Thursday, May 30, 2002
All the crime fit to print - Globe and Mail article
Fifty-four Vancouver women disappear, and everyone knows that police are searching a pig farm for them.
But how many people can name even one of the victims?
The largest crime story in recent memory -- 54 missing women and the police investigation of Port Coquitlam farmer Robert William Pickton, who has been charged with seven murders in the case to date -- is unfolding in British Columbia.
You'd have to have been on Mars not to have known that. Unfortunately, the media and police cultures have combined to rob the public of much-needed information about the case, as well as a true understanding of why and how it happened.
Cases of this magnitude tend to become the causes celcbres of their era, highlighting tensions of class, race, sexuality and issues surrounding femininity and masculinity. For instance, three major homicide and serial murder cases of the past 50 years in Canada -- Steven Truscott, Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo -- all became vehicles for diffuse fears surrounding morality and safety.
In the current case, we know that 54 women have gone missing in Vancouver since 1983, with the disappearances becoming more frequent in the years from 1998 to 2001. More than half of those women were of aboriginal descent and many of them were working in the sex trade when they disappeared. We also know that family members had lobbied the police for years for information about their missing relatives with few results.
Unfortunately, the larger issue of what it all means remains unaddressed in media coverage. How do we deal with our notions of good and evil, right and wrong and blame in this case? And what is our responsibility as community members?
Instead, we receive vague information about the police investigation, gruesome details of the crime scene and stories about how Mr. Pickton is going to pay for his legal fees. We have also seen more interviews with victims' families and friends than past crime stories. By newsroom definitions, these articles are advancing the story and providing information for the community. But there is a difference between information and knowledge -- one includes bits of unrelated fact; the other is defined by its context and the understanding it supplies. What we know of the victims and the investigation in this case has been largely filtered to us through the numerous media and police organizations involved in the case.
For instance, the fact that most B.C. residents would be able to tell you that police are investigating a pig farm in this case, but wouldn't be able to name any of the victims is a function of the media's definition of news judgment. Part of that definition involves anything "bizarre" and the location of the crime scene on a pig farm fits that criteria. It is also a function of the relative news value placed on certain types of victims.
The Vancouver Sun published an investigative piece on the missing women last fall. It examined who the women were and the circumstances of their disappearances. So far so good. But when the media discovered that police were searching a pig farm for clues, "pig farm" became the code word for the case. People no longer asked what happened to the 54 women, but have you heard what is going on at the pig farm? This is media culture at work.
As well, because these women did not fit the profile of the innocent victim -- they were engaged in illicit activity -- the coverage they received since women started going missing in 1983 was limited at best. Compare their stories' treatment with that of an attractive young blonde Vancouver woman abducted from her middle-class home by a former boyfriend earlier this month. It was no accident that the recent story received prominent media coverage. The tale of a violent abduction of a young woman is news by any definition, but especially so if the victim conforms to images of innocence. A 1997 U.S. study found that the more a victim looked like presumed readers, the more likely the story was to receive prominent media coverage.
Not only are these 54 missing women less likely to garner media coverage when they disappear, they are also more likely to become victims of a serial killer in the first place by virtue of their vulnerability and socio-economic status.
Now that there is an accused perpetrator and an interesting story from the pig farm, the news culture dictates that we will read every new detail of the scene and case. However, the amount and quality of that detail is dependent to a large extent on how much information the police are releasing.
.../2
All the crime fit to print - Globe and Mail article
Fifty-four Vancouver women disappear, and everyone knows that police are searching a pig farm for them.
But how many people can name even one of the victims?
The largest crime story in recent memory -- 54 missing women and the police investigation of Port Coquitlam farmer Robert William Pickton, who has been charged with seven murders in the case to date -- is unfolding in British Columbia.
You'd have to have been on Mars not to have known that. Unfortunately, the media and police cultures have combined to rob the public of much-needed information about the case, as well as a true understanding of why and how it happened.
Cases of this magnitude tend to become the causes celcbres of their era, highlighting tensions of class, race, sexuality and issues surrounding femininity and masculinity. For instance, three major homicide and serial murder cases of the past 50 years in Canada -- Steven Truscott, Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo -- all became vehicles for diffuse fears surrounding morality and safety.
In the current case, we know that 54 women have gone missing in Vancouver since 1983, with the disappearances becoming more frequent in the years from 1998 to 2001. More than half of those women were of aboriginal descent and many of them were working in the sex trade when they disappeared. We also know that family members had lobbied the police for years for information about their missing relatives with few results.
Unfortunately, the larger issue of what it all means remains unaddressed in media coverage. How do we deal with our notions of good and evil, right and wrong and blame in this case? And what is our responsibility as community members?
Instead, we receive vague information about the police investigation, gruesome details of the crime scene and stories about how Mr. Pickton is going to pay for his legal fees. We have also seen more interviews with victims' families and friends than past crime stories. By newsroom definitions, these articles are advancing the story and providing information for the community. But there is a difference between information and knowledge -- one includes bits of unrelated fact; the other is defined by its context and the understanding it supplies. What we know of the victims and the investigation in this case has been largely filtered to us through the numerous media and police organizations involved in the case.
For instance, the fact that most B.C. residents would be able to tell you that police are investigating a pig farm in this case, but wouldn't be able to name any of the victims is a function of the media's definition of news judgment. Part of that definition involves anything "bizarre" and the location of the crime scene on a pig farm fits that criteria. It is also a function of the relative news value placed on certain types of victims.
The Vancouver Sun published an investigative piece on the missing women last fall. It examined who the women were and the circumstances of their disappearances. So far so good. But when the media discovered that police were searching a pig farm for clues, "pig farm" became the code word for the case. People no longer asked what happened to the 54 women, but have you heard what is going on at the pig farm? This is media culture at work.
As well, because these women did not fit the profile of the innocent victim -- they were engaged in illicit activity -- the coverage they received since women started going missing in 1983 was limited at best. Compare their stories' treatment with that of an attractive young blonde Vancouver woman abducted from her middle-class home by a former boyfriend earlier this month. It was no accident that the recent story received prominent media coverage. The tale of a violent abduction of a young woman is news by any definition, but especially so if the victim conforms to images of innocence. A 1997 U.S. study found that the more a victim looked like presumed readers, the more likely the story was to receive prominent media coverage.
Not only are these 54 missing women less likely to garner media coverage when they disappear, they are also more likely to become victims of a serial killer in the first place by virtue of their vulnerability and socio-economic status.
Now that there is an accused perpetrator and an interesting story from the pig farm, the news culture dictates that we will read every new detail of the scene and case. However, the amount and quality of that detail is dependent to a large extent on how much information the police are releasing.
.../2
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