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I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: Rape Coverage By Laura Flanders Rape, and in particular acquaintance rape, has become something of a human interest story-of-choice for mainstream newspaper editors recently. But more coverage has usually not meant better. When five St. John's University students were charged in the rape of a fellow student last spring, the New York Daily News went out of its way to present the assailants as more than just nice guys. "To Friends, a Fab 4" was the headline on one story (5/11/90) that quoted the men's lacrosse coach as saying, "They are the types to give something back to the community." It isn't just tabloids that promote this theme. "After Rape Charge, 2 Lives Hurt and 1 Destroyed" was the New York Times headline (11/12/90) above a story about a University of Rhode Island student who committed suicide before giving testimony to police about a rape he had witnessed. The story, by William Celes 3rd, presented the rape survivor and her attacker as equally "hurt," the real victim being the 20-year-old young man with "personal problems" who couldn't bear the memory of the assault he'd witnessed without trying to prevent. (Celes points out, however, that "some said the real victim was Mr. Lallymand," the man charged with the rape.) Few facts are given about the survivors of the assaults in these stories, except the victim-blaming detail that the women were reportedly drunk at the time of their assaults. (This is mentioned twice in the Times' story.) While there are conventions protecting the identity of rape victims, there is nothing to prevent them from being "humanized" at least as fully as their assailants. In neither of these stories was that even attempted. To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1558 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

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