is a relic of the journalistic myth of “objectivity”—that giving equal weight to all sides of a story, no matter how ridiculous, is the pinnacle of responsible reporting (FAIR.org, 7/20/12). One would hope that journalists covering sexual violence would be opposed to it, whether or not they had experienced it themselves.
Publications that maintain that having been sexually assaulted poses a conflict of interest in covering sexual assault stories, of course, should first interrogate how prevalent harassment and assault against women are in their industry.
Earlier this month, The 19th (8/9/21) pointed out that 58% of female journalists surveyed in 2018 reported being threatened or harassed in person due to their work, according to the International Women’s Media Foundation. Sixty-three percent of respondents reported being threatened or harassed online, and 26% said they’d been physically attacked.
Sonmez’s alleged sexual assault occurred at the hands of another journalist, Jonathan Kaiman of the LA Times, when they were both living in Beijing. He had also been accused of assaulting a woman named Laura Tucker, who recounted the incident in a Medium article (1/10/18) that Sonmez says inspired her to come forward.
The Centers for Disease Control found in 2015 that nearly 1 in 5 women experience rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes, but rape and other forms of sexual abuse affect a significant part of the population, regardless of gender. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) reports that 1 in 33 men have been victims of rape or attempted rape. Transgender people of either gender are particularly vulnerable; a 2015 survey found that 47% in the US have experienced sexual assault in their lifetime. If news outlets were to prevent everyone with a #MeToo story from covering #MeToo-related news, they might find themselves short-staffed.
Pretending neutrality
NPR (6/8/20) reported on the case of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Alexis Johnson, who faced “retribution for writing a flippant tweet comparing looters to country music fans after a concert.”
The Washington Post isn’t the only outlet that has suspended or fired journalists under the guise of protecting “objectivity” and “neutrality.” During the summer of 2020, editors banned a Black Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter from covering local protests after he posted a tweet comparing looters to country music fans after a concert. Meanwhile, a white reporter who tweeted a disparaging comment about looters received a warning, but was not banned until the Post-Gazette’s union drew attention to the unequal treatment (NPR, 6/8/20).
Both reporters technically had a “bias,” but the white one’s comments were overlooked until the union spoke out.
In 2017, former Marketplace reporter Lewis Wallace, who is transgender, wrote about being fired from the outlet just days after Donald Trump became president (Lewis Wallace, 1/31/17). At the time, Wallace wrote on his personal blog (1/27/17) about navigating being a transgender journalist who does truthful, ethical work amid the rise of Trump’s bigotry and lies:
Neutrality isn’t real: Neutrality is impossible for me, and you should admit that it is for you, too. As a member of a marginalized community (I am transgender), I’ve never had the opportunity to pretend I can be “neutral.”… Obviously, I can’t be neutral or centrist in a debate over my own humanity. The idea that I don’t have a right to exist is not an opinion, it is a falsehood.
Wallace recounted that when Marketplace’s managing editor and executive producer informed him of his suspension, they told him the outlet believed in objectivity and neutrality—words that do not appear in Marketplace’s code of ethics.
In the piece where he announced his firing, Wallace wrote:
I hope people understand my messages here: that we cannot have token diversity without making actual space for the realities of being a marginalized or oppressed person doing journalism; that we cannot look to the same old tools to defend truth in reporting; that we must work harder and do more to truly represent the communities we report on and on behalf of in order to build trust and remain relevant.
Whose ‘objectivity’?
The LA Times‘ David Shaw (7/3/90) quoted a reporter on abortion: “If you are a woman reporter under the age of about 50 . . . you are writing about something that could happen to you.” This is a standard that would make it difficult to find a reporter to write about climate change, nuclear war, mass shootings, pandemics or any number of issues.
Journalists (especially those who are white and male) have long been interrogating whether women can possibly be objective enough to cover topics that affect them. In 1990, for instance, LA Times writer David Shaw (7/3/90) wondered, “Can Women Reporters Write Objectively on Abortion Issue?”
“Newspapers and television news organizations want their reporters to keep personal feelings out of their stories,” he wrote. “Can women reporters do that when covering abortion?”
FAIR (Extra!, 7/8/90) highlighted Shaw’s and others’ skewed perception of abortion coverage, and their failed attempts to call out what they saw as pro-choice bias in the news. FAIR pointed out that though Shaw claimed women reporters cited pro-choice viewpoints more than anti-abortion viewpoints in print, citing a 1989 study by the conservative Center for Media and Public Affairs, he failed to mention that male TV reporters cited more anti-abortion sources–and that men outnumbered women reporting on abortion by 2–1. (Plus, for every woman who has an abortion, there is a man who did not become a father.)
Placing white, straight, cisgender men who have not experienced such forms of disadvantage at the “objective center” is entirely arbitrary. Deciding that only those who can report on issues from their armchairs can be “neutral” perpetuates the media’s misrepresentation of stories that don’t center white, wealthy men.
Having an experience with an issue can actually help journalists tell marginalized stories sensitively and accurately. In an interview with The 19th (8/9/21), Alex Stuckey, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for her work at the Salt Lake Tribune examining mishandled sexual assault reports at Utah colleges, said being a sexual assault survivor made it easier to speak to her sources and make them feel comfortable.
“As a survivor, I bring a perspective that’s important. I know how to approach victims because I’ve been a victim,” she said. “Just because this happened to us doesn’t mean we don’t know how to do basic journalism.”
By the misguided standard of “objectivity,” the perfect journalist would live in a vacuum and have no opinions: A Black person should not report on anti-Black racism, an immigrant should not report on immigration, and a refugee should not report on war or political violence. By this standard, perhaps, a billionaire shouldn’t own a newspaper?
Great article (as usual, thank you FAIR). Just wanted to add but this would all say probably keep her off a jury in a rape case. Why it seems to be acceptable to want jurors who are totally unfamiliar with the crime being tried has always disturbed me.
This may not seem applicable to the above article, but I assure you, it is…
There is no such thing as separate subjects and objects out there. Descarte was wrong.
Furthermore, the physicalists in academia today, have now fully embraced the role of the church. The irony of this switch is that it was the church who was burning scientists which motivated Descarte to split the world into mind and matter, in the first place.
And now the scientific orthodoxy is in lock step defending this reactionary idea that is preeminently unknowable: “material exists outside of and independent of mind,” which is an illogical hypothesis that will never be able to be proven.
The day someone can prove to me there is some pre-existent world with stand alone deterministic reality, which exists in full before it is observed, will be the day I believe in so-called “objectivity.”
Space and time aren’t even real, so how in the hell can objects even exist in a space-less and time-less vacuum?
(added as rejoinder)
All of this reminds me of a little known documentary that came out in 2015 titled “The Mask You Live In,” directed by Jennifer Siegel Newsom, which tried to get at this unexamined notion of “masculinity” that we could forge our little boys from.
Keep all this in mind, as once again, nothing is mentioned about the meta-problem of sexual abuse; or the high likelihood of our abusers having been abused as children themselves.
This doesn’t mean the survivors pain is less important, or totally equal to the abuser’s, no, it is just glaringly obvious (to me at least) that we keep ignoring the underlying cause of the whole damn cycle.
Just as important as catharsis in our reporting, is to leave room in our hearts for forgiveness and redemption of our attackers. The cycle has to be stopped somewhere.
BTW: This forgiveness should include the male (and female) news room executives and editors in chief who made the decision to sideline survivors of abuse in the name of some ill-defined notion of “objectivity.”
I think all executives running a (mostly) patriarchal news room needs to be ousted on sight, or placed on indefinite furlough…unbelievable.
Peace everybody
Sometimes there is real hope and real action. Remember the “Stanford Swimmer incident?” He was assaulting a woman outside in the dirt, next to a dumpster, as she was passed out.
Thankfully some exchange students riding by very in the a.m. saw a man humping a woman who appeared to be noncompliant, passed out or dead. The bike riders stopped , held the man for the police and The “Swimmer,” was taken away. The woman was taken to the hospital.
A real case of rape? No— a judge was worried about said swimmer’s future. He was let go with not much of ANYTHING.
AS PER THE JUDGE, THE SWIMMER HAD A FUTURE. I GUESS THE RAPE VICTIM DIDN’T?
The judge, by the way lost his next election—good job voters. There was a later trial-and the victim saw him in court, and gave- a wonderful speech—including,” You don’t know me. but your fingers were inside of me.” Kudos for the woman, and her book and her strength to speak the TRUTH.
And so media who often doesn’t get that rape is a crime—-grow up, and if you have any girl children , I pity them already.
That’s so ridiculous. If these media giants were really concerned about conflicts of interest, their foreign affairs correspondents and “analysts” wouldn’t all be ex-spooks and/or members of “defense” think tanks.
Alas, this is no good article.
If you start to put the search for facts, truth, and objectivity – it was always „which person’s objectivity“ in all history – in brackets, you distort things.
Racism is a fact. Violence against many women is also a fact. If you stop any search for the history and objective truth of racism, you weaken the fight. Well, people who do this would always be right of course in their own bubble. Which is precisely what many of the 1000s of woke bubbles are for. But that is not what the fight is about.
For example you would end, this really happened, in this: some group wants to eradicate all books written by white people or before say 1960. Comes a woman who says she would not like that. She would still read Shakespeare and Goethe. And a twitter shitstorm with hundreds and hundreds of raging narcisstic participants roars up. The lady who only wanted books not to be eradicated is a writer, her agent is called, her publisher is called to fire her – and they do fire her. For what crime? Did these CRT people think Shakespeare and Goethe would hurt people, because following their weak theory they were white supremacists?
All of this is, in this case, done by richer white people and some richer people of color in good jobs at university, in publishing houses etc – hunting a person who differs from their view about what is good literature. You can very well read Shakespeare and Goethe and fight racism, you know. Objectively.
But these people call each opinion differing from their own devilish – and constantly talk about that there is no truth, no objectivity, that everything was socially constructed etc. There are hundreds of cases like this – people raging wild and somehow playing revolution, without changing a bit of their – by the way, as in “truth” climate-destroying life-styles. (It will hurt continents like Africa, precisely as the US-way of buying lots and lots of vaccines but giving nearly nothing to say South Africa is killing people. Now. There is no comparable uproar at posh postmodern woke Twitter channels.).
This, and putting objectivity and the search for truth in brackets, belittles also the fight against racism.
It is wrong to put objectivity in brackets. Simply because all can oil out of facts this way. And many do, in their bubbles. People who do it mainly think the search for facts and objectivity in others is wrong, while their own theories were always right. But it is not true.
And about rape and hurting of women – all of these are facts throughout history. It has to be fought – with facts.
Yet look at what people who put truth and objectivity in brackets do not write about. Michel Foucault, a post-structuralist and a near God for the woke movement, so witnesses say (and there were many throughout his time and later) is said to have thrown money at 13 year old african boys while in Tunisia. The boys took the money and he raped the kids. Many knew about it, but stayed silent, now someone told about it in a book.
Now – what are our fans doing? Putting objectivity in brackets – and because Foucault is their God they say “it simply can’t be”. The boys of say 1955 did not even know who this man was who raped them for coins he threw around. They could, even if they wanted, never accuse him and get him to court. I don’t know if the many accusations against Foucault are true. Yet I know that all in the CRT theories and in our mainstream media simply deny it – „because it cannot be“.
This is precisely what men said all through the times when they were accused of hurting women deeply.
Something is wrong with our fragmented times. This is not what the fight against injustice was. Not at all. And by the way, the Washington Post and New York Times are truly no papers today who would be against me too or would defend men who rape women. We need to fight injustice instead of following posh theories.
Yo Klemperer….never click on the “JUST FOR YOU” social media “news” feed…and make sure you clear your browser after every internet session.
Those Foucault smears, have been investigated, debunked, and even the original “Guy” (Guy Sorman – Reagan/Thatcher apologist) who started the rumor with an unsubstantiated claim in a book, no longer is “…sure of having “seen” Foucault ‘buying’ little boys; he (Guy Sorman) is no longer capable of commenting on their age…”
The first link below is an article by Paru Dans, which concludes that the allegation by Sorman “was a case of pure slander.”
The second link below is a webpage containing a press release by Centre Michel Foucault…the site has been transparent about all of this, and provided links to an investigation which debunks the claim. One may even do their own sleuthing, with links to a ‘useful bibliography’ of Foucault’s time in Tunisia at the bottom of the linked to page.
The Foucault with “13 year olds” is a lie, and was nothing but garden variety slander – see for yourself:
https://lundi.am/The-Black-Masses-of-Michel-Foucault-the-Bullshit-of-Guy-Sorman
https://progressivegeographies.com/2021/05/24/centre-michel-foucault-statement-on-guy-sormans-accusations-against-michel-foucault-and-bibliography-of-foucault-in-tunisia/
To Klemperer,
I tried to leave a comment with a few hyperlinks to sources which debunk the Foucault allegations, and my comment was moderated out – figures.
Reactionary author Guy Sorman is the origin of that lie and slander about Foucault. Guy Sorman himself has since walked back the entire allegation, and you can read this for yourself in an interview where Guy was pressed on the accusations by a French reporter in the French magazine L’Express (link in article named below.)
There is an english translation of a Paru Dans article titled “The Black Masses of Michel Foucault, the Bullshit of Guy Sorman,” that has the link to several sources who debunk not only the allegation, but the timeline Guy Sorman claimed the events to have occurred.
I’m delighted to see this issue finally getting some attention, but in my personal experience disallowing anyone who has any actual experience with something to cover it has been standard media procedure for at least the last 40 years.
I wasn’t allowed to cover domestic violence, even as an issue, because I had once mentioned my ex was an emotionally abusive narcissist. Instead, a kid just out of J-school with no experience or background knowledge whatever was assigned. And that was just one example.
If anyone wants a reason why journalism has become so pathetically uninformative, insisting the only way to avoid bias is to be totally ignorant of the subject being covered might go a ways toward explaining it.