By Jody Santos
The MSNBC.com headline reads, “Pageant contestant accused of killing ex-actress.” The first three paragraphs don’t even mention the victim, Felicia Lee, by name. She is simply the “ex-adult movie actress” choked to death by Brian Lee Randone, a self-proclaimed preacher who appeared on the Fox special “The Sexiest Bachelor in America.” As I hurriedly scanned the headline last week, I marveled at how the news media still could be so insensitive. Lee was an afterthought in most of their accounts, and their lurid descriptions of her brutal murder sounded like a plot from “Realty TV Stars Gone Wild.” The press apparently felt no compassion for Lee – no sense of outrage over the fact that Randone allegedly had tortured her for hours prior to finally killing her.
In another recent incident of domestic violence, reporters speculated as to why reality show contestant Ryan Jenkins had murdered model Jasmine Fiore. I’m sure the news media felt like they were being objective and presenting both sides of the story when they mentioned that Fiore had been communicating with an ex-boyfriend prior to her murder – and that Jenkins had been jealous. But is the press really being objective in presenting violence as spurred by something the victim did? In reporting “both sides” of these two stories, the news media failed to put the violence in any kind of social context, instead giving us a he said/she said type of account that minimized this devastating epidemic.
In the most recent issue of Columbia Journalism Review, Brent Cunningham offers a unique prescription for what ails the news media – take a stand and don’t simply amplify the agendas of the rich and powerful. If the mainstream press wants to regain its relevance, Cunningham says, it must assume a leadership role in public discourse. This is particularly true of domestic violence. I believe that some media biases are good – like one that takes a definitive stand against the torture and killing of innocent victims.
Jody Santos is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, who teaches at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and she is the author of Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions, which will be out in December.
Plight of women in MA politics has yet to hit the front page for the extent of intimidation that accompanies the experience.
The threats revealed over the House vote recently by the woman who did acknowledge being threatened may have been one of the rare times that the public has heard of the problem. Yet, it may well appear as a tradition in MA politics given its history of strong male legislators and proprietary turf.
Even Caroline Kennedy had trouble trying to run for office in NY, and had to bow out.
Facing that MA is not the civil political environment it should be would be a first step in approaching any semblance of gender equity in representation - but it's about time. It sometimes appears to evoke the war between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, perhaps because government has been dominated by so many Irish. But there are an equal number of Irish women as there are Irish men in MA, likely. Where are they? It may not be about ethnicity, but it sure is about turf wars.
Posted by: Pat | April 11, 2010 at 06:07 PM