When a law does not exist pertaining to an issue at hand, good journalists abide by a sense of ethics. Good journalists, of course, are an endangered species.
The debate regarding whether rape victims should be named is not a new one. But most news establishments in the West have clear policies against publishing victims’ names. Legally, rape victims’ names are part of public records, specifically those dealing with law enforcement and the court system. But good journalists typically avoid naming them in stories.
Proponents of naming rape victims in news stories argue that the names help eliminate the stigma that the victims should be ashamed or have done something wrong. Opponents contend that it is the newspaper’s (or news establishment's duty) to report the news while minimising harm to those who have been victimised. They also argue that rape victims (or any other victim) cannot necessarily give consent during traumatic times.
Coming to the news item at hand. I had seen this news report about a female police constable being raped and murdered in Kota on a few websites last night itself. But when I saw not only the name but also the victim's photograph in this morning's Times of India, it came as a shocker. Not done, I said to myself.
The Times was not the only culprit. There were others too — like NDTV.com, dnaindia.com (which faithfully reproduced a Press Trust of India creed). In a country where news establishments hardly have any laid-down Code of Ethics, journalists ought to abide by some of their own. Not naming a rape victim should be one of them. Incidentally, Hindustan Times and the Indian Express had not named the victim.
The Times of India, however, is quite selective about naming rape victims. This search result from Google News shows that sometimes it does, and at times it doesn't. Maybe this time they thought carrying a photograph alongside will make the hearts of readers bleed profusely. Why does this newspaper need to be told that journalism is not about feeding on the dead like scavengers?
The fact that this woman was dead can be no case for justification.
But that's not where the story ends. The TOI website had earlier carried the same story creeded by the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) which did not name the victim. That was at 6.00 pm on Friday. Their colourful story subsequently went up on the site at 1:09 am on Saturday. We are free to draw our own conclusions here. And at the same time, can we remind them of a Supreme Court advisory about not naming victims of sexual violence? One not too difficult to abide by, surely.
About two years ago, I had done a survey of news stories about a nun coming out in the open to give a statement about the trauma she had to undergo during the Kandhamal riots in Orissa. She had been raped and paraded naked by a frenetic mob of Hindu rightwingers two months earlier. She narrated her ordeal at a press conference in New Delhi, and issued a signed statement.
Many news outlets reported the heart-wrenching tale. But there were others who threw elementary journalistic ethics to the winds and went overboard—they named the victim. [See the report here; there's also a link to the PDF file of the 4-page report at the bottom]
I don't see news establishments laying down transparent Codes of Ethics in the near future. But someone ought to come up with guidelines for such insensitive and disgusting instances of third-rate reportage.
Such callousness is becoming a bit too much to take in times when even being perceived to be politically correct is quite fashionable for many. If you can't be a good journalist, then try to be politically correct, at least, for heaven's sake. But then, this is not about fashion, it is about elementary journalistic ethics. And good journalists, of course, are an endangered species. Aren't they?
