Update: For more on earning readers’ trust in trauma stories, see my January/February 2011 article in the Columbia Journalism Review (PDF here with permission).
There was a big bruhaha not long ago on Twitter in which I got pretty well bitch slapped by the editor of one of my favorite magazines. So while I really want to spend a lot of time alone with that awesome feeling, I’m compelled to try and raise this above the cacophony:
If you want to tweet a rape story, you don’t have to do it live.
I’m using html flourishes to rise above because I made this suggestion before the debate took off, and in all the defensiveness that ensued, it seemed to get missed. That’s a shame, because the real journalistic issue here isn’t an easy “Should you tweet about rape?–no!” It’s a question of how to use Twitter to do it.
To be clear, I wouldn’t: I said and still think it’s too ephemeral for such a grave topic. But MoJo clearly saw some benefit to doing it, and so I offered, and do so again, this suggestion which I think would help do it better:
Report the story completely, and then tweet it later, when you know how the whole story will look. Earlier, I put it this way:
You can let a serial micro-narrative unfold this way, with more writer (and editor!) control, and in a way that allows Mac and MoJo to take the time needed to follow good professional practice on trauma journalism during the interview. That lets her give her full attention to the subject, to address one of many concerns raised to me from my own post on this topic….
[I]if you really want to see what Twitter can offer you as a tool for putting out the story of violence against women in Haiti, use Twitter’s most magical weapon of all: digital illusion. If Mac tweets the story out over an hour in three days, we won’t care that she wasn’t tweeting as she saw it unfold. It will still unfold for us, the reader.
What I didn’t say in my earlier posts was something I’ve said before, elsewhere: To write responsibly about rape, you have to think not only about the rape survivor who is your subject — although that’s primary — but about your reader, as well. If your reader can’t figure out how you got the information, they’re going to be ethically uncomfortable.
I saw that in other people’s responses to the “rape feed.” The journalist didn’t explain the rules of the game before starting; she just launched in. We didn’t know what we were in for — it did, indeed, look at first like we were going to get a grisly rape story, tweet by tweet, and then the story changed. We were in a doctor’s office. But how did we get there? Do we feel okay about being there?
For example: Tweeps (I hate that word) had concerns about whether the victim had given consent and whether she should be named. I didn’t share these concerns — I gave MoJo the benefit of the doubt on both — but clearly Mac/MoJo would have done everyone a favor if they had stated this up front.
There’s a fine line for journalists who cover trauma. How do you balance making the reader ethically comfortable with you, the journalist, with making the reader morally uncomfortable with the violence that happens in the world?
This is what trauma journalists are trying to do. They aren’t sanitizing stories or giving you the “golly gee whiz I came through it stronger” hopeful Hollywood ending. They are trying to be honest about the story, and honesty about brutal violence should make us uncomfortable. That has to happen. But readers shouldn’t ever feel uncomfortable about the journalist’s practice. The minute the reader stops trusting the journalist, the story is lost. And that’s a disservice in many ways, but above all to the woman who’s story the journalist was trying to tell.
If you’re interested in these issues, or want guidance on how to make your own trauma reporting better, I recommend, as always, the Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma.
Can we read the exchange between you and MoJo? Well, at least I am curious to know what exactly MoJo editor(s) said. I for one cannot see ANY REASON that McClelland has to tweet her story live. For one, the event (the rape) has already happened and so it’s not as if she’s broadcasting live a rape event as it happens (as horrifying a thought as that is, and I would NEVER recommend tweeting live a rape as it happens!).
Seriously, what is the compelling reason for MoJo to tweet the interview as it unfolds?
There’s not a good way to share the conversation, except to refer you to the feeds where it happened which is @clarajeffery. Mine is @itsjina. She never directly addressed the substance with me, although I did see a tweet about how the MSM is not covering rape, which I took to be the motive, or one of them. I’m not convinced that tweeting rape change that, but I didn’t find Twitter the best medium for a discussion about these concerns.
I liked that phrase “the big mind” in one of your other comments. What a useful visual for the process…
And, you made a good point that McClelland can tweet her story after she has composed it and after she has gone through the process of deciding how to tell the story, what to tell, and how to deliver it.
In any case, I wouldn’t be against that, even though like you I think tweeting is a silly medium to write about stories as serious as a story of a rape victim. Yeah, do that story in 140 characters or less.
There’s such a big different between, “listen to me telling this story” and “listen to this story.”
New technology means the same decisions have to be made again in dfifferent contexts, but I too wish they had come to a different decision.
There’s so much ego in journalism. live tweeting rape, digging up dead bodies, writing about white people instead of black people, none of these things are about the world around us. They are about us, and a side of “us” I’d rather not see, on twitter or elsewhere.
I like the distinction you suggest between “listen to ME telling this story [emphasis mine]” and “listen to this story”.
Part of the contract with the reader does have a lot to do with the reader’s trust of the style of the story.
An ethical issue richoceting in the original comment strand had to do with assumptions about consent — some were suspicious of this being an ambush interview; others thought it was condescending to question the victim’s ability to say yes to an interview; the reporter felt she had the consent of the victim for various reasons (a previous TV interview the victim did; the mother’s presence; the rape victim advocate’s assurances).
But I think many readers will be alienated by the Twitter form in a case like this because the bare bones reporting leaves no room for the implicit flags of consent that a longer, nuanced story offers and that cushion the reader from feeling voyeuristic.
Consequently the uneasy question is in the air from the beginning, even though McClelland feels she had the victim’s consent and doesn’t need to show it in the reporting.
But it’s worth considering consent outside the sweaty pressure of the moment that McClelland must have been under to have to dash out her impressions as a witness to the immediate aftermath of such a horrific crime.
Can a woman just raped and mutilated — no doubt in not just emotional but physical shock — consent to anything? It’s a medical fact that a trauma victim might not be in full control of her emotion, or fully aware of the emotional consequences of the rape, let alone the consequences of an interview about the rape. A recently raped woman hasn’t had much counseling on the subject.
Consent also takes on a different flavor in the social and racial context of Haiti. It’s not clear what class this woman comes from, and it’s safe to assume she’s black. There’s a power dynamic fairly obvious to anyone who spends much time in Haiti — it’s a class and race thing, and McClelland is a “blan” from a rich country with perceived power (power to bring negative or positive consequences to people desperate for help). This is not condescension, it’s a real factor.
Consent, in this context, also has a psycho-linguistic component. We know McClelland does not speak Creole. We don’t know what kind of an interpreter she had (and under the emotional stress of this moment, even the best interpreter would have trouble conveying the nuance that the victim might be conveying as well as the pressure the reporter on Twitter deadline might be conveying); we don’t know how the mutilation of the tongue affected the victim’s speech; we don’t know how much control over the actual interview the mother, herself probably distraught, took. We don’t know if the reporter was simply listening and deducing or if she was putting questions to the victim. We do know that the victim and reporter were strangers with no established rapport and mutual understanding.
Consent can often be contingent on the subject of an interview feeling comfortable with where and how the story will appear. Again, in the context of Haiti, there’s a strong chance the victim doesn’t even know what Twitter is, and what form it takes. Was the victim told, and could she possibly have understood , in this heated moment, that the stranger interviewing her would broadcast provocative sound bites about her condition (eyes popping as she was choked, tongue bitten off, etc) even before the audience would know any of the tenderest or truest detail about who Kerby really is?
Kerby’s story ought to be told in a fair way. And it’s hard to imagine the live Twitter feeds could have had the kind of stamp of consent journalists would be expected to get in the US from a rape victim – nor that cushion the conscionable person needs to feel they’re having an honest read and not a peep-show.
Would McClelland, or you, or I be able to “consent” to the same type of journalistic treatment if we’d just been raped, mutilated and approached by a stranger to explain ourselves? That’s the kind of question that plagued me as I read the Twitter story of Kerby — and I didn’t trust it.
Clara, these are great insights, especially setting into context for us the racial and class dynamics that need to be brought up. As you very well explained, Twitter does not afford the writer the kind of nuanced, careful, and considered approach that an article would.
The question I keep coming back to is this: what is THE PURPOSE for McClelland to tell this story via twitter as opposed to say a blog or printed format? In other words, what is the purpose of the live format of the story?
I have not seen any good and compelling reason that the story McClelland tells needs to be done live and especially not in 140 character chunks.
Thib:
Mother Jones seems to be arguing for an art form; experimenting.
Wire services have always done breaking stories in short takes because of the urgency of the news itself or the urgency of beating the competition.
I wouldn’t object to 140 word bursts of news of a criminal rampage going on right now in my neighborhood – that’s the story at the moment that I need to know; the story of the rape victim needs to be told, but why on deadline? I can’t think of a good reason to serialize Unedited, unweighed impressions of a rape victim in real time. I have no objection to seeing those same impressions published later in a coherent way that fairly portrays the victim as a whole person with the strengths and flaws and detail of her whole humanity; and not just grotesque teases exploiting her victimhood.
McClelland was not going to get beat on this story if she waited to tell it in a more traditional form; she would have had a more useful story for the reader. I believe some people were moved by the shock of the format; but shock can be polarizing and create reaction as quickly formed and absent of deep thought as an out of context Twitter burst.
There’s just much more heat in Tweeting rape than there is light.
Clara,
Thank you for your insights. Yes, it seems that the main reason to use Twitter for that story is the shock value it would give readers. Digging deeper, what is the necessity of shock in this case? The story itself, when properly told, is not shocking enough?
Thib: As a journalist myself, I don’t want to second-guess why McClelland and Mother Jones did what they did. I have to believe that, as a first-rate institution, Mother Jones was considering the victim and the effects of this form of reporting. Sometimes the side-effects of what we do aren’t what we anticipate. In other words, there are honest mistakes.
Clara Jeffrey, McClelland’s editor, suggests that the objections to theire Twitter rape coverag setpe from “questioning [the victim’s] right to ask that the story be told.”
That’s a public defense that ignores the point of the controversy. But it’s inconceivable that — after the legitimate questions about Twittering rape have been raised — Mother Jones would not be thinking hard about what they did and reviewing ways to do it better. They want attention for their coverage; they want to reach readers’ hearts. Those are legitimate motives. The success of the effort is still doubtful.
McClelland’s full Twitter strand (which is still going) is so out of context that it raises more questions — as a whole — than it answers and does not necessarily help the reader understand the full picture of rape in Haiti. There’s no documentation for what is called “an epidemic” of rape. It’s one long anectodal feed, not fully reported. I’d love to see her “real” story — I mean, she is going to write a real story, isn’t she?
There’s as much good as there is bad with this new Twitter tool.
I think that tweeting provocative but well chosen words to describe/promote chapters in longer coverage to be found on the publication’s website or magazine could be done well. It might even be done in “narrative” fashion — but it could only be done after a fully reported, well-crafted story was done and the editors and reporter had well-considered subjects to craft into 140 word bursts. And a fully reported, well-crafted story can only be done after the reporter has done due diligence: reporting all angles, talking repeatedly to the victim, her family, her friends, her doctor, her counselors,; making an effort to find the alleged (and alleged does apply) rapist(s), those who know him(them), and any witnesses; for context, talking to human rights officials and those who run the camp she lives in. Nailing down the thesis that rape is an “epidemic” there.
The effect of what McClelland did was to create outrage (heat), but not much understanding (light).
But, Thib, I would argue that we shouldn’t write off Mother Jones for an attempt to use Twitter in a way that would call attention to their “real” coverage; I just hope the upset over this episode helps them reconsider how they do it on topics like rape.