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Using domestic violence as a news peg

Nearly 40,200 incidents of spousal abuse were reported to police in 2007, according to Statistics Canada.
A Liz Claiborne study on teen dating abuse in 2005 found one in three teenagers knew of a friend or peer who had been physically hurt by their partner.
So why does it take a pop star punching another pop star in the face on Grammy night to bring such a widespread issue to the forefront of mainstream media?
“The problem with abuse stories, by and large, is that they are so common, so mainstream media doesn’t really like to comment on things that happen all the time. [As a result] regular kinds of domestic abuse don’t tend to get covered very much at all,” says Romayne Smith Fullerton, a faculty of information and media studies professor at Western.
“Until some external situation happens that gives you the peg to cover it, it’s pretty hard to get there,” she adds.
The events of Feb. 8, 2009 provided such a peg.

Breaking the Rihanna/Chris Brown story
When news broke of a violent altercation between Chris Brown and Rihanna, it quickly turned into what would become one of the most talked about entertainment news stories of the year — reputable news outlets, tabloids, talk shows and blogs all closely followed the story as it developed.
“[It gives] an awesome opportunity to a serious media outlet to engage, not only with the story of Rihanna, but also the larger issues around abuse, because those types of stories are ongoing, but they only really get covered when there is this news peg,” Smith Fullerton says.
But according to Susan Knabe, women’s studies and FIMS professor at Western, it was a missed opportunity for some media outlets. She points to the problematic way in which these types of abuse stories tend to be framed.
“The media tends to want to see women as somehow serially wanting to be in relationships with ‘bad men,’ and that there’s a pattern — and it’s not really a part of patriarchal society that sanctions violence against women, but rather these are women who seek out dysfunctional relationships,” she says. “The problem then shifts from being a problem within society to being a problem with an individual woman who makes bad choices.”
Case in point — the reaction of a panelist on arguably the most influential talk show on television.
“I’m so worried [Rihanna’s] sending the wrong message to young fans,” celebrity personality Gayle King said about Rihanna’s handling of the event on an episode of Oprah.
Smith Fullerton believes many mainstream media outlets do strive to represent people and information in a fair and accurate way. But she also agrees there have been cases in the past in which the victims have been portrayed in a less than innocent light.
She recalls the media’s portrayal of the Paul Bernardo killings of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French in the early 1990s.
“Leslie was very much framed by some media outlets in exactly [this problematic way]. The reporters went out and found out she left home a couple times, that her parents had locked her out, that she smoked and she was 15, that she drank — there were clearly implications that she deserved what she got. That to me is a shocking, shocking idea.”
Trevor Hinds is the program director of Changing Ways, a London-based organization that supports men in their efforts to end abusive behaviour in their relationships. He believes the media’s widespread justification and glorification of violence is to blame for the problematic way in which domestic abuse cases are framed.
“We can look at sports and the language we use […] It’s using power to assert authority over other people […] And all these things are creating an environment where violence is OK and it’s the men who are being rewarded,” he says.
The notion of shifting the blame from abuser to abused — be it through the media’s portrayal of victims making poor decisions or its general acceptance of violence — was one that also played out in the public’s reaction to the Rihanna and Brown case. Blog posts and comments that spoke out in support of Brown were common occurrences online.
“Rihanna is totally faking the whole thing and needs to get a life! Chris Brown deserves way better and needs to get a proper girlfriend who won’t scam publicity and money off Chris,” is how one person reacted while commenting on a VH1 blog.
“If that bitch needed her ass [whipped] then so be it,” was another comment made on YouTube.
“There’s still a lot of tolerance for people to say, ‘ I think she incorrectly accused him [of something],’” Knabe explains. “It’s like, if she hadn’t done [something wrong], he wouldn’t have been provoked.”
Another popular reaction to this case of domestic violence came in the form of humour. Several YouTube parodies popped up poking fun at the situation, as did the terms “to Chris Brown someone” and “she got Rihanna-ed” when referring to domestic abuse.
By making light of the situation, the seriousness of the issue is downplayed.
“What [humour] does is it normalizes and trivializes the real impact and trauma a situation like this has. It also reinforces [and normalizes] […] and the more desensitized people become,” Hinds says.
“I think it is also a way that our culture tried to deal with topics that it really doesn’t want to necessarily face. So humour often gets used to deflect strong emotions around things,” Knabe adds.
Misplaced blame and the tendency for humour to trivialize aside, there is some good to be taken from the media’s coverage of a high profile abuse case.
“Reporting on this […] creates a catalyst. Reporting on it can get people really thinking about it. Any healthy dialogue about this issue is a great opportunity,” Hinds says.
While talking about the issue of domestic violence may be seen as a positive, the discussion can be limited in terms of its scope. The diverse and complex nature of domestic abuse can be overlooked, and the important questions can forget to be asked in an attempt to play off of the news peg.
“The kind of conversation that happens within the media […] tends to actually not allow other questions to get asked, like ‘what did your friends do?’ ‘who knew about this?’” Knabe explains. “There’s a whole range of other questions that can get asked, but on the whole they tend to be the questions that don’t get asked to the media. So I suspect that even though they used [the case of Rihanna and Brown] as a teaching moment, it was a very narrow teaching moment.
“It’s very much a game for public consumption that is not going to look at the issue of domestic violence in a more systemic and systematic way.”

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