TY - JOUR
T1 - Teaching Journalists About Violence Against Women Best Reportage Practices
T2 - An Australian Case Study
AU - Easteal AM, Patricia
AU - Blatchford, Annie
AU - Holland, Kate
AU - Sutherland, Georgina
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Media reporting of violence against women (VAW) has the potential to contribute to improving the community’s understanding and response to this social problem. However, journalists are not immune to gender biases and myths concerning VAW. Both can affect how the subject is framed. We look at an Australian training programme implemented to improve VAW news reporting practices such as including social context, family violence experts and help-seeking information for survivors, challenging myths and avoiding perpetrator exoneration and victim-blaming. We compare journalists’ reporting before and after training and also compare the trained reporters’ content with a matched comparison sample written by untrained journalists to see if training translates into best practice reporting. We conclude that reportage practices have improved overall in recent years and that the training model, in which participants were selected to take part, appears to be effective in improving some key elements of best practice reporting, but some areas of concern remain. We recommend more targeted programmes with curriculum additions to better address some reporting deficiencies we identify.
AB - Media reporting of violence against women (VAW) has the potential to contribute to improving the community’s understanding and response to this social problem. However, journalists are not immune to gender biases and myths concerning VAW. Both can affect how the subject is framed. We look at an Australian training programme implemented to improve VAW news reporting practices such as including social context, family violence experts and help-seeking information for survivors, challenging myths and avoiding perpetrator exoneration and victim-blaming. We compare journalists’ reporting before and after training and also compare the trained reporters’ content with a matched comparison sample written by untrained journalists to see if training translates into best practice reporting. We conclude that reportage practices have improved overall in recent years and that the training model, in which participants were selected to take part, appears to be effective in improving some key elements of best practice reporting, but some areas of concern remain. We recommend more targeted programmes with curriculum additions to better address some reporting deficiencies we identify.
KW - Australia
KW - journalism training
KW - reporting violence against women court cases
KW - violence against women
KW - violence against women media training
KW - violence against women newspapers
KW - Violence against women reportage
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101297067&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17512786.2021.1886866
DO - 10.1080/17512786.2021.1886866
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85101297067
SN - 1751-2786
VL - 16
SP - 2185
EP - 2201
JO - Journalism Practice
JF - Journalism Practice
IS - 10
ER -