Epstein’s victims deserve more attention than his ‘client list’

The Jeffrey Epstein story has slipped in and out of the headlines for years but in a very particular way Majority news articles ask a specific question which powerful men might be on the list Headlines focus on unidentified elites and who may be exposed or embarrassed rather than on the people whose suffering made the incident newsworthy in the first place the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked Right now the story is entering a new phase A federal judge has authorized the Justice Department to unseal grand jury transcripts and other evidence from Epstein companion Ghislaine Maxwell s sex trafficking incident A court in Florida has cleared the release of grand jury records from a federal inquiry into Epstein himself all under the new Epstein Files Transparency Act Passed in November that law gives the Justice Department days to release nearly all Epstein-related files The deadline is Dec Journalists and the general are watching to see what those documents will reveal beyond names we already know and whether a long-rumored client list will at last materialize Alongside that there has been a stream of survivor-centered reporting Certain outlets including CNN have regularly featured Epstein survivors and their attorneys reacting to new developments Those segments are a reminder that another story is available one that treats the women at the center of the matter as sources of understanding not just as evidence of someone else s fall from grace These coexisting storylines reveal a deeper dilemma After the MeToo movement peaked the community conversation about sexual violence and the news has clearly shifted More survivors now speak publicly under their own names and various outlets have adapted Yet long-standing conventions about what counts as news conflict controversy elite people and dramatic turns in a episode still shape which aspects of sexual violence make it into headlines and which stay on the margins That tension raises a question In a circumstance where the law largely permits naming casualties of sexual violence and where specific survivors are explicitly asking to be seen why do journalistic practices so often withhold names or treat sufferers as secondary to the story What the law allows and why newsrooms rarely do it The U S Supreme Court has repeatedly held that cabinet generally may not punish news organizations for publishing truthful information drawn from community records even when that information is a rape victim s name When states tried in the s and s to penalize outlets that identified casualties using names that had already appeared in court documents or police reports the court mentioned those punishments violated the First Amendment Newsrooms responded by tightening restraint not loosening it Under pressure from feminist activists victim advocates and their own staff a large number of organizations adopted policies against identifying casualties of sexual assault especially without consent Journalism ethics codes now urge reporters to minimize harm be cautious about naming casualties of sex crimes and consider the peril of retraumatization and stigma In other words U S law permits what newsroom ethics codes discourage Related The fight for the Epstein files isn t over How anonymity became the norm and MeToo complicated it For much of the th century rape casualties were routinely named in U S news coverage a reflection of unequal gender norms Casualties reputations were treated as constituents property while men accused of sexual violence were portrayed sympathetically and in detail By the s and s feminist movements drew attention to underreporting and intense stigma Activists built rape dilemma centers and hotlines documented how rarely sexual assault cases led to prosecution and argued that if a woman feared seeing her name in the paper she might never summary at all Lawmakers passed rape shield laws that limited the use of a victim s sexual history in court Selected states went further by barring publication of casualties names In response to these laws as well as feminist pressure most of newsrooms by the s moved toward a default rule of not naming casualties More of late the MeToo movement added a turn Survivors in workplaces politics and entertainment chose to speak publicly often under their own names about serial abuse and institutional cover-ups Their accounts forced newsrooms to revisit assumptions about whose voices should lead a story Yet MeToo also unfolded within existing journalistic conventions Investigations tended to focus on high-profile men spectacular falls from power and moments of reckoning leaving less space for the quieter ongoing realities of recovery legal limbo and group response The unintended effects of keeping survivors faceless There are good reasons for policies against naming sufferers Survivors may face harassment employment discrimination or danger from abusers if they are identified For minors there are additional concerns about long-term digital evidence In communities where sexual violence carries intense social stigma anonymity can be a lifeline But research on media framing suggests that naming patterns matter When coverage focuses on the alleged perpetrator as a complex individual someone with a name a career and a backstory while referring to a victim or accusers in the singular audiences are more likely to empathize with the suspect and scrutinize the victim s behavior In high-profile cases like Epstein s that dynamic intensifies The powerful men connected to him are named dissected and speculated about The survivors unless they work hard to step forward remain a blurred mass in the background Anonymity meant to protect truly flattens their experience Different stories of grooming coercion and survival get reduced to a single faceless category A window into what we think is news That flattening is part of what makes the current moment in the Epstein story so revealing The suspense is less about whether more casualties will be heard and more about what being named will do to influential men It becomes a story about whose names count as news Systematically anonymizing survivors while breathlessly chasing a client list of powerful men unintentionally sends a message about who matters the bulk The Epstein controversy in that framing is not primarily about what was done to girls and young women over various years but about who among the elite might be embarrassed implicated or exposed A more survivor-centered journalistic approach would start from a different set of questions including wondering which survivors have chosen to speak on the record and why and how news outlets can protect anonymity when it is inquired for but still convey a victim s individuality Those questions are not only about ethics They are about news judgment They ask editors and reporters to consider whether the preponderance crucial part of a story like Epstein s is the next famous name to drop or the ongoing lives of the people whose abuse made that name newsworthy at all Stephanie A Sam Martin Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Populace Affairs Boise State University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license Read the original article Read more about this topic House Democrats release new batch of Epstein photos Democrats ask DOJ watchdog to prevent tampering with Epstein files Judge orders release of grand jury files in Epstein s sex trafficking situation The post Epstein s casualties deserve more attention than his client list appeared first on Salon com