the best Rolling Stone 2014 fuckup autopsy out there

Last month, NYT David Carr Fellow (though you may know her from her sublime culture & tech coverage from Slate before that), Amanda Hess was at this summit on how media can better cover sexual violence, and she gave this unnerving, I’m-telling-you-this-because-I-love-you-but-you’ve-really-got-to-do-way-the-fuck-better keynote on the 2014 Rolling Stone rape story.

Luckily for us non summit-type people, Poynter’s published the speech, The stories we tell and the stories we don’t online, and it’s a must-fucking-read for anyone in the biz of telling stories, period. Some highlights:

“When we gravitate toward the most “shocking” stories, we necessarily distort reality. And as we do that, we send messages about what’s important. One of the messages we send is that the violence of rape isn’t violent enough. It’s only really newsworthy if the victim gets punched in the face, too. Also, it helps if the victim conforms to certain characteristics…”

And...

“What would journalism look like if it accurately reflected the whole scope of sexual violence? We would see more working-class victims, elderly victims, some male victims, too. We would read stories about abuse committed not just by strangers or sadistic frat boys but by family members and committed partners, not just in elite colleges but in detention facilities. Why it is that we seem to be reporting so much on the sexual assaults experienced by white women in college, often to the exclusion of these other crimes?”

And most 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 of all:

“The press is very interested in female victims, but often so incurious about all of our other human experiences and contributions.”

Loooord there are not enough retweets in the world.

(Also, to anyone tryna update that website/portfolio/web presence, I highly recommend you scope Hess’s site for pointers, here.)

Like Deez Links? Forward to some more media tough love.