Police officers arrested for rape

Name of article: Police officers arrested for rape

Name of journalist: Ntsebeng Motsoeli

Name of publication: Lesotho Times

Date: 1-7 March 2012

Country: Lesotho

Theme: Gender violence

Skills: Sources

Genre: News

GEM Classification: Gender blind

Description
While police are expected to enforce the law and ensure safety of citizens, some police officers in Lesotho have been found on the opposite side of the law. Two male officers were recently arrested and released on bail for allegedly raping women. This, according to media reports, follows a similar incident where two male officers were also accused of raping female detainees. This media highlight analyses a Lesotho Times newspaper article that reported on these shocking happenings.

Headlines: The headline is sharp and reflects the content of the article.

Sources
The article is single sourced making it journalistically wrong and gender blind. News is about ordinary people. The journalist could have asked a few people particularly women on what they think about their police and safety following the incidents. Further, the reporter could have interviewed gender/human rights activists to comment on what they think should be done to discipline the police service in the country.
Language: Overall, the reporter used neutral language except using “spokesman” instead of a gender neutral term “spokesperson”.

Visual images
The article uses an image of a police spokesperson making it relevant to the article. However, the caption of the picture says very little except telling the reader the name of the person in the photo.

Story angle and perspective
The story solely focused on one source making it shallow in both perspective and depth. Further, the article merely reported the issue without offering solutions to the problem. The missing voices as mentioned under sources could have increased the article’s depth and perspective. These voices could have further provided the way forward to this issue.

Placement or positioning
The article was placed on page four under national news and the article could have more impact of the said missing voices were included.

Training exercises
– If these incidents had occurred in your locality/country, what sources would you have interviewed and why?
– Journalistically, why should journalist refrain from single sourced stories?

Other training resources
– GMPS: Part of the problem or part of the solution? – coverage of gender violence

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