SHELTON, Wash. — As a rookie reporter in the 1950s, Al Ford learned it was his job to name everyone who stood up to testify at a criminal trial. That included rape victims.
Then, in the late '60s, feminists argued that rape is a particularly personal crime that ought to be treated with special sensitivity by the press. Virtually all newspapers reversed their former policy and began to withhold the names of women who had been raped.
But the gusts of social change seemed to bypass Ford, who still identifies sexual assault victims.
"I've been yelled at, threatened, accused of having no compassion," said Ford, a short, dapper grandfather of seven whose unconventional reporting policy sets the standard at the Shelton-Mason County Journal (circulation, 8,782). The Journal is one of not more than 10 newspapers in the country, and perhaps the only one in the West, which make a point of naming rape victims.
More proponents of the policy are coming forth in the wake of a June 21 Supreme Court ruling concerning a Florida newspaper that inadvertently revealed a rape victim's name. The court held that the small, weekly paper in Jacksonville could not be punished for publishing the victim's name because the information was lawfully obtained. While the court did not declare unconstitutional Florida and South Carolina statutes prohibiting publication of rape victims' names, the ruling did say that, for now, it is up to journalists to decide the to-name-or-not-to-name question.
An article in the June issue of FineLine, a newsletter on journalism ethics, was weighted in favor of naming victims. Six of eight news executives interviewed came down firmly on the side of identifying victims.
And in a recent New York Times opinion piece, Geneva Overholser, editor of the Des Moines Register, said, even though her newspaper does not identify sexual assault victims, she believes in the concept of naming victims because "Rape is an American shame. Our society needs to see that and attend to it, not hide it or hush it up."
Identifying rape victims will help lift the stigma surrounding sexual assault, proponents say. To impose anonymity on rape victims "singles out rape as something different and distinct and more awful" than other crimes whose victims are routinely named in the media, said Gilbert Geis, a UC Irvine professor emeritus who has studied the reporting of rape. "And maybe it is worse. But crimes like having your child kidnaped are pretty awful, too."
