The Global Pulse

When I wrote for NEED, a humanitarian magazine that published from 2006-2009, I learned to strip the word “victim” from my vocabulary.  I was a senior in college and I clearly remember the moment that Stephanie Kinnunen, editor in chief, informed me that this term was banned from her publication.  It felt profound – in a way that I didn’t yet fully understand.

NEED magazine Issue 3 cover
photographer: Ron Haviv

Making a concerted effort to erase “victim” from my reporting left a large impression on me.  In the context of humanitarian and social justice news, I often came across stories that identified people as “victims” and felt irresolute.  For me, the word developed a negative connotation that never seemed to match the author’s intent.

At the conclusion of my second gender and women’s studies course in graduate school, I feel that I can finally articulate this tension behind the word “victim.”  It frames an individual as a helpless, passive character who is stuck on the receiving end of poor circumstances.  Calling someone a victim strips them of their agency – a popular word among academics that refers to an individual’s capacity to make choices, to take control of their own lives.

Am I overanalyzing all of this?  After all, Nicolas Kristof refers to sex trafficking victims, rape victims, and victims of honor killings in his reports of human rights abuses for the New York Times.  But then I suppose he has his own rationale and, if I had a chance to ask him, he might convince me otherwise.  I can’t assume what academic and professional experiences have shaped his perception of the word “victim.”

In pursuit of my master’s in journalism at UW-Madison, I chose to take two internationally focused gender and women’s studies courses to help develop my “area of expertise.” Through these courses, I didn’t become an expert on any single human rights issue.  But I did expand my sense of story in the realm of international social justice and, most importantly, I became more sensitive to word choice when writing about these issues.

For instance, in an article we read for class. Uma Narayan[1], fixates on the term “dowry-murders,” which is used to paint a picture of Indian women as “victims of their culture.”

Uma Narayan
Photo Credit: http://kilden.forskningsradet.no/c17251/artikkel/vis.html?tid=36124

At the same time, Western women who die at the hands of abusive partners are not framed as victims of Western culture because this same culture counters the issue with shelters for battered women.  In essence, Western media resist any depiction of Western women as victims of a culture that condones violence against women.  This would be inconsistent with the proud Democratic narrative of Western culture.

As a female Indian-American academic in the U.S., Narayan has spent years struggling to resolve the frustration she felt whenever she came across “dowry murder” as a symbolic representation of the female experience in India.  She set out to dissect this familiar narrative and the unintended negative consequences of it.  This led her to coin a new term for American reporters to consider: “domestic-violence murders.” She explained:

In contrast to “dowry-murders,” fatal forms of domestic violence in the United States are a problem lacking a term that “specifically picks them out” from the general category of “domestic violence.”  I believe that this “absence” operates to impede Americans from making the connection that would facilitate their seeing dowry-murder as a form of domestic violence.

Even as I attempt to pare down her argument, I am struck by how nuanced words truly are.  As bearers of cross-cultural information, this places a large responsibility on media professionals to choose their words carefully.  I do my best to consider this in my own journalistic studies. But, admittedly, it can be hard for journalists to avoid oversimplifying human rights issues when they’re limited by editorial pressures.

Writing for the Boston Review, Jina Moore asserts the need for sensitized reporting in her article, “The White Correspondent’s Burden: We Need to Tell the Africa Story Differently.”  She explains how American media professionals have shaped African reports around images of poverty, disease, violence, and “our own compassion.”  This locks Africans into a single narrative that casts them as victims waiting to be saved by Western outsiders.  This depiction is misleading and can cause more harm than good. (Please read Moore’s article for more detail on the dangers of oversimplifying stories for news.)

I don’t think concern over using value-laden words should paralyze any journalist from tacking underreported issues.  Rather, it’s a learning curve that takes discipline and humility.  No matter which nation, culture, race, or gender we identify with, shedding these perceptions takes time, practice, and reflection.  For me, gender and women studies classes are my attempt to take control of this process.  But you don’t need to enroll in a university course to challenge your social justice reporting techniques and word choice tendencies.

Here are a few online resources that I’ve come across thus far:

Thomson Reuters Foundation (Media development/advocacy org), Central European Journalists’ Guide to Reporting Development

International Women’s Media Foundation (Female journalist advocacy org), Reporting on HIV/AIDS in Africa: A Manual

Internews (Media development org), Speak Up, Speak Out: A Toolkit for Journalists Reporting on Gender and Human Rights Issues

GLAAD (LGBT org), Media Reference Guide

Please share any other guides or other resources that focus on sensitized reporting.  I know there are plenty more that I’m unaware of.  In the media profession, we are fond of talking about the power of a single story to create social change.  Moving forward, consider the power of a single word to do the same.