Media Ethics and Serial Victimisation...
Media Ethics and Serial Victimisation
Date: January 1, 1970
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In the aftermath of the acquittal of Jacob Zuma on charges of rape, Kwezi, the woman who had accused him of rape ?disappeared? from the public space. Literally and physically. She was spirited out of the country and there were no more screaming headlines. The media put her on the public stage, she performed more or less to the pre-prepared skit and like all actors, she vanished to the backstage. She was just another subject for news.
In an interview on 14 May 2006 in the Sunday Times she says, “I haven’t spoken out before because I did not want to be part of the games-playing that I saw happening through the media. I see myself being described and defined by others. The media, the defence, the judge. I have seen the things said by members of the various structures and parties. I see analysis and judgment from all sides.”
These words hint at the anger of a woman who, if we believe her (considering that whether to believe her or not was actually the basis on which the case was built), was a victim of probably the most serious violation that a woman can suffer.
Kwezi’s case, by being so universally profiled in both the local and global media raised the question of media ethics; the role of the media as a catalyst for social change especially in how it deals with the victims and reports on cases of gender violence particularly violence against women.
There were, and continue to be, debates on the rightness or wrongness of particular modes of reporting on the case by various media outlets. We heard less about the manner in which Kwezi, and any other victim of rape whose case may attract such media attention, becomes a serial victim because of ‘trial’ by the media, the public and the justice system. This is the point that Kwezi seeks to make in the quotation above.
To begin with, the story was ‘broken’ to the public via a newspaper report. A series of reports and counter reports followed, projecting the victim as undecided (on whether she was raped or if she would wish to lay formal charges against Zuma). Consequently, an experience that was very private became a public subject, with the victim’s feelings, emotions and state of being becoming less important.
Yet there were hardly any critical debates, within the editorials of various media – print, radio, television, on how to report the case without causing the victim more pain, anguish and prejudice. Sensationalism took over rational and responsible reporting and seemed to infect even the court process.
When Kwezi’s sexual history was bared in court through cross-examination by the defence lawyers or by way of the opinions of ‘experts’, it was not just another instance of the victim being forced to re-live violent and dehumanising past experiences; it was deliberate and orchestrated public unclothing of a woman without any consideration to her dignity.
The symbolism was taken a step further by the members of the public tearing underpants for the entire world to see their chastisement of the woman who wanted to bring their ‘man of the people’ down. Of course there were cameras to take the pictures of all this for the front pages. The media could never have been more complicit in this perpetuation of victimisation!
The Jacob Zuma rape trial was a serious reminder of the good and the bad that media can do even when it presupposes to be serving public interest. Kwezi became carrion for media as scavenging reporters indulged in all manners of speculation, with a number of newspapers accounts being repetition of other speculative material published before with little reflection on the implications of those reports and this is what was fed to the public.
In a society where women are victims of daily sexual violence, rape being one of the most widespread, this case should have provided the opportunity for the media to constitute an on-going debate about how to rectify the social ill. The media should have broadened its coverage of gender violence beyond the court proceedings or police reports, and clearly defined what this case was all about: serious violation of human rights and a woman’s dignity.
As we celebrate 16 years of the 16 days of Activism against Gender Violence, the media should introspect on these important issues, develop, and implement policies that will guide reporting gender violence and violence against women. Such violence is against universal human rights, which media everywhere is naturally expected to protect. It is not a ‘games-playing’, to use Kwezi’s words; it is a matter of life and death.
(Agnes Odhiambo is the HIV/AIDS, Gender and the Media Programme Manager at Gender Links. This is part of a series of articles produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism).
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