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Manufacturing Concern: Chapter Five: Explaining the Results Jim Boyce

 

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We have seen that headlines portray women as victims of violence differently and far more frequently than men, and examined these findings in terms of several specific cases, such as headlines from 1984 and headlines from the CNI category Child Abuse. In this chapter, I show that these portrayals are inconsistent with the rates of victimization found in police statistics, personal surveys and academic studies. I then suggest three reasons for the types of portrayals we find: an emphasis on gender only in cases where women are victims of violence, the influence of the Montreal Massacre and the type of sources used in reporting on gender and violence.

Rates of Violence Against Men and Women

In determining rates of violence, I have focused on sources which report on both genders rather than one or the other. Recent statistics based on police records suggest men and women experience similar rates of victimization. Canadian Crime Statistics, for example, reported that in 1992 “50% of the victims of violent crime were males and 50 per cent were females” (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics 1994:64). Another study, based on 1991 information from 15 police departments, found “women were reported to be the victims of crime as often as men,” although it recognized that the findings were, “contrary to what has previously been found [in other studies],” namely, that rates of violence against men have traditionally been higher than those for women (Trevethan and Samagh 1992:14). The rising levels of violence reported by women in recent years is due, in part, to an increase in the reporting of sexual assault (Johnson 1988:27) and domestic violence against women (Trevethan and Samagh 1992:2). Trevethan and Samagh write that between 1982 and 1991, the sexual assault rate more than doubled, compared to the rate for assault (63%), other violent offenses (32%) and robbery (10%) (1992:4).

Police statistics suggest men and women are victimized at similar rates. There are, however, limits to such sources: “some crimes are never detected and some which are detected are never brought to the attention of the police” (Canadian Centre 1992:17). This limitation is borne out in personal surveys on victimization, the 1988 General Social Survey finding that “90% of sexual assaults and 68% of non-sexual assaults were never brought to the attention of the police” (Gartner and Doob 1994:2). Ten thousand Canadians were interviewed by telephone for the General Social Survey of 1988 and 1993. The respondents were aged 15 years or older and answered questions about their experiences with violence in the previous year. A report on the 1988 survey stated that, “in general, men face greater risks of criminal violence (90 incidents per 1,000 [population]) than do women (77 incidents per 1000 population)” (Sacco and Johnson 1990:24). A report on the 1993 survey, noting that additional questions had been asked to determine levels of sexual assault, found that the rate for women was 101 incidents per 1000 population compared to 80 incidents per 1000 for men (Gartner and Doob 1994:6). This is in comparison to the Canadian Urban Victimization survey in 1981 which found that “men were twice as likely as women to be victims of violent crime” (Johnson 1988:27). Personal surveys, just as statistics based on police records, are limited: “they are based on respondents’ perceptions of events and so may include offenses that would not have resulted in charges being laid by police” (Trevethan and Samagh 1992:5).

Although women and men appear to have similar victimization rates they appear to be victimized in different ways and places. Women have been found to be five (Canadian Centre 1994:64) to eight (Trevethan and Samagh 1992:6) times more likely to report being victims of sexual assault, while men tend to report higher assault rates (Canadian Centre 1994:64) and are twice as likely to be murdered (Wright 1992:9; Statistics Canada 1989:65). Trevethan and Samagh found that women were more likely than men to report being attacked in a residence (62% to 30%), men citing the outdoors (43% to 22%) and public places (27% to 16%) (1992:10). Women tended to report being attacked by their spouse or other family member (50% to 9%) while men reported strangers (51% to 20%) or friends, business relations or acquaintances (39% to 29%) (1992:8; also see Canadian Centre 1994:53). The majority of women and men were attacked by men, Canadian Crime Statistics showing that about 90 per cent of adults charged with violent crimes are male (Canadian Centre 1991:12; 1992:13). There are a variety of other factors that could be examined, such as the age, marital status, education level and geographical location. But when we put aside such differences and consider overall rates of violence, recent statistics and surveys suggest men and women in Canada appear to suffer from relatively similar rates of violence.

As in the case of police statistics, there are limits to the findings of personal surveys. In particular, they may be skewed by the social acceptability or unacceptability of reports of particular kinds of violence. It is in this regard significant that statistics on violence against women have increased in the years we have been studying, years in which “violence against women has become a prominent social issue” (Trevethan and Samagh 1992:2), a point affirmed by the findings of this thesis. The matter is also complicated by changes in methodology, such as those in the 1993 General Social Survey which asked additional questions about sexual assault. Trevethan and Samagh point out, in examining police statistics, that “although the increases in sexual assault may be due to a greater tendency towards reporting these offenses, they may also reflect definitional changes introduced by the Bill [C-127, in 1983, replacing rape with sexual assault]” (1992:5). It might therefore be asked whether male victimization, which is not considered a prominent social issue, is under-reported.

One especially important case is that of domestic violence. One study in Winnipeg found that wives were the victims in 90 per cent of court cases and husbands in 10 per cent (Ursel 1994:6). Studies based on personal surveys have, in contrast, suggested that men experience high rates of domestic violence. Brinkerhoff and Lupri found that 213 of the 562 couples they interviewed in Calgary in 1981 reported violence in the previous year. It was mutual in 38 per cent of the cases, solely by the husband against the wife in 27 per cent and solely by the wife against the husband in 35 per cent (1988:421).” DeKeseredy criticizes these findings, arguing that motives are not taken into account in these types of studies and that violence by women, even when instigated by women, is defensive (1993:5-6; also see DeKeseredy and Hinch 1991:11)³⁶ It should also be noted that studies have stated that men tend to be hesitant to report less severe injuries -- “men tend to report only the most extreme abuse, and would not dream of reporting lesser abuse... which women routinely report” (Steinmetz and Lucca 1988:238), and are thwarted by social stigmas -- “the stigma attached to this topic, which is embarrassing for beaten wives, is doubly so for beaten husbands” (239).³⁷

More work needs to be done to establish the extent to which men and women are willing to report particular kinds of victimization. This being said, there is no clear reason for thinking that women are more reluctant than men to report such incidents, especially since the findings of this thesis suggest society is more willing to consider the victimization of women.

The important point, then, is that the evidence we do have suggests men suffer as much violence as women but that this suffering receives little media attention. In explaining this situation, I will consider three factors suggested by the headlines: an emphasis on gender in those cases where women are either perceived to be or actually are the main victims of violence, the influence of the “Montreal massacre” and the type of sources used in reporting on gender and violence. 

 

The Emphasis on Family and Sexual Violence

The victimization of women was a media issue before the time period studied in this thesis. Headlines from 1984 show that gender was emphasized in reports on two kinds of violence -- sexual and family. In every instance the emphasis was on women. Most gender-specific headlines from 1989 to 1992 also focused on these types of violence although we begin to see other types of violence encompassed in the term “violence against women” and some headlines on men’s victimization.

Sexual and domestic violence seem to be considered newsworthy due to their intergendered and intimate nature. This violence is overwhelmingly seen in terms of men against women and, to a far lesser extent, women against men, rather than men against men or women against women. It is also intimate: domestic violence is not between strangers but people who have taken vows to love one another while sexual violence arguably violates our most personal space.

In many ways, focusing primarily on violence against women is attractive from a media standpoint. Simply put, it is a “good story”: it encompasses the entire population, is based on conflict (men versus women), concerns intimacy, and simplifies what are otherwise complex issues surrounding violence.  Fishman showed that a good story can override a concern with the facts.  In analyzing the construction of a crime wave against the elderly in New York, he described a journalist who learned of statistics showing that violence was on the decrease but “felt they were unreliable and incomplete, and anyway he had to do the story as originally planned because the whole issue was too big to pass up or play down.” Fishman continues: “As I checked with other journalists, I found that many had doubts about the reality of the crime wave. Still, no one could resist reporting it.  The crime wave was a force weighing heavily on their judgement of what was news, and it simply could not be ignored” (1980:5). When I asked an assistant managing editor at one of the newspapers studied in this thesis about the emphasis on violence against women, he said that “these things have a life of their own.... Why weren’t newspapers plugged into violence against women twenty years ago, fifty years, one hundred years ago?  I can’t explain it” (Paper4 1993).³⁸

 

Coverage of the Montreal Murders

Two other factors can help explain the trends in coverage we have found. One is the extensive coverage of the Montreal murders. Hachey and Grenier found 172 articles -- including 96 news stories and 76 opinion pieces -- on the massacre in the Montreal Gazette’s first month of coverage after the murders (1992:218). They write that “the Lepine mass murder attracted considerable newspaper coverage... [which] was found to be located predominantly in the first section of the newspaper as compared with all other sections, suggesting a relatively high degree of importance was attached to this event” (219). This importance is supported by our chronological examination of the headlines in the sample, which found that a high proportion were published in the weeks surrounding the Montreal murders and its anniversaries.

The symbolization of the murders widened the definition and intensified and sustained the focus on violence against women. This symbolization was literal in headlines calling the Massacre a “symbol of violence against women” (91.12.06 HCH.A7), a “symptom of widespread hate” (89.12.08 MO.D1 1) and a sign that violence against women was “deeply ingrained” (89.12.16 MG.B1,6). The symbolic status of the murders was also implicit in coverage of the anniversaries, whether in headlines reporting on vigils, memorials and a national day to remember violence against women, or associations of general violence against women and the murders. A headline such as “A year later, the lesson of Montreal still unheeded” (90.12.05 HCH.A6) suggests the murders were not atypical but, instead, held clues to ending all violence against women. In essence, the Montreal murders, which were neither an act of sexual nor domestic violence, served as a medium between those two specific types of violence and the remaining violence women suffer from men, and was reinforced in the yearly coverage of the anniversaries. As Tuchinan writes, “Juxtaposition is a form of categorizing, since it encourages the understanding that these facts have something to do with one another. It both claims and creates a theoretic relationship between and among the phenomena presented as facts” (1978:204). In essence, violence against women became a “news theme,” a way “to allow one to see diverse incidents as related insofar as they can be seen as instances of some encompassing theme” (Fishxnan 1980:6).

By widening the scope of violence against women, coverage of the Montreal murders provided the leeway for portraying them as “systemic” with each act being part of a “continuum.” As Hachey and Grenier write, “it symbolized to women, in general, and to feminists, in particular, all that was and still remained problematic with past and existing institutional structures” (1992:2 16). Not only did this facilitate discussing violence against women in terms of culture and equality but it led to broader generalizations about men and women. In examining media coverage of “Watergate,” Brunner describes how the meaning of the term evolved from referring to a specific event to being associated with larger issues:

At the time of the break-in, “Watergate” was understood by those few who recognized it as a reference to a building in Washington, D.C. By the time of the Presidential election, it was sufficiently dissociated from the building to be usable and widely used as a summary reference, with significant emotional overtones, to a complex of unresolved issues involving integrity in government (1987:54).

Symbolized, the “Montreal massacre” was a vehicle for future coverage. According to the headlines themselves, the murders “burst the issue of violence against women out of the closet” (90.12.01 HCH.Bl,2), serving as “a turning point” (91.12.06 VS.A19), a “national wakeup call” (92.12.04 CH.B6) and a “catalyst for action” (91.12.03 GM.A 1,10). Such headlines appeared each year alongside calls for the government, society and men in general to take action to stop violence against women.

An obvious way in which the murders became a general symbol was by associating the murderer to men in general and the 14 victims to women in general. Headlines such as “‘Men cannot know the feelings of fear”’ (89.12.12 GM.A7), “Suddenly, no woman can feel safe” (89.12.10 CH.C2) and “Slayings deal blow to gender relations, murder expert says” (89.12.11 GM.A9) imply that the violence of one man has much to say about male violence and female victimization in general. The idea of men’s collective responsibility is also seen in headlines concerning the White Ribbon Campaign. One headline reads, “Violence done to women doesn’t fade: even caring men amazed by fear many women feel” (90.12.05 MG.B3), suggesting that the separation of the sexes is so complete that even empathy is out of reach of most men.

The prevalence of this interpretation is seen in headlines which suggest a different approach to the murders: “some survivors are being challenged because they hesitate to characterize the event as indicative of sexism or male violence” (91.12.06 GM.A20). Grenier and Hachey, examining paragraphs from 172 Montreal Gazette news stories following the murders, found that the most frequently cited cause was “misogyny”: “The attribution of causality in the misogynous character of the offender himself... tended strongly to be generalized to men as a group and not particularized or restricted to one male or one type of male.  In a word, what emerged was a fairly consistent image of the male gender group as being inherently misogynous” (1992:31).

In essence, if the intergendered nature of domestic and sexual violence provided the media with a “good story,” the murders gave it a great story by symbolizing this conflict and serving as the basis for further coverage of all types of violence against women by men. Grenier and Hachey write that journalists tend to focus on those

angles of an event which “hold the greatest promise for continuous story extension.... [Ejfforts come to be exerted to associate them to other controversial issues, in our case, male aggression towards females in general” (1992:235). One reason for this coverage is the profit-making nature of the newspaper business:

Even when covering sensational news, the built-in tendency would be to maintain or expand the sensationalistic dimension of such news as much as possible even if it means exaggeration, contextless analyses, and over-generalization, to name but a few. Mass murder is certainly sensational news; in the age of women’s liberation, mass murder of females is even more so. Here is a major contemporary social calamity that offers newspapers enhanced prospects for increased advertising profits if readership can be rapidly and significantly increased and especially if this increase can be later maintained (236).

 

The Use of Sources

A final aspect of newspaper coverage that helps explain the trends we have found is the use of sources that emphasize women as victims of violence. Ericson. Baranek and Chan write: “News is a product of transactions between journalists and their sources” and “what is at stake in news production is the meaning attributed to events, processes, or states of affair” (1989:377).  Chibnall  calls sources  “the  primary gatekeepers of information” (1981:80). This suggests that the meaning and content of news is closely linked to, and dependent on, sources. As Fishman writes,

No matter how much journalists expect to see a certain theme in the news they cannot continue to cover it without a steady supply of fresh incidents to report as instances of a theme. Therefore, we must look at the sources of crime news to understand the origin and continued existence of crime waves (1980:8). 

In the case of the headlines examined in this thesis, the sources are overwhelmingly focused on women, whether in terms of individual cases of victimization, individuals and/or groups associated with the women’s movement, the government, the legal system or various gender-specific studies, etc.  When men are cited as sources, they also tend to emphasize women’s victimization (for example, the men who established the White Ribbon campaign).  When I talked to an assistant managing editor of one of the newspapers studied in this thesis I asked him what types of sources would be used for an article on violence against women.  He cited political organizations, groups like the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and a reporter’s own stock of sources.  When I asked what types of sources would be used in a story on violence against men, he said “there are a couple of men’s groups in town, can’t remember the names of them, there is Men Against Violence Against Women [my emphasis]….  [The reporter would] go to some of the people quoted in the past on violence against women.., although some people in NAC [National Action Committee on the Status of Women] might put a different spin on it [the issue]” (Paper4 1993).

The heavy emphasis on sources emphasizing women raises the question of whether this is indicative of an extreme bias in the media or, at least in part, the result of availability.  It is not surprising that the editor quoted above cites few sources dealing with men’s victimization since few exist. Consider the following:

a) The Directory of Associations in Canada lists hundred of women’s organizations. These include a wide range of groups concerning sexual assault and rape crisis centres, battered women’s shelters and national organizations such as Women Against Violence Against Women and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (1994:1308-10). Although there are more than a dozen men’s groups listed, none appear to concern violence against men while several concern violence against women.

b) We find similar trends in Corpus Almanac & Canadian Sourcebook. While dozens of women’s organizations are listed (1993;8:394-396), there are none listed for men. Canadian Almanac & Directory lists more than a hundred groups concerning women (see, for example, 1994;2:242-246,4-46), but has only two concerning men -- an association dealing with men’s clothing (2-30) and a men’s golf club in Prince Edward Island (2-24). 

c)  Government departments concerning women’s issues are found at the municipal, provincial and federal level. Most of these are identified as “women’s directorates,” advisory committees on the “status of women” or ministries of women’s issues or equality. Many levels of government, as in the case of Labour Canada or the Public Service Commission, also contain a “woman’s bureau” and a department for “women’s programs” respectively (see, for example, Canadian Almanac  1994:4-46).

This focus on women also characterizes available information and programs on gender and violence. Consider the following.

a)  A search of Wilfrid Laurier University’s computerized library index reveals 24 citations for the subject heading “violence against women,” 34 for “battered women” and 137 for “wife abuse.” There were none for “violence against men,” “battered men” or “husband abuse.” In an attempt to find some sources on the victimization of men, I typed in the subject headings “violence” and “men.” Of the 13 entries, all but two concerned violence by men. The two exceptions were books on violence by gay men against their partners and on the history of lynching.

b)  In 1991, Health and Welfare Canada listed 319 transition houses or shelters for battered women (Health and Welfare 1992: Table of Contents). Under Project Haven, a program managed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, “projects creating 446 shelter units.., have been approved or are in various stages of development” (National Clearinghouse 1991:3). I found no mention of shelters for men in government literature although a Health and Welfare document lists 98 programs for men who batter (1991:Table of Contents). 

c) Since 1982, the federal government has undertaken a variety of measures to address domestic violence against women, such as tabling reports, creating working groups, issuing a Declaration on Violence Against Women, establishing the National Panel on Violence Against Women, and the Family Violence Initiative. The latter bridged seven federal government departments, such as the Department of the Secretary of State of Canada which “funded close to 400 projects sponsored by women’s groups and other non-profit organizations which address the issue of family violence against women” (National Clearinghouse 1991:3). Measures include making police officers more sensitive to wife assault, introducing the issue of violence against women into the classroom, organizing a conference on women and the law with violence against women one of the topics being addressed and creating programs to help female offenders who have themselves been victims of violence (3-4).

As can be seen, the media have a wide range of sources at their disposal when they write about violence against women but few on violence against men.  In addition, many of these, including large social organizations and governmental agencies, are institutionalized. This is significant since many researchers argue that the media tend to focus on and legitimize institutionalized sources, and this, as Fishman writes, predetermines who the “relevant knowers” are in any case (1980:51). Tuchman describes it this way: 

First, news is an institutional method of making information available to consumers….  Second, news is an ally of legitimated institutions.  The secretary of state can float an idea in the news media.  The “average” man or woman does not have such access to the media…. Third, news is located, gathered, and disseminated by professionals working in organizations. Thus it is inevitably a product of newsworkers drawing upon institutional processes and conforming to institutional practices (1978:4). 

Tuchman writes that the success of the women’s movement in the United States came from its institutionalization.   As a centralized bureaucracy, it became synchronized with the routines of newspaper reporting and turned the “thrust of the movement from a concern with consciousness to a concern with politics and law” which led to a wider range of media coverage:

“stories about issues raised by the women’s movements are made into routine occurrences covered by specific (nonwomen’s) beats and bureaus or assigned to general reporters” (153). As mentioned earlier, this reliance on institutional sources is linked to the institutionalization of the newspaper business. It would seem that in the case of violence the institutionalization of women’s issues plays a role in explaining the disparity of coverage between male and female victims of violence. But there are two additional aspects of sources that bear mentioning.

First, sources have a tendency to thrive on one another. As Fishman notes in observing the creation of a “crime wave” against the elderly, “when there was an occasional lack of crimes there was plenty of activity among police, politicians, and community leaders to cover” (1980:10). It is not a far step to take to see, for example, links between coverage of the “Montreal massacre,” calls for the media for action on the issue of violence against women and the creation of the National Panel on Violence Against Women (this will be explored further in the next chapter). Second, the media serve as sources to themselves. “All journalists depend on other news organizations for their sense of ‘what’s news today’,” writes Fishinan (1980:7) and this is key to understanding crime waves. As the issue expands among some media it becomes more irresistible to other media.

It appears, then, that the media not only focus on sources dealing with women’s victimization but that these sources are both plentiful and accessible.  This situation helps explain the disparity we find between the amount of coverage of female and male victims in headlines and their rates of victimization as revealed in crime statistics. I have also suggested additional explanations for this coverage: a predisposition in the media, before 1989, to emphasize gender in the case of domestic and sexual violence against women; and media coverage of the Montreal murders.

 

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