Misrepresentation or no representation in the Media

After reading Lynne E. Edwards, “Victims, Villians and Victims” one idea really stuck with me and I wondered to what extent it was actually true. In her article she talks about how youths voices are often replaced by “official sources” in news articles. Let me take you back to a section in this essay:

“The power to legitimate self and source is an area of concern, however. The frequent selection of official sources marginalizes ordinary people as potential sources, and the people most often marginalized are youth. Sadly, the sources frequently missing from news stories about youth and crime are youths themselves, an omission that leads to their frequent misrepresentation in news. Rather than including youth as sources in stories about them, law enforcement officials and experts are often cited, providing explainations for why youths commit crime, get pregnant or any number of other issues associated with them. Even when youth do appear in news stories about juvenile crime, the predominant speakers are “white male adults”. This absence of youth as sources in news stories is particularly ironic at a time when journalists are beginning to identify juvenile suspects by name.”

Shortly after this assignment, I stumbled across an extreme case where there was a lack of youth’s voice in an article and extreme misrepresentation of the entire situation. The original article which was posted in the New York Times is entitled “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town”. In this article, the author explains how the town has been “rocked” by the rape of an 11 year old girl by 18 young men. The incident was discovered because of a video taken and passed around of it. In the article there is no mention of the effect that this might have on the girl and one quote even goes so far to state that “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.” There was mention that this girl dressed like she was in her twenties and also question of where her mother was.

I think that the article by Roxane Gay in the Rumpus does a good job explaining the horrid reporting techniques of the event. It also goes on to explain “rape culture” in the media.