In some ways, the Torrington, CT case that ricocheted through the press last week looks a lot like the ugly spectacle in Steubenville, OH. Two football players stand accused of rape. Their fellow students have taken to Twitter to bash one of the victims, calling her a “whore” and a “snitch,” and blaming her for ruining the players’ lives. The “hacktivist” collective, Anonymous, has jumped into the fray, promising to dredge up evidence and publicly humiliate the cyber-bullies.
But this time the local paper has beaten Anonymous to the punch. In a story last Wednesday, Torrington’s Register Citizen broke the news of the victim shaming. Unlike reporters covering Steubenville, who have been careful not to identify the victim’s online tormentors, the Torrington paper printed screen shots of the tweets—complete with pictures, Twitter handles, and names. A number of national media followed suit, after which students whose tweets were published were inundated with ugly, profanity-laced messages.
Some people no doubt find it gratifying to see the tables turned on the hecklers. But is it fair to subject minors—even those who behave badly—to this type of humiliation? Reporters generally use special care when reporting on children and teenagers. As a rule, most news organizations don’t publish the names of juvenile criminal defendants on the theory that people shouldn’t be stuck with a life-long stigma for youthful errors in judgment.
Then again, most criminal defendants don’t broadcast their misdeeds on Twitter.
Matt DeRienzo, the group editor for the Journal Register Company’s Connecticut publications, including The Register Citizen, says one key reason editors chose to print the tweets was that they were already public. “I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule that no one under the age of 18 should ever be named in a newspaper for doing something bad,” he adds. “We’ve become more and more cautious about doing that over the years, but we will if it serves an important journalistic purpose.”
In this case, that purpose was at least partly to pressure local school officials to confront what DeRienzo sees as a culture of violence and bullying, especially among football players. The paper has been grappling with the issue since last October, when it came to light that four football players had been suspended after a locker-room hazing incident. School officials were remarkably stingy with information about it. Superintendent Cheryl F. Kloczko acknowledged that something had happened and said two “agencies” were investigating. But she and other district officials refused to reveal any other particulars, including the names of the agencies involved.
Then, earlier this month, The Register Citizen’s courts and education reporter, Jessica Glenza, happened to notice the names of two 18 year olds who had been charged with sexually assaulting two 13-year-old girls were also on the 2012 varsity football-team roster. (Police have since arrested a third alleged perpetrator, and are now describing the incident as statutory rape.) By this point, the Steubenville case was making bold-faced headlines. DeReinzo and his fellow editors began wondering whether what they were seeing was part of a pattern of ugly behavior by high school athletes. So they urged Glenza to cross-reference the statewide pending criminal docket with varsity football rosters.
What Glenza found was eye opening: One of the suspects in the sexual assault case—an 18-year-old football star named Edgar Gonzalez—had also been arrested, along with a former teammate, on felony robbery and assault charges after allegedly jumping three younger students in March 2012. While the coach at the time was aware of the situation, Gonzalez was allowed to keep playing football and was later named the team’s Most Valuable Player.
When Glenza confronted school officials about the hazing, robbery, and assaults, they insisted these were isolated incidents rather than signs of a deeper cultural problem. “These things happen everywhere,” Athletics Director Mike McKenna told her. “We’re not any different than any other community.”
I would have had no problem if, as McBride says, the paper took the "verify, verify, verify" approach. Regardless of whether or not someone came forward, the practice deployed by the Register-Citizen is one I find personally troubling (and potentially dangerous on many levels--from ethical to legal).
The reporter was also quoting today as saying, "We didn't find one tweet in support of the victim" However, at least one of the hostile tweets was in response to a student who was defending the victims -- so something just feels wrong about this. Or maybe I'm just overly skeptical these days about everything.
It's probably a bad analogy but it's the only one I can think of -- is torturing a terrorist justified to save lives? And maybe it is. I know.. that's an extreme analogy--just trying to make an ends-justifing-the means case. In this case, it just seems that unless the newspaper knew for certain who was behind those tweets, it was irresponsible. On the other hand, calling out problems in Torrington was needed and maybe this was the best way to get the truth. I'm not intelligent enough to say I know.
All I do know is that I feel so sad for the victims, disgusted by the attackers, angry at both bullying students and an obtuse group of administrations. As far as the Register-Citizen, I clearly having mixed emotions.
#1 Posted by Dan, CJR on Mon 25 Mar 2013 at 05:32 PM
Speaking of anonymous:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/rights/opinion-hacking-vs-rape-which-crime-more-deserving-jail-time
We have a really screwed up heirarchy of priorities at the justice department.
When banks get away scot free with stealing, defrauding, drug money laundering, price fixing, and causing the largest global financial crisis in near a century you'd think that they'd have better things to do than to harass people who defaced a web page OMG:
http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous
Even if you think, "By compromising the security of electronic property, the potential damages these hackers can do is enormous. They can steal, defraud etc... They must be sanctioned!" you'd think the actual people who are actually abusing their power to actually defraud and steal would rank some of the effort that this justice department devotes to hackers. You'd think the penalties for stealing and fraud in the financial world would be more than a small percentage of their haul when caught.
You'd be wrong. The justice department doesn't mind crimes by powerful potential future employers. Their prosecutorial power is reserved for people who have the knowledge to do damage without the perch that entitles them to do so. The rich are allowed to hit you. Nobody, especially hackers, should have the capacity to hit back. You will be punished for the capacity for damage.
At least until anonymous gets the clout to start offering cushy jobs to lawyers from the Justice Department.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 26 Mar 2013 at 01:38 PM
america is a sick society when we have officials here trying to justify the rape and sick dissrespect for a 13 yo girl. Oh its just a joke. well see how much of a joke they think it is when they are tossed into a adult jail for 20 years. people are treating this like any vulnerable kids who doest think beforte she writes something is fair friggin game ffs, well what if its an 8yo in primary school. Same fair game. i heard about this on australian radio and its about so-called football jocks are made to account for thier couldnt care less attitudes.
#3 Posted by paul malloy, CJR on Mon 29 Apr 2013 at 08:17 AM