The ethics of emotion

On a rare occasion and for a fleeting second, the elephant in the room was too big to ignore. But the decision quickly turned into a matter of who let it come in in the first place.
This past Sunday, Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays, 16 and 17 years old respectively, were found guilty Sunday of raping a 16-year-old and were sentenced to a year in juvenile prison. Mays was ordered to serve an additional year for photographing the victim naked, but both boys could ultimately be held until they turn 21.
The crime took place last year at an all-night party in Steubenville, Ohio when Jane Doe was stripped naked in the basement of the house. She was too intoxicated to consent to sex, but as the accused both used their fingers to penetrate her not only there in the basement but in the back seat of a car, that didn't matter. Other boys, some also on the football team, didn't try to stop the attack and instead recorded it with their cell phones. And when it was all said and done, Mays sent messages pleading with the girl to not press charges because it would damage his career.
Those are the raw details. Jane Doe was too drunk to know what was happening or to remember any of it, but the evidence captured the night before quickly made rounds in an onslaught of texts, social media messages and online video and photos.
And thus ended Richmond and Mays's twisted version of fun and debauchery.
Stars of a high school football team in the Midwest at an underage party gone wrong, and a video of the incident passed on by text from teen to teen as a means of entertainment. It sounds like something straight out of a Lifetime movie. And just as one would expect the television drama to play out, every news organization had their cameras turned on to tell the story of the victim, the attackers and a town in disarray.
How could this happen? Who let this happen? Was it Jane Doe, dangerously intoxicated and vulnerable, or Richmond and Mays, who took advantage of a situation that so effortlessly presented itself to them?
It depends on what news broadcast you're watching.
Sunday didn't just bring a verdict; it also brought outrage and enough of it to lead to a petition that, at the time of The Spectrum's press, had over 210,000 signatures, each belonging to a person calling on CNN to apologize for its disgraceful coverage and "breach of journalistic ethics." The network has been accused of spending more airtime focusing on the damage on the lives and "promising futures" of Richmond and Mays rather than the life they ruined.
CNN wasn't alone. ABC News talked extensively on Richmond's promising football career and how "he was in a celebratory mood" the night of the rape. AP and USA Today placed the emphasis on Jane Doe's intoxication. Yahoo! News said she tore the town apart and forced it into an emotional situation, describing the courtroom as "filled with sobbing and exhausting emotion." And multiple stations - including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and Steubenville's CBS affiliate - made the unethical faux pas of airing her name.
Every journalist in every corner of the country has probably sat down since Sunday and asked, "What would I have done in this situation?" And we at The Spectrum have done the same. How would we report on the story and get a story?
The verdict hopefully opens a conversation for our rape culture. But after Sunday's verdict, social media broke out in tweets, Facebook posts and comments blaming Jane Doe for drinking underage and putting herself in that situation, saying she deserved it, that she ruined Richmond and Mays's lives with her carelessness (two Ohio girls were even arrested for making social media threats of violence against the accuser). Of the players, students, principals and the team's 27 coaches and volunteers, 16 people refused to talk. That's what we should ultimately be talking about. But like it or not, there is also a story with the accused.
The unfortunate reality is without being able to report anything about Jane Doe (and rightfully and understandably so), the story is on Richmond and Mays - who they are, what will happen to them and what this means for their lives. It's very difficult to talk about the damage it will cause to her life without revealing her identity.
The problem with the coverage of the Steubenville verdict is the tone, not the content. While there are, sadly, people who feel pity for Richmond and Mays, the vast majority of people are not looking for a set-up to feel sympathy for two rapists, no matter how "promising" their careers may have been. No one should feel that their futures were ruined. No, they ruined their own futures - nobody else did it for them. But the facts of what their futures would have been still exist, and those facts should be reported.

Email: editorial@ubspectrum.com