Women, Violence, and the Media: Readings in Feminist Criminology

Preface

PREFACE Two goals guided the development of Women, Violence, and the Media. One was to develop a collection that would help readers to think more clearly about women’s experiences of violence; the other was to organize it so that readers would begin at step one and progress by degrees toward a reflective, critical approach to media representations. It struck us that the Preface would be a good place to pull together all the bits and pieces that otherwise seemed to get lost. But first, a digression. The collection raises issues of concern to college readers. Sexual violence is a fact of life for too many college students; it traumatizes victims and interrupts college careers, temporarily and permanently . Because popular culture, including the media, tends to encourage victim blaming, students may find the collection useful in challenging their tendencies to blame victims and, perhaps more importantly, for survivors of violent attacks to avoid the erroneous conclusion that they may be responsible. Moreover, many college students are headed toward careers in the very agencies—criminal justice, health, and social services —responsible for dealing with violence by and against women. An initial step in learning to approach women in crisis is to acknowledge and put aside gendered biases discussed by the contributors to this collection. A second step is to understand the role that justice, health, and service professionals may play in interfacing with the media and how they can work with journalists to improve the accuracy and the quality of media representations of violence and women. A second digression allows us to talk about media trends that bear on the collection and its concerns. High-profile cases are examined in several chapters and reflect shifts in the organization of electronic media. Network news has given way to cable networks such as CNN and Court TV, which require a constant stream of news stories in order to fill the airwaves twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. As Court TV’s coverage of the O. J. Simpson case demonstrated, an ongoing, larger-than-life crime attracts and retains a sizable audience and provides content to fill the airtime. Over the last several decades, other highly publicized cases (e.g., the Scott Peterson case and that of Susan Smart) have turned a sec-· ix · ond wave of domestic and family violence into epic tales about women and violence. These cases offer unique opportunities to investigate gendered constructions of violence. In addition, television has had to adjust to women in the labor force and their role in purchasing the household items advertised on commercial networks. The television industry has responded by casting women in leading roles as professionals. Cable networks such as Lifetime have taken the additional step of catering to an all-female audience. These changes resonate throughout the offerings of television, and scholars have examined them for new kinds of gendered assumptions. The last set of media changes reflected in the collection concerns globalization , the “interconnectedness” of persons, processes, and institutions , across national boundaries and from one region to another. U.S. news services bring ethnic cleansing (in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur) into the domestic market, but reports are selective, emphasizing some insurgencies or civil wars and disregarding others. Moreover, television programs developed in one country are exported to other nations: A popular TV series, Prime Suspect, and the reality-based monthly program Crimewatch UK are both produced in the United Kingdom for English-speaking audiences. Prime Suspect has been imported and aired in full on the Public Broadcasting System, where its status as a quality mystery has earned it a loyal following. In contrast, Crimewatch UK has remained in Britain: U.S. viewers watch America’s Most Wanted, a home-grown version of reality-based programming. Finally, the Internet has decentered the distribution of news. An on-line version of a newspaper, the Star, published in print form in Bangladesh, reaches far-flung expatriates with news of home, gives voice to resistance, and provides a refuge from censorship. In one way or another, these changes provide background for readings encountered in Women, Violence, and the Media. Now let’s return to the main point, the bits and pieces about teaching and the critical thinking skills this collection aims to foster. From the outset , readers must keep in mind that real violence and media representations of violence are not the same thing. The distinction is not as obvious as some might suppose. Much of...