How well did the press do its job? Covering “Nicole”

How well did the press do its job?
Covering “Nicole”
By Venus L. Elumbre

From the day a 22-year-old Filipino woman accused a US Marine of raping her in Subic until the end of the court hearings, the media in general referred to the victim as “Nicole.” The use of a pseudonym to refer to a rape complainant—a standard practice in journalism—was meant to protect her from further trauma.
When the verdict was read and aired live on national television on Dec. 4, however, the full name of the victim was inadvertently mentioned by an officer of the court. Many journalists faced a tough decision on  whether to continue keeping Nicole’s identity secret, or to start using her real name.
One journalist appeared not to have too much of a problem, however. Soon after the promulgation of the verdict, ANC news anchor Korina Sanchez kept repeating Nicole’s real name in her spiel. While asking Nicole whether she had still wanted to keep her identity private, Sanchez in fact addressed her by her real name.
Nicole answered with a firm “Yes” and was distressed upon learning that she had already been named in the reports and that identifiable shots of her had been shown on TV.
When Nicole and her camp held a press conference on Dec. 5, the problem became more complicated. Nicole, who came with her family and her lawyer, had only sunglasses to conceal her face. Some reporters took this as a green light to take shots of her.  But Nicole requested, “Wala po sanang violation.”
Confused, the journalists there wondered: if Nicole really wanted to remain anonymous, why didn’t she just keep herself away from the media?
“I recognize the validity of that point,” Nicole’s lawyer Evalyn Ursua told PJR Reports, “but I also don’t think that’s fair.”
Ursua said Nicole made herself available to media to dispel rumors that she was a “prostitute” and a “loose” woman.
“We also needed public opinion on our side,” the lawyer admitted, adding, “It was a difficult balancing act that we did (when we decided to give) a face to her case while protecting her privacy.”

A double-edged sword
In her earlier interviews, Nicole’s face was covered. At one point, however, she felt uncomfortable with the setup.
Nicole herself started questioning the way her identity was being protected. “Why do I have to cover my face in front of people who interview me? What is it that I am supposed to be ashamed of? I am not supposed to be ashamed of anything,” Nicole’s lawyer quoted her as saying.
Describing the media’s role in the rape case a “double-edged sword,” Ursua said while the intense coverage helped, it also “made it very difficult for us to protect the privacy of the victim.”
“There was no go-signal (to name the victim) at all, at least from our camp,” Ursua maintained.
She added that they plan to sue media outfits that published Nicole’s identity, on the grounds of violation of the general rule on the rights of privacy. Nicole, according to Ursua, was “adamant” about it. But at the moment, they could not attend to that as they were busy dealing with the issue of Daniel Smith’s custody.

Whose life is it?
The news about Smith’s conviction landed on the front pages of most Manila broadsheets the next day. Among the dailies, only The Daily Tribune and BusinessWorld published the full name of Nicole in their stories. In subsequent reports, however, the two newspapers went back to using her pseudonym.
At present, there is no law in the country that bans media from disclosing the identity of rape victims. The expanded Code of Ethics by the Philippine Press Institute even states that identifying victims of sexual assault is allowed “in cases when the adult victim (above 18 years old) has decided to file a case in court.” Publishing the victim’s photographs, however, is prohibited.
The fact that Nicole’s identity has come out does not give media the right to use her real name without her expressed consent, according to Rachel Khan, chair of the journalism department at the University of the Philippines.
“It’s a matter of respecting the privacy of the person, despite the fact that she had gone out and filed the case,” Khan, who is also a consultant for the Center for Media Freedom and Res-ponsibility, said in an ANC interview.
For Ursua, only Nicole can decide whether to have her real name disclosed or not. “It’s not our life, it’s hers. She’ll (have to) live with it,” she said.

Denying the horror
Bob Steele of The Poynter Institute, the Florida-based journalism training organization, seems to agree. In his August 2002 column in Poynter Online (www.poynter.org), he wrote: “As journalists, we generally write a story and move on. Those we write about will be forever connected to that story. We have a duty to show great care and concern.”
In the rape case against William Kennedy Smith in 1991, some editors justified the publication of the victim’s name without her consent by pointing out that withholding the name only reinforces the stigma that victims suffer.
But in her 1992 book Virgin or vamp: How the press covers sex crimes, journalist and author Helen Benedict countered that view, “To deny the role of sexual humiliation in rape is to deny victims the horror of what they have been through.”
According to Benedict, naming a rape victim guarantees that “whenever somebody hears her name, that somebody will picture her in the act of being sexually tortured. To expose a rape victim to this without her consent is nothing short of punitive.”
In contrast, journalist Geneva Overholser, a vocal proponent of naming rape victims in news reports wrote in her Poynter column (“Time to name the accuser”) that when the accuser in the rape case against American basketball superstar Kobe Bryant in 2003 filed a suit, the woman effectively placed herself in the “public limelight,” thus justifying media’s move to “cease the conceit of this naming taboo.”
Overholser resigned after the editors of Poynter decided to remove the name of the rape victim from her column. The editors reasoned that “the journalistic purpose to be achieved by naming the accuser is outweighed by the potential harm that could result from doing so.”

Educating journalists
In the Nicole case, media—while extensively covering the story—failed to educate the public on the truths and myths about rape. The two laws on rape, Republic Act (RA) 8353 (The Anti-Rape Law of 1997) and RA 8505 (Rape Victim Assistance and Protection Act of 1998) were never discussed thoroughly in the press.
Worse, journalists themselves perpetuated some common misconceptions about rape.
In a live interview with Nicole in 24 Oras last Dec. 5, GMA-7 news anchor Mel Tiangco asked what lessons young people should learn from her experience. Sensing the vagueness in Nicole’s reply, Tiangco made a quick follow-up: “Eh ’yung tamang pag-inom, Nicole, ng ating mga kababaihan, hindi ba dapat din?”
Nicole was taken aback by the question but answered after a while: “Opo, dapat din po na alamin natin kung hanggang saan ang limits ng ating pag-inom.”
Tiangco seemed to imply that Nicole was perhaps also to  blame for the rape because she had been drinking before the incident.
Reporters also tended to simply report what the lawyers had said after the hearings without corroborating their claims with other sources. When the defense lawyers argued that the rape could not have taken place because of the very limited space inside the van, the media did not seek out the opinion of crime experts to determine if this was true.
Blog sites and forums in the Internet mentioning Nicole’s real name and even condemning her show that the public still needs to be better informed about rape. Even those in the legal system—including  investigators and judges—need to be educated about rape, Ursua said.

Another angle
The Subic rape story also exposed the problem of interpreting the Visiting Forces Agreement’s (VFA) provision on the custody of a US serviceman convicted of a crime in the Philippines.
The media could have taken the opportunity to look into the VFA, its historical background, and experts’ views on it.
The media also seemed to forget about a counterpart agreement between the US and the Philippines regarding Filipi-no military personnel who visit the US. It would have been inte-resting to know how the Philip-pine government’s interpre-tation of the VFA would affect the treatment of Filipino soldiers who might find themselves convicted of a crime in the US.
From the day the rape story broke out, media did not falter in reporting daily developments. Even when the trial had ended, journalists followed the custody issue involving Smith and how he was being treated—or given special treatment—at the Makati City Jail where he was detained for about three weeks.
Despite lapses in the coverage, a few reports stood out from the rest.
On judgment day itself, the Philippine Daily Inquirer gave readers the context of the Subic rape trial. Its front-page report had a rundown of the arguments and counter-arguments by both the prosecution and defense based on the evidence presented during the trial (“4 American Marines face judgment today,” Dec. 4).
The following day, the Inquirer recalled the key events of the case from Day One until the handing down of the decision (“Historic court trial ends in high drama,” Dec. 5).
The Philippine Star had an exclusive interview with the driver of the van where the rape allegedly took place (“Subic van driver says there was no rape,” Dec. 11). The Star report revealed that Timoteo Soriano Jr., the so-called “missing link” in the rape case, was willing to testify. Through the report, Soriano was able to tell his “own version of the truth.” (sic)
In the wake of the landmark trial, Ursua asked media: In the event of another rape case, how can the press improve its coverage?
High-profile or not, every rape case must be handled responsibly and carefully by the press.  The Subic rape case provided ample lessons for this.  Among its lessons: revealing the real name of the victim is in the end her decision, which the media must respect.

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