Since the news cycle started when Kasandra Perkins was shot nine times by her boyfriend Jovan Belcher, I feel like I’ve wandered into the Red Room in Twin Peaks. Everyone is speaking in a shady language, and no one is addressing the obvious question.
Over the past four days, I’ve increasingly felt like I’m about to flip my shit, lose my mind, go over the bend, etc. Y’all, how many ways can I say that this fills me with Eleanor Holmes Norton-style rage until you get it? This kind of reporting is unacceptable.
No one in the media—or, specifically, the media reporting this story—knows how to discuss domestic violence. Most pieces focused on the “trauma” of Belcher committing suicide, Bob Costas made the story about gun control, and Deadspin published a bunch of quotes that called Perkins the catalyst. Even Ben Greenman at The New Yorker, who I love, tweeted that he couldn’t believe that everyone was talking about concussions and not about steroids. No one mentioned domestic violence.
It took days for someone to write about his history of domestic violence, and even then it was called “trouble at home.”
This (lack of) coverage particularly hits home because I used be a public relations specialist at a domestic violence shelter in Kansas City. I know this community.
There’s a better way to cover a problem that hurts a woman every fifteen seconds in this country. Let’s all get out of the Red Room.
1. If you are writing a story about someone killing or abusing their partner, you are writing about domestic violence.
Call it what it is. Mention those words. If we only report these acts as random or solitary incidents, and not part of a long entrenched history of partner violence in this county, then you aren’t giving the full weight of how insidious and ingrained this problem is in our culture.
Do not speculate about “what could have caused this” without mentioning domestic violence. When the violence is only directed at one person—the partner—he is not out of control, he chooses to be violent and who he is violent with. Belcher did not shoot his mom, or the security guard, or anyone at the stadium. He only shot his girlfriend.
2. Do not report from the lens of the abuser.
If you are reporting about a murder-suicide, lead with the murder.
If you are reporting about a murder-suicide, do not focus on how the suicide could have been prevented, focus on how the domestic violence could have been prevented. Let’s be honest, there wouldn’t have been a suicide if there hadn’t been a murder. The victim did not get to choose.
If you mention the abuser’s name in the first sentence, mention the victim’s name.
Do not write a headline calling the victim a baby mamma, or only show pictures of the abuser in your slideshow.
Interview someone from the victim’s side; don’t dredge up the abuser’s high school coach just to get a quote about what a great guy he was.
Don’t make domestic violence about gun control.
Do not heavily quote someone who just shot a family member as being a “family man.” YOU ARE NOT FAMILY MAN IF YOU KILL YOUR FAMILY.
3. If you report from the lens of the abuser, you are participating in victim blaming.
When you quote at length from the abuser’s friend’s account of the incident, talk about the victim’s college transcripts, or her employment record, you are participating in some good old-fashioned victim blaming. This is not “getting the other side.” There are not two sides to domestic violence.
When you report that a “heated argument… stemming” from something the victim did, and you mentioned that it happened right before the incident, you are also participating in good old-fashioned victim blaming. Your syntax is suggesting that SHE was the catalyst. Especially, if you report that the victim “had been drinking” and “came home late.” Newsflash: These are not reasons to kill someone.
When you highlight that other people involved in this incident did not feel threatened—especially if those people are three men in the NFL—you imply that this was just the victim’s problem.
4. Educate yourself.
Do some research, interview some domestic violence experts, or at least Google some statistics. If you do even a small amount of research, you might be able to say something about *why* this happened, instead of quoting friends and colleagues who say he was “everyone’s favorite player” and “didn’t see this coming.” Domestic violence is not inexplicable. It’s a product of someone controlling and dominating another person. It’s perpetuated by a culture of entitlement and misogyny, and we keep that kind of culture alive when we don’t call it what it is.
Here are some statistics that you might find one Google search:
- One in four women will be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime.
- In 70-80 percent of intimate partner homicides, no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder.
- Every day in the US, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.
- Black women ages 25-29 are about 11 times more likely than white women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the year after childbirth.
5. Don’t feed the “it came out of now where” storyline.
If you do your research, you might find that abusers are really good at hiding their abuse. They often isolate their partners from support systems. A major reason that victims are afraid to leave their abusers is because they are afraid no one will believe them. You can be involved in “charity work” and still abuse women. You can be poor, wealthy, educated, lazy, successful, “articulate,” religious, and still abuse women.
6. This is not a women’s issue.
A friend of mine said that he would not expect a Sports Illustrated article to be “heavy on domestic violence coverage.” What he meant was, this isn’t a Sport Illustrated issues. But because sports culture can breed an environment that glorifies control and power, it is especially important for a sports-focused publication to call this domestic violence. This is the second time someone affiliated with the Chiefs shot his partner and committed suicide. In four months.
This is a sports issue. This is an every-single-one-of-us issue.
Whether you are writing for ESPN, Gawker, The New York Times, you should be talking about it. The readers of sports publications may never have been confronted with the real issues of domestic violence, and it’s important to stick it in front of their noses. If someone hears “a defensive lineman shoots himself,” they might automatically assume it’s an injury-related suicide. It’s a journalist’s responsibility to fill in the details, and tell the full story.
Until we as a culture figure out how to teach men (and women) a healthy way to process emotions—and that we do not have the right to control, abuse, or kill our partners—this is going to be a familiar headline.
7. Most importantly, mention where victims of domestic violence can get help.
All you need to do is copy/paste this: If you, or someone you know, is a victim of domestic violence, call the National Hotline at 1−800−799−SAFE(7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224.
I have read this three times now, shared, and had friends share. Thank you for putting into eloquent words the rage, tears, and cold hard facts that I didn’t feel able to express.