PressEthic

Last night, my roommate and I turned on the television to watch the 10 o'clock news on the WB. Much to our dismay, the story at the top of the hour was about a woman who was involved in a "sex attack" in a Chelsea pet store. According to the report, a man forced her to the back room of the store and "sexually attacked" her at knifepoint. This story then led into another "sex attack story" of two cops that assaulted a woman in Brooklyn.

Sex attack? What exactly is a "sex attack"? This type of phrasing means that such a crime has a more of sexual motive than one of power. As I've stated before, media has the ability to form a person's understanding of an issue. But using this term on broadcast news further complicates the taboos associated with this type of an assault. While the nature of rape is in part sexual, it isn't a crime of sex. It is a form of violent domination of one person by another. State what it really is- rape.

I tried looking up the transcript for the story, but could not find it. Fortunately, the wording used to describe the crime was changed in an online version of the story this morning.