Shame Is For Criminals
It has been years, but I still remember the ache in the man's voice. He and his wife had been victims of a violent crime. It was newsworthy, and The Post's Metro section, which I headed then, was readying a story. "Why is our name important?" the Virginia man asked as he pleaded that we not identify him or his wife.
I had a flashback to that phone conversation as I read about the vindication this week of three former Duke University lacrosse players accused of raping a 28-year-old woman. Not only were all charges against the young men dropped, but the North Carolina attorney general went so far as to say that the crime that was alleged never took place. Now an editorial writer and separated from news decisions, I wondered how newspapers -- including my own -- would handle the question of whether to name the discredited accuser. The Post, the New York Times and the Associated Press continued to grant anonymity to the woman while newspapers in North Carolina, the New York Daily News and many Web sites not only published her name but also a photograph.
I'll confess to being somewhat of an extremist in my view that the role of newspapers is to report, not withhold, information. Names -- in essence who and what a story is about -- are important. Names give humanity to events and help in our understanding. Would Don Imus's hateful words have had such sting if we had not known who their intended targets were? The identity of people at the center of the news should be withheld only under the most dire of circumstances and for sound reason. Otherwise, we start down a slippery slope.
In my years as a news editor, I sometimes agreed to withhold names when, for instance, police said publication could jeopardize an arrest or endanger a witness. Once, a psychiatrist argued that her patient would cause herself harm if her name appeared in the newspaper, and so we ended up not publishing a story. In the case of the couple who had been attacked in their home, we published their names -- after determining that the culprit in the crime was in custody and posed no threat to them. I took no pleasure in causing more pain to a couple already suffering, but sympathy for an individual shouldn't trump what the public is entitled to know.
It's instructive that the Raleigh News & Observer reached its decision to name the Duke lacrosse accuser after doing its own fact-finding, consulting with people who have interests in the issue, among them lawyers, a judge and advocates for victims of sexual assault. News organizations that withheld the name simply fell back on their long-standing policies of not naming people who say they are victims of sexual abuse.
The only problem is, as North Carolina Attorney General Roy A. Cooper made clear in his searing assessment, no sexual assault occurred in this case. Continuing to withhold this woman's name perpetuates a suggestion that she is a victim, in need of shielding and protecting. It's an insidious suggestion that maybe a crime did indeed occur. That's not fair to the facts or to the young men whose names already have been tarnished by this false accusation. By the same token, there is a certain hypocrisy in newspaper accounts that delicately cloak this woman in anonymity but then characterize her with the worst of adjectives.
The discussion in newsrooms about whether to name this woman who was not raped has reignited the debate about whether the media should continue their long-standing practice of not naming victims of sexual crimes even though their names are a matter of public record. The Raleigh newspaper announced that it is reviewing its policy of not naming victims and invited readers to weigh in with their opinions. The theory behind not naming rape victims is that publicity would discourage women from reporting that they had been assaulted, and sexual assaults are already underreported crimes. As a journalist, I think publicity is a great spotlight that focuses attention on problems and -- witness Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- can lead to solutions. Pick up a newspaper, turn on the television -- coverage of the awful sexual violence against women is, at best, consigned to briefs. Unless, of course, a celebrity is involved and then the story isn't really about what happened to the victim.
Some of the most powerful words on this issue were penned by Geneva Overholser, who as editor of the Des Moines Register argued that suppressing the names of victims stigmatizes these women rather than protecting them. Her editorials prompted a rape victim to come forward to be identified in stories that captured the true horror of rape. The paper won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for public service. It's 16 years later, and, to use Overholser's words, rape is still in that dark corner. The true victims of sexual assault have -- just as that couple from Virginia -- nothing for which to feel shame. It's time to say so publicly.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff. Her e-mail address isarmaoj@washpost.com.
