2022.Sep.21

REPORTS

Report on the MeDi Workshop “Considering Media Coverage of Sexual Violence”

On Sunday, May 8, 2022, Media and Diversity Forum (MeDi), the B’AI Global Forum-based industry-university cooperative research group, held a closed online workshop on the theme of “Considering Media Coverage of Sexual Violence.” The purpose of the workshop was to examine how journalism has covered sexual violence occurring in various areas, including politics, society, education, and the home, as well as what challenges it faces, and to exchange opinions with media practitioners for better reporting. The workshop was facilitated by MeDi member Keiko Yamamoto (News Commentator, Senior Manager of News Division at Nagoya Station NHK), and as speakers, Misook Lee (MeDi member, Associate Professor of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo), Yukiko Sato (Executive Director of Spring, which is the first incorporated sexual assault survivors’ organization in Japan), and Michiko Kawahara (a former Asahi Shimbun reporter and Project Professor of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo) participated in it to present the points of discussion regarding the coverage of sexual violence from their respective perspectives of a researcher, a survivor, and a journalist. After their presentations, the participants discussed in several groups on the challenges they face when covering sexual violence and solutions, and at the end of the workshop, each group shared with the entire participants what they had discussed.

 

Sexual Violence Reporting and Journalism: The Watchdog Role, Public Sphere, and Trust in Media

 

In the opening remarks, Professor Kaori Hayashi (MeDi Chairperson, Professor of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo) mentioned three points to consider the coverage of sexual assault and crime within the larger context of journalism: the watchdog role of the press, public sphere, and trust in media. According to Hayashi, the most important function of journalism is to watch the power, and sexual violence is the ultimate abuse of power using strategies such as coercion, authority, and manipulation, therefore, it can be said that proper reporting on sexual violence is responsibility of journalism. However, it is necessary to look back that journalism has failed to watch sexual assault and crimes, which have been committed overwhelmingly by men. Regarding the second point, the issue of public sphere, she criticized the fact that the concept has been recognized too positive despite the male-centered nature behind it, and pointed out that in reporting on sexual violence, it is required to consider how to report and disclose information from the perspective of women, minorities, and victims, rather than simply applying the logic of the public sphere. With regard to the last point, trust in media, she cited the New York Times’ coverage that exposed sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein, an American film producer, and stated her thoughts that sexual violence reporting can be said as a sort of barometer of the level of trust in media in a society in a sense that it places particular emphasis on sufficient corroboration and real-name testimony, which have been regarded as major principles of journalism.

Hayashi said that the above three points emerge as great challenges when considering the coverage of sexual violence in Japan, and concluded her remarks by expressing her hope that this workshop would provide an opportunity for media researchers and practitioners to think together about those deep-rooted issues, which are related to historical and institutional social structures.

 

Presentations from Diverse Perspectives: Researcher, Survivor, and Journalist

 

After the opening remarks, the session began with the presentation of discussion points in sexual violence reporting from a researcher’s perspective by Misook Lee, who is one of the members of the MeDi and Associate Professor of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. Firstly, she presented statistical data showing the current state of sexual violence in Japan. According to the “Survey on Violence between Men and Women” (released in 2021, N=5000) by the Gender Equality Bureau of the Cabinet Office, about 1 in 14 Japanese women have experienced forced sexual intercourse, etc., approximately 60% of them reported that they have not told anyone about it, and half of them said “they were too embarrassed to tell anyone.” As the reason why women become forced to feel embarrassed, Lee pointed out that the myth that “sexual violence is an act accompanied by ‘assault and intimidation’ by a ‘total stranger'” is behind the situation. To explain it, it is necessary to recall the definition of sexual violence in Japan. The term refers to “any unwanted or non-consensual sexual acts or statements,” including sexual assault/rape, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, molestation, stalking, and taking or disseminating images or videos of the body without permission. And, according to the survey mentioned above, nearly 90% of sexual violence cases are perpetrated by acquaintances, such as partners, relatives, schoolmates or colleagues. However, she said, the sexual abusing acts committed by acquaintances or such acts without assault and intimidation tend not to be recognized as sexual violence in the first place or to be suspected as if the women were at fault, which makes such sexual abuse victims be forced into shame and remain silent, and consequently causes that sexual violence is increasingly tolerated and encouraged.

Lee noted that the state of the press is also deeply involved in this current situation and picked up the discussion points related to the sexual violence reporting: lack of the coverage, content of the coverage, and expression in the coverage. According to her, sexual violence has not been considered as the valuable information that people should know about for a long time, and it was assumed that the incident did not exist through not being covered by the mass media. Particularly in Japan, there have been many cases in which accusations of sexual violence perpetrated by politicians, celebrities, and other figures of high social status have been ignored by the media due to their indifference, or consumed in entertainment contexts. She said that this has become a sort of a social message that forces silence to victims, making them increasingly intimidated. Regarding the point as the content of the coverage, she suggested that there is a strong tendency to treat sexual violence as “a deviation of the individual perpetrator” or “a private matter between individuals in dispute over facts,” rather than focusing on the structural background of the social culture and the power imbalance between men and women that give rise to sexual violence. Furthermore, looking at the expression in the coverage, she criticized that many expressions are used that focus on the “fault” of the victim, that directly convey the statement of the alleged perpetrator, that trivialize sexual violence, such as “indecent” and “lewd acts,” and that deceptively cover up sexual exploitation, such as “compensated dating” and “casting couch.” She pointed out that these expressions create the impression that the victims are responsible for the violence, downplay the seriousness of sexual violence, and reproduce the myth of rape, as well as stressed the need for more coverage from the survivor’s perspective to eradicate sexual violence.

 

Next, Yukiko Sato, the Executive Director of Spring, an incorporated sexual assault survivors’ organization appeared. She herself is a survivor of sexual violence, as well as being involved in supporting other survivors and young women as an advisor on the countermeasure against sexual violence, and shared her knowledge on what kind of interviews victims can/cannot receive without anxiety, based on her own experience of having received nearly 100 interviews so far.

She began by suggesting several advance preparations, as some tips which reporters can learn in order to make victims feel comfortable to be interviewed. For example, the suggestions were made as follows: inform the victim in advance by e-mail of what they want to ask in the interview; give the victim the option of refusing certain questions or the interview itself; inform the victim in advance that they can take a break if they feel uncomfortable during the interview; allow the victim to check the article before publishing it, and to ask for corrections if necessary. By doing so, she said, interviewees can secure the “right of self-determination,” “sense of safety,” and “sense of power,” which are all senses that have been taken away by sexual violence. In order to avoid re-experiencing the feelings of “unawares,” “fright,” and “confusion” that the interviewees experienced at the time of being attacked, it is important to create a place for interviews where they can anticipate what will happen next.

In contrast, what kind of interviews do survivors feel uncomfortable with? Sato gave examples, such as interviews in which the questions are vague and those in which the survivor is being judged. The former, she said, makes survivors uneasy because they do not know where to start and how much detail to give, and the unexpected question may cause strong reactions to trauma, and the latter makes them uneasy because it involves the possibility of being denied their own victimization experience, which may further lead to a second rape on the internet. She also advised that asking for details of what happened to survivors with “why” or “how come” would make them feel self-accusation, so instead of them, those with “how did it happen,” which is an expression that asks for a timeline, would be better.

In addition, Sato mentioned, from what she has felt in the interviews she has received so far, that it doesn’t matter if the reporter is a female that the  reporter has the correct understanding of sexual violence and victims, and that it is nonsense to impose stereotypical images of victims such as “victims should not laugh” or “victims cannot enjoy ordinary daily lives.” She added that what is really necessary for trauma recovery is to feel a “connection with others” and a “place in society,” both of which are created through interactions with the interviewers, so she hoped that reporters would cherish these.

 

Lastly, Michiko Kawahara, who is a former Asahi Shimbun reporter involved in the coverage of sexual violence for nearly 30 years, spoke about the challenges she feels as a journalist and the minimum knowledge for the reporters needed when reporting on sexual violence. Kawahara began by referring to quantitative changes regarding coverage of sexual violence by mass media, presenting data on the number of articles in which the keywords “sexual violence/sexual assault” appeared in the Asahi Shimbun (1985-2021). According to the data, the number of articles, which was nil in the 1980s, has been steadily increasing since 1990, reaching a peak of more than 300 in 2020. As one factor of these changes, she cited the increase in the number of female reporters, who are interested in the issue of sexual violence and stated that the difference between female and male reporters is the huge difference in the experiences of sexual victimization around them. However, as Sato mentioned, Kawahara pointed out that a female reporter does not always have the correct understanding of the issue just because she is a woman, so that all reporters involved in such coverage, regardless of gender, must acquire skills and knowledge specific to sexual violence reporting. Moreover, she pointed out that reporting on sexual violence not only entails difficulties in collecting materials and fact-checking, but also requires a sense of mission of revealing “routinized abnormalities” and changing awareness, while addressing the lack of understanding and prejudice that persist in society and within news organizations.

Then what kind of knowledge is necessary to report on sexual violence? Kawahara listed four things that should be known at a minimum when reporting on sexual violence: (1) the basic rules are different (a different attitude is necessary from that for reporting on companies, government offices, celebrities, etc.), (2) know about trauma responses (especially the victim’s self-accusation), (3) understand that each victim’s feelings and reactions are different (do not impose stereotypical images of victims), and (4) the reporter may also be emotionally damaged, so be aware of the necessity of self-care and prepare for it in advance, referring to two materials, which were distributed the participants beforehand, “A Guidebook for Reporting on Sexual Violence” (Association for Dialogue on Sexual Violence and the Press, 2016) and “Reporting on Sexual Violence” (Dart Center Europe, 2011).

 

Q&A Session

 

After the presentations of the speakers, a Q&A session was held to answer the questions and concerns of the participants about reporting sexual violence that had been submitted in advance. They, who are struggling in the news field and keeping in mind the trauma of survivors and the possibility of secondary victimization, asked concrete questions about the interview process and writing articles, such as “how much detail about the situation in which the survivor was attacked is allowed to ask?”, “how detailed should the article be?”, “would it be okay to report the perpetrator’s excuse as it is?”, etc.

First, on the issue of “how detailed to write an article,” Kawahara said that the reporter cannot help agonizing each time because there is no correct answer, and added that it is necessary to keep in mind that even if one writes in detail to convey the seriousness of the situation, it might be read with other interests, which can lead to secondary damage. As for the question of “how much detail to ask during an interview,” she said that there is no single absolute answer to this question either, so the only way is to look at the interviewee carefully and consult with her/him, and shared the points she always bears in mind, for example, presenting the questions she wants to ask and the purpose of the question at the beginning, and then clearly indicating the option of not having to answer if it is difficult, and telling them to feel free to tell her if they have any concerns. Sato, from the standpoint of an interviewee, also agreed with this way of proceeding and added that it would be helpful if reporters could communicate in such a way that, for example, they write down a list of questions to ask and let the interviewee choose what she/he would like to talk about, and tell them it would still be okay if she/he does not want to answer all of them.

On the other hand, several participants asked how to report the story of the perpetrator’s side. As stipulated in the Code of Ethics for the Press, it is true that comments from the perpetrators (suspects, defendants, etc.) must be conveyed, but some participants were concerned about whether they must convey even the most unreasonable excuses and hesitated to do so because they feared it might hurt the victims even more. To this question, Kawahara responded, reflecting on her own experience, that it is necessary to listen to the arguments of any person in principle, no matter who they are or what they say, but the important thing is, she added, that it would be possible for reporters to clarify the legitimacy of their arguments through the continuous coverage rather than to stop there. And Sato expressed her view that she would feel uncomfortable if the assailant’s argument is on the same page as her interview, but she understands the need to give him a chance to explain himself, so it would be good if she were informed in advance that the stories are going to be published in the same place.

 

Group Discussions

 

Next, the workshop moved on to the group work session. The participants were divided into six groups and engaged in in-depth discussions using examples of articles they had brought. The following is a summary of what was discussed in each group.

First, practitioners shared their experiences with respect to the various obstacles they face in the field of news reporting. As a background to the “the lack of coverage,” as pointed out by Associate Professor Lee, it was discussed that it is difficult to cover ongoing cases in which the verdict has not yet been finalized in court, and that there is a practical problem such as the risk of lawsuit. Moreover, there is another factor that makes reporters concerned: the issue of the second rape. Reporters said that in reality, a number of sexual assault cases are committed by acquaintances or involve alcohol, but that such cases are more vulnerable to secondary victimization, so they are in the dilemma that reporting on such incidents may expose victims to second rape on the Internet. Furthermore, this problem seems to be even more difficult in relation to the “reproduction of the stereotypical images of victims.” One participant said that when editing TV news footage, they sometimes cut out the victim’s flamboyant clothing, etc. with the intention of preventing bashing on the Internet, but still concerned whether such self-regulation would rather lead to the reproduction of victim stereotypes.

As for the perpetrators, on the other hand, several participants expressed their concerns about the problem of conveying the comments of the alleged perpetrators as they were said, as discussed in Lee’s presentation and in the concerns submitted in advance. What was mentioned here was a specific expression describing the perpetrator’s sexual impulse, which often comes up as a motive for the sexual crime. Regarding the expression, which is unclear whether it is really the perpetrator’s statement or a police’s fixed phrase, it was pointed out that repeated usage of it in the news may underestimate sexual violence and reinforce certain myths surrounding sexual violence, and that having it read by a female announcer may cause the news to be consumed inappropriately.

In the larger context, it was also pointed out that it is difficult to depict the structure of oppression that is a fundamental background of sexual violence by simply focusing on individual cases. That is, sexual violence reporting tends to focus too narrowly on specific issues between individuals, and the story ends without discussing the sexism and power relations that lie behind it.

Some participants suggested that these various issues may be due to structural problems rooted in the media industry itself, such as sexual harassment and lack of diversity. Recently, a number of victims in the film industry have come forward with accusations of sexual violence, exposing the seriousness of sexual exploitation and sexual harassment that persists in the media industry. And one participant said that there is in fact a problem in the news bureau that sexual violence is not recognized as an important matter among people in top editorial positions and is rated low in reporting priorities.

 

Then what can be done to achieve better reporting that leads to the eradication of sexual violence? In the group session, the participants not only pointed out the problems but also discussed positive ways to solve them. First, as a measure to prevent second rape, it was suggested that, in the similar way that the hotline information is placed at the end of an article on suicide, an explanation of secondary damage should be placed at the end of an article on sexual violence to alert the public and create an atmosphere among the audience to point out each other “that could be second rape.” On the other hand, one participant introduced the case of TikTok, in which the number of inappropriate posts decreased considerably after it used AI to detect a post that could be considered second rape and issue an alert to the user, and suggested that other platforms such as Twitter should introduce such technology. Also, there was an opinion that a secondary damage could be reduced to some extent if articles were written in a way that pointed out social injustice and pursued fairness in the first place.

Regarding the problem of not being able to see the structural background of individual cases, a suggestion was made that when reporting on a particular case, it could be effective to show the structure if the reporter gathers other cases that occurred in similar situations and group them together for reporting. For example, if the incident took place in a school, the reporter can collect similar cases and report them together in the form of “sexual violence in schools” so that it would be easier to show that they are all occurring within the same power structure, and make it more telling to society.

On the other hand, participants emphasized the importance of in-house training and study sessions on sexual violence and its reporting. Training and study sessions have a primary effect in terms of employee education, but they are also important in terms of visualizing that there are people within the company who share a similar awareness of the issues. Furthermore, some commented that horizontal collaboration across organizations, such as today’s workshop, must be strengthened because it is difficult to change processes and perceptions related to the overall structure of the press only through the effort of individual organization alone.

 

After all the sessions were over, Sato and Kawahara shared their impressions of today’s workshop. With a comment that she was glad to hear the wide range of topics discussed, Sato said that while the #Metoo movement is thriving, there are many survivors who feel confused because they are not able to speak up. She emphasized that it is their own choice to speak up or not, and must not be forced by others, and what is really important is whether or not there is an environment where survivors can raise their voices when they want to, and added that she would like to do her best for creating the environment. Kawahara stated that “today we could share that there are many things that cannot be solved by one person alone,” and stressed the importance of continuing to cover the issue despite the barriers and deliver the information in various forms, connecting beyond organizational boundaries, and increasing the number of people who share an awareness of the issue without giving up.

There are still a number of issues related to sexual violence reporting that have not been discussed here. However, it is also true that some hope for the future could be seen by bringing together people who have a similar awareness of the issue and sharing ideas. To further strengthen these horizontal ties, MeDi will continue to focus on this topic and to create a forum for better reporting.