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Rape, Trial-by-Media Anxiety and 'The Newsroom'

Goes without saying, but just in case: don't take sexual assault reporting tips from Aaron Sorkin.

Sarah Berman 9 Dec 2014TheTyee.ca

Sarah Berman is an associate editor at The Tyee. Her writing has appeared in VICE, Adbusters, Maclean's, the Globe and Mail and many other publications.

Canada's media landscape changed forever when the Jian Ghomeshi story broke. Consent and barriers to reporting sexual assault flooded the national conversation, empowering victims with a new strength in numbers.

But the public allegations also raised a spectre of anxiety: what happened to the presumption of innocence? Has the fiasco opened a door to future witch-hunts and pile-ons? How can journalists ethically report on these issues?

The last place anyone should go looking for answers to these questions is a fast-talking television drama scripted by Aaron Sorkin. And yet the latest episode of The Newsroom hurls a scolding arrangement of these very anxieties, juxtaposed against recent headlines that appear to justify the sentiment.

The cautionary tale here is Rolling Stone's recent University of Virginia gang-rape story, which the magazine retracted after the accused fraternity disputed central claims within the main source's account. Rolling Stone did not attempt to fact-check the claims by other means before publication. Editors apologized for the journalistic failure, which has undoubtedly caused pain and suffering on all sides.

This is the fraught public arena in which The Newsroom busted out a campus rape subplot on Sunday, in which (spoiler?) a male reporter declares he's "morally obligated" to not believe a rape victim without a conviction of her rapist. The show is set to end next week after three polarizing seasons, circling back to where it began: on most critics' shit lists.

The Newsroom writers couldn't have possibly seen Rolling Stone's UVA gang-rape bombshell coming. The plotline was speaking to a years-long convergence of activism and reporting around sexual assaults (and failing investigations) playing out on campuses across North America.

Of course, the show merely aims to encourage debate, not set a journalistic standard. But in the context of the UVA scandal, I worry Sorkin's take can too easily be understood as the antidote to the perceived "online vigilantism" ruining the careers of the accused, law school hopefuls and Bill Cosby-types alike.

Let me be clear: this self-righteous TV caricature does not offer a legitimate or helpful alternative to the UVA reporting fail. It also represents a glaring miscarriage of justice. In the media reporting of serious sexual allegations, there's a middle road that requires more legwork and less moral grandstanding -- a direction for which longtime investigators like the Toronto Star's Kevin Donovan are still figuring out the best practices. Let's recap.

Behind closed doors

Here's what's so maddening about The Newsroom episode: most of it is compelling, believable television with the potential to stoke interesting, necessary conversation. Thomas Sadoski's character Don Keefer is a producer sent to pre-interview a Princeton student named Mary who says two men raped her at a party. Don's assignment is to get Mary to come on a live television debate with one of her rapists (absurd, I know), but his real plan is to talk her out of going public.

Before Don sits down, there's a whiff of nervousness as she closes the door. Could Mary make a false rape claim? We're left to wonder as she tells Don that neither campus nor city law enforcement did anything about her case -- despite knowing names, addresses and procuring a rape kit. That's why she set up a website for women to post anonymous sexual assault warnings. It's a public service, she says. (A problematic one, yes).

Don argues the site will inevitably "clobber" an innocent man's reputation. And if she goes on TV, Mary's case will devolve into a "lawless food fight" reported "like sports," he says with disgust. They both agree the court system does not serve victims, that too few sexual assaults are reported, and even fewer brought to justice. He agrees she's right to name her attackers.

But even within Sorkin's airtight narrative tautology (of course debating your attacker on TV is a bad idea), Don's character still fails to perform as a reporter or a human. He says he's obligated to side with the "sketchy" dude on this one. "This isn't about testimony, or even an abstract stance meant to strengthen journalism (ie. 'personally I believe you, but I need to regard your story with suspicion')," writes New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum in her Sunday recap. "As an individual, talking to a rape survivor, Don says that on principle, he doesn't believe her."

That's precisely the moment where the show stops commenting on a criminal justice issue and starts reinforcing a harmful rape hoax narrative that many journalists now make efforts to question and debunk. It's that "jilted ex" piece that was so powerful for Jian until it wasn't.

Yes, a fraction of alleged victims lie. No, we shouldn't stop being skeptical and thorough as reporters. But to say there is no possible scenario in which a journalist can "morally" believe or report on an assault before a conviction? Even with multiple corroborated sources? Or photos? Or perhaps a friend's confession?

These are not easy editorial decisions to make. If only they were as simple as they appear on The Newsroom. As Nussbaum also points out, you can't disagree with Sorkin without becoming one of his straw man caricatures -- something that rang true for one of the show's writers, Alena Smith. Smith took to Twitter after the episode aired, claiming she was kicked out of Sorkin's writing room for objecting to the rape interrogation scene:

"I wanted to fight with Aaron about the NSA, not gender," she tweeted. "I didn't like getting cast in his outdated role." In a statement, Sorkin did not dispute Smith's account, but lamented the fact she chose to break his writer's room's confidentiality agreement.

Don, by the way, doesn't convince Mary to back down, but instead lies to his higher ups, claiming he couldn't find her. Case closed, no further investigation necessary.

Presuming innocence

Even after encountering so many of Sorkin's misplaced attempts to represent three-dimensional women on television, I still presume his intent isn't malicious. In many ways Sorkin's show and its backlash have carried the reporting-on-sexual-assault debate a tiny step forward.

The sour aftertaste comes from the black-and-white presentation, the fact that Don can so easily make Mary's story go away; that police disinterest is taken at face value; or that sensationalism and the exploitation of sources aren't examined as separate issues.

Obviously there's no perfect or moral way to report on a sexual assault or rape. That trial-by-media anxiety will always be weighed against the public interest. Those best practices are still a moving target.

The Ghomeshi police investigation is underway, and he too is innocent until proven guilty under the law. We don't know if the women will get their conviction, or if his career will be forever tarnished, or if it will be worth it for victims to have come forward. There's no way to fully dispel that cloud of ambiguity -- but being extra diligent and meticulous in reporting on it helps.

This is the kind of understated complexity that you're never going to find in a Sorkin script. Which brings me to my own closing straw man argument: only an idiot would take sexual assault investigating tips directly from The Newsroom.  [Tyee]

Read more: Gender + Sexuality, Media

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