Balancing sensitivity, verification

Ghomeshi case has greatly intensified media coverage of sexual assault

It has long been the Toronto Star’s policy not to name the victims of alleged sexual assault.

That is in line with provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code, which makes a ban on publication of the identity of a sexual assault complainant mandatory if requested by the Crown or the victim. In such cases, the Crown should have consulted with the complainant and made clear the implications of a ban that not only blocks the media from naming her (or him) but can also make it difficult for her to speak publicly about her experience even years after.

Not all sexual violence complainants want to be silenced forever.

Indeed, there are times — rare, but increasing — when some individuals want to be publicly identified in sharing their stories of how sexual violence affected their lives. In such cases, the Star’s policy allows for victims of alleged sexual assault to be identified with their consent.

Our policy says nothing about the ethical issues to be considered when a sexual assault complainant decides to speak openly to the media. It provides no compass for how journalists can report with sensitivity on sexual assault and at the same time live up to the journalistic responsibility to question and seek to verify whatever we report.

In recent months, public conversation and media coverage about sexual violence has intensified in the glaring light of the sexual assault and choking charges against Jian Ghomeshi, of which he was acquitted last week. So too has the increasing coverage of sexual assault on university campuses across North America brought new questions for the media about how we report on sexual assault complainants who do not wish to be silenced.

To provide a guide for media in such cases, the Canadian Association of Journalists’ ethics committee recently released a paper that explores the ethical consideration in naming sexual assault complainants. Full disclosure: I was a member of this panel, as was the Star’s newsroom lawyer, Bert Bruser. This committee included Western University professor Meredith Levine. It was chaired, and the paper largely written, by Ryerson University professor Lisa Taylor, also a lawyer.

The paper provides guidelines for journalists to ensure they have taken steps to obtain informed consent from anyone who comes forward to be identified as a victim of sexual assault. It says journalists should never coerce these individuals to identify themselves and calls for giving them enough time to fully consider that decision. In some cases, obtaining written consent of what has been agreed to makes sense for all involved.

It makes clear the media’s duty to explain the implications of being identified as a sexual assault complainant in our digital era in which news is searchable and lives forever online, and social media provides easy means to share such identifying and sensitive information worldwide.

Most important, given recent debate about the justice system and sexual assault complainants, the paper leaves no doubt as to the journalist’s responsibility to seek to verify any complainant’s story of sexual violence.

“This is, of course, a touchy issue,” Taylor wrote recently in a J-Source article about this paper. “There are those who feel that testing the story is endemic of societal skepticism and disbelief of sexual assault.”

Indeed, while journalism is not a legal cross examination and reporters would be unlikely to challenge a sexual assault complainant in the same adversarial manner that is normal in the courtroom, journalists are also not simply stenographers who recount the stories of sexual assault complainants without question. “An ethical journalist should treat a sexual assault complainant with the highest degree of sensitivity, given the nature of the trauma itself and the challenges that come from being the subject of media scrutiny,” the paper states. “But being sensitive does not release a journalist from fact-checking and verifying a complainant’s story.

“An ethical journalist will test and verify a complainant’s story for the same reason the journalist will fact-check a politician’s comments or seek multiple eyewitnesses to an event,” it states. “While uncomfortable, the verification process is necessary.”

Of course, journalists should also clearly explain to sexual assault complainants why they are asking challenging questions and seeking further verification before publishing their story: “Unless the rationale for verification in journalism is clearly explained to the complainant, it may leave her with the sense that she is not believed because she is a sexual assault complainant. This, of course, is not the case.”

Sexual assault complainants who speak through the media should also be made to understand that if they are later called as witnesses in a sexual assault trial they may be “rigorously cross-examined” on what they told the media, as certainly was the case in the Ghomeshi trial.

With the public conversation about sexual assault far from over, the media’s task in reporting on sexual assault complainants remains clear: We must seek to balance compassion and sensitivity with the demands of journalistic verification. publiced@thestar.ca