Media Crtitque: CNN Coverage of the Steubenville Rape Trial in March

    In March, six months ago, the rape trial involving high school students in Steubenville, Ohio, made the national news due to the fact that the accused rapists (Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond, 16 and 17) and posted photographic and video-taped evidence of the event and its participants on Twitter. That evidence was removed, but was then recovered by hackers and a blogger who was desperate to break the story and hold the rapists accountable regardless of their age. News of this sparked outrage because this girl was black-out drunk and unaware of what was happening; if she can't physically say yes, then nobody has permission to engage in sex with her.

    For those of you who are unfamiliar with the details of the trial, there was an girl who was 16 at the time of the event (August 2012), she has chosen to remain anonymous, and she went out partying one night. She got very drunk and it eventually got the point where she passed out. She was then taken by teenage boys from one party to another, and on the way to the second party she was sexually assaulted while she was passed out. Then, when she arrived at the party (still passed out), she was sexually assaulted for a second. After the event, the rapists recorded a video of themselves talking about how they raped this blacked-out girl, referring to her as being "dead" and saying that somebody urinated on her and she didn't wake up. They continued to make jokes about how they raped this poor girl, and the rapists had throughout the event posted things on Twitter (pictures of this girl and messages about her rape), which they tried to delete along with their video. However, a couple of hackers and blogger caught wind of this girl's story and went to recover the hard evidence.

    In mid-March, CNN reported on the outcome of this trial when the rapists were convicted in juvenile court  by a judge and no jury to a minimum of a one-year sentence in prison up to a maximum sentence of until the rapists' turn 21. This would have been a great story, considering there were two women delivering it, Poppy Harlow reporting and the CNN anchor Candy Crowley. However, this story turned out to be one carrying heavy tones of apology for the rapists. Poppy Harlow kicked the story off by saying:

"I've never experienced anything like it, Candy. It was incredibly emotional-- incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures.... Literally watched as they believe their life fall apart."


    The two women then continued to tell this story in such a way that was blatantly apparent in trying to gain sympathy for the two boys convicted of rape, only mentioning their charges briefly once and mentioning the victim a grand total of three times. Candy Crowley then called in legal expert Paul Callen to explain how these boys' being on the Registered Sex Offenders List would "haunt them for the rest of their lives."

    Now, in any kind of journalism, tone is everything. If a journalist delivers facts in a biased way, they immediately violate the yardstick of fairness. This is a prime example of that. When Poppy Harlow mentions the alcohol involved in the event, she describes it as if it the alcohol who caused the rape, and not the actual rapists. When she describes the additional charge that Trent Mays received aside from the felony of sexual assault of felony of taking pornographic pictures of a minor, she describes it as almost accidental. Listen carefully to her tone and voice and its almost like she's implying that he just saw a naked girl drunk and passed out on the floor and his finger slipped, taking her picture. Listen to the way she says "because he took a photograph." Then his finger slipped again and they were posted all over Twitter.

    By doing this, not only did Poppy Harlow violate the yardstick of fairness by airing biased facts, but CNN in general crossed over the lines of both the principle and yardstick having to do with truth. If someone manipulates the truth for their own means, they are no longer telling the truth, they are giving opinions. When Candy Crowley brought Paul Callen in to do a legal analysis, she said that despite "what big football players they are, they still sound like sixteen year olds to us." Notice how she didn't include the victim in this statement, who was also only sixteen, but mentioned her separately.

   CNN tried to abide by the yardstick of explanation by having Candy Crowley and Paul Callen discuss the "big picture" of what the "lasting effects" of the court decision to convict these felons (CNN also failed to mention that rape is a felony in Ohio, yet again violating the principle of truth).
However, they failed by only mentioning the effects of the rape on the rapists, not the victim (there's that pesky yardstick of fairness again).

    Lastly, CNN violated the principle of exercising your conscience by airing a story that heavily seemed to justify rape. Rape is a serious problem in America, and its a violent crime against women. If someone tries to justify rape, then they are trying to justify men using women's bodies whenever without the need for permission. Morally, this is wrong. Shame on CNN, Paul Callen, Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow.

    CNN has since taken this video off of their website, but it can be found on an infotainment news source that is actually more reliable than it sounds.


http://sourcefednews.com/cnn-reporter-labeled-rape-apologist-after-steubenville-update/