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Sorko
7/21/2002 (19:49) |
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By Nadya Stani
In late July, a sensational story hit the Australian press about a spate of gang rapes in Sydney. Eighteen young men were charged with over 360 sexual assault offenses. The New South Wales (NSW) police identified the perpetrators as being Lebanese and Muslim, the victims as Caucasian and alleged that the rapes were racially motivated.
It was a big story, obviously. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly accurate.
In fact, the media so sensationalized these crimes that it raised the question of whether they can cover a story that involves race without criminalizing what are essentially minority and powerless communities (despite Australia's celebrated multiculturalism and its oft-remarked tolerance of cultural diversity). Rather than challenge the conflicting and confusing accusations and statistics, the major newspapers (which have been described by Australian Arab writer and community activist Paula Abood as a white institution) handled this story in ways that made the racial tensions and racist currents far worse.
For several weeks Australian television and radio news bulletins ran with 'Muslim rape gangs' in their headlines, as did the tabloid press.
The Australian, a national newspaper, declared in a headline that there's a 'rape menace from the melting pot.' And a headline from Sydney's major tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, shrieked 'I was raped because of my nationality.' (It was coverage for which its editor, Campbell Reid, says he makes 'no apologies.')
This was a potentially explosive situation. And because race was part of the story, there was a real risk that this could blow up into ugly vigilantism, with attacks on innocent Muslims and Arabs due simply to race. It could, and it did. And the media are, at least in part, to blame.
A Melbourne talk show reports receiving e-mails from listeners who say they have moved out of certain suburbs because of 'the Muslim presence' and allegations of the harassment of women, presumably by Muslim men. This information is presented uncritically and adds to the demonization of the community.
One-Sided View
'Because of the way representation works in Australia,' says Abood, 'all Lebanese men are now vilified as rapists because no one ever sees Lebanese Australians talking for themselves — they've always been represented as something quite negative.'
Lebanese Australians, along with Vietnamese Australians, are generally featured in the Australian media through associations with crime, unemployment and gang violence. It's a community that seems to have become fair game for media attacks. In 1998, the Daily Telegraph featured a front page story about the alleged ease of purchasing guns in the Bankstown area of Sydney and the effortless access young men have to weapons. Though the story has been strongly contested by the young men featured in it, it is an example of the stereotypical and simplistic reporting that Australia's popular press relies upon, and with which it tarnishes vulnerable communities.
And so it was not difficult to whip up hysteria about 'Muslim rape gangs' even if the number of attacks were never really clear. Early news reports in July said that 70 such attacks had been reported over the last two years in Bankstown.
Three weeks later, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics challenged those reports, citing figures that put the total number of sexual assaults occurring in the local government area of Bankstown (where the bulk of the attacks took place) at 10 each month.
The Bureau also pointed out that in fact rapes by multiple perpetrators occur with greater frequency in NSW's rural areas, where fewer Lebanese Muslims live. Further, it revealed that in 1999, 70 sexual assaults, out of a total of 120 in Bankstown, were charged to one man, from an Anglo-Australian background.
Each year in NSW 140 women are gang-raped. Rarely do any of these attacks receive public attention and seldom do they become the subject of a debate on tough sentencing. Many observers, including some within the Arab community, couldn't help making the connections between Bob Carr, NSW's premier, his favorite populist platform — law and order — and the public hysteria that surrounded the identity of the attackers in this case.
'Carr is always on about law and order,' says Abood, 'so I see it as a political campaign when certain communities get racially profiled. And the media pick up those stories — they're the sorts of sensationalist and racist stories that have become normalized in the Australian media.'
But the tabloids and talk media in Australia have never been known for letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Soon, the incendiary reporting incited racist violence against Sydney's Muslim and Lebanese community. Muslim women, in particular, were spat on, verbally abused and physically attacked.
2ue, a radio station in Sydney, whose talk shows have long been regarded as a barometer of public opinion by Australian governments, fielded calls similar to one it received from 'Steve,' a white, working executive from the suburbs, who said, according to Melbourne's Age newspaper, 'There will be — and I'm certainly not trying to inspire it here — massive vigilante reaction. I would not like to be walking down the road as a girl in that headdress.'
Assaults have increased even more following the September 11th attacks in the United States. The Muslim Women's Association reports that women students are being taunted with 'You're worth raping now.' The Melbourne-based Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC) has documented an increase in hates crimes particularly against women since the September 11th attacks. It cites a particularly disturbing case where a pregnant Muslim woman was 'assaulted at a tram-stop in inner Melbourne. The assailants subjected her to racial abuse before threatening to murder her if she didn't remove her hijab [headscarf]. She was then viciously assaulted by one male, who smashed her head against a metal pole. It was only when the tram arrived that the assailant fled.'
Since September 11, racist violence has also escalated against Australia's Sikh, African and Asian communities; the media's complicity in creating the conditions for such violence cannot be underestimated.
So why couldn't the popular press offer more balanced reports?
'It's not rocket science,' says TV presenter Quentin Dempster of Stateline, on ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, one of two publicly funded broadcasters here). A weekly program about state issues, Stateline presented two carefully considered reports on Sydney's multiple sexual assaults and the 'hidden epidemic' of the lack of reporting of rape by women. These stories were in distinct contrast to the popular media's reporting of the story, which Dempster says 'press the prejudice button and win popular response from the white Christian mainstream.'
However, the Daily Telegraph's editor Campbell Reid rejects suggestions that his paper distorted the story or relied upon stereotypes. The Telegraph, according to Reid, spent some months investigating. The paper's 'court reporters were following the story and were well versed not only in the details of that case but also what the investigating police had been telling them and the briefings from senior police.'
While Quentin Dempster concedes that reporting 'the racial or religious background of those involved can be legitimate to explore the question of motivation to commit crime,' he says 'it can also distort the story to secure a more sensational treatment, and journalists must be alive to this.'
The Daily Telegraph views the issue differently. 'Our reporters spent time with the victim of one of these crimes. She believes she was raped because she was an Australian,' says Reid. In deciding to whom the paper owes a responsibility, he adds, the Daily Telegraph 'owes a responsibility to victims in this crime.'
Race? Gender?
Nada Roude, media spokesperson for the NSW Islamic Council, says her community has condemned the crimes, yet it is 'being targeted and feeling like it was responsible for the commitment of such heinous crimes. A lot of hatred has been directed against the Muslim community.'
The crimes must be 'identified as a gender issue,' she adds.
So it would seem, given that the cases that went to court concluded that there was no racial motivation behind the attacks. Judge Megan Latham who presided over the cases, found 'no evidence before her' that race was a factor.
Pressed on the backlash of violence experienced by the Arab and Muslim community, Reid asks if it is his responsibility to protect them. 'Am I meant to say that there's one group of women in danger of being raped and attacked in our society, but because I don't want to offend anyone, I'm not going to talk about it?'
In the already volatile environment created by media reporting, the first case, which went to court in August, created a furor led by Australia's tabloids over the 'lenient' sentences. The three offenders received between 18 months and six years. The clamor provided the NSW government with the justification to introduce legislation to increase the sentences for rapes involving multiple perpetrators. Offenders now face a sentence of 25 years (known as 'life') instead of a maximum 20 years.
The Daily Telegraph has since changed its reporting of the story and is no longer saying the sexual attacks are racially motivated. In fact, there are no longer any references to the religion and background of the attackers.
In reporting the recent sentencing of a 17-year-old man for his involvement in the gang rape of two young women, which re-ignited a public furor over law and order in NSW, little or no references were made to his cultural and religious background.
While it's a welcome change, the question is, as always: How long will it last?
And perhaps more important, when will journalists interrogate their sources as well as themselves, their colleagues and editors about why stories are reported to bolster prejudice rather than to unpack and challenge it?
Why does our craft behave much like a lynch mob against groups who have little power?
— Nadya Stani is a freelance journalist based in Australia. She recently produced a program for ABC radio's The Media Report, on the reporting of race.
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