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Abstract
This article reports on recent research concerning the use of sources by journalists reporting violence against women (VAW) in Australia. Until recently, VAW has been largely reported in the media by focusing on seemingly isolated events, rather than reporting VAW as a social problem. The international literature and Australian empirical studies show that journalists rely on law enforcement personnel as the expert “voices” that inform debate in the media, with an absence of survivors of violence, advocates, service providers and researchers. We report here on recent research focusing on intensive interviews in two Australian newsrooms, both of which made decisions to campaign for social change on the issue of VAW. We find that in the case of an “old media” newspaper, sourcing practices have not changed. Law enforcement personnel are still key—but changing attitudes within the police force were a key driver of the newsroom’s recognition of the scale and nature of the problem and the decision to launch a campaign. However, in the case of a commercial broadcast current events programme, social media played a key role both in sourcing practices and in spurring journalists to do more reporting on the issue. Social media was also increasingly being used to source subjects for interview, including survivors of domestic violence. We conclude with discussion of the implications of our findings for the domestic violence sector and its media relations, and question whether the media’s recent attention to VAW as a social issue will be sustained.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to our colleague Dr Gael Jennings who conducted some of the interviews relied on in this article. Thanks also to the journalists and other study participants who generously gave up their time to be interviewed. Annie Blatchford provided meticulous and good-humoured research assistance. We are grateful for comments from other members of the Australian Research Council research team on earlier drafts of this article.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
Margaret Simons has done work under contract for the National Media Engagement Project of OurWatch, an Australian Government funded body established to drive change in the culture, behaviours and power imbalances that lead to violence against women. OurWatch can be expected to benefit from the research described here.
Notes
1. Other interviews were conducted, including with Merita Tabain, Director of Corporate Communications for Victoria Police, other journalists at the Herald Sun, and The Age and from Mamamia; these will be reported on elsewhere.
2. Chief Commissioner, 2001–2009. Nixon instituted in her first year a review of all VAW cases they had dealt with and worked both internally and externally for a greater focus on VAW, including commissioning from Boston Consulting Group a report on the costs to the state of family violence and new codes of police practice to strengthen their responses to family violence (Nixon and Chandler Citation2012, 250–251).
3. Chief Commissioner 2011–2015.
4. Chief Commissioner 2009–2011.
5. For more on the Herald Sun’s relationship with sources during Overland’s period as police Commissioner, see Victoria Office of Police Integrity (Citation2011).
6. It is worth noting that Lay is also university educated. However, this rarely featured in media discussion of his work.
7. For data on the patterns of interpersonal violence, see Australian Bureau of Statistics (Citation2013).
8. There has been one Australian broadsheet “campaign” on VAW of which we are aware, in The Age in June 1993. This is discussed, and criticised, in Howe (Citation1997).