The media can be a powerful tool in preventing violence against women and children, according to research released on Friday by Our Watch.
Can be. But isn't.
"There is a clear link between media reporting and community attitudes towards violence against women," Our Watch chief executive Mary Barry says.
"The way news media frame a story about violence against women can have a powerful impact on the way the public understands the issue. Who or what is selected to appear in the news and how those individuals and events are portrayed matters.
"Blaming victims for the violence inflicted upon them, for instance, still happens in one in six articles about violence against women. Not only are people never to blame for experiencing violence, in society these views impact how many people report violent incidents and conviction rates."
The report makes a number of welcome recommendations about media training and collaboration between journalists and front-line workers, but barely mentions how audience responses can help push for change.
Media outlets don't just include newspapers and TV any more, and audiences are no longer passive consumers. Social media can be, and often is, used as a tool to express aggression and threats towards women, however it can also be used to communicate with media outlets, enabling readers to respond to the stories they are told and read.
An example of this is the collective disgust expressed at the Daily Mail's coverage of Sam Armytage wearing underwear under her dress when she went shopping. While Armytage's threat of legal action may have put a stop to that alleged news, it was the huge social media backlash that forced the publication to make a public apology and change its policy on body shaming women for fun and clicks.
It would be nice to think that newsrooms and editors of large publications don't need to be told that shaming women or blaming victims of violence is not only wrong, but also dangerous. However, it appears, that's not the case.
Research by Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety shows that when it comes to reporting men's violence against women and children, the media tend to sensationalise stories, perpetuate myths, excuse perpetrators and blame victims, and fails to recognise the broader social context of domestic and sexual violence. That's a pretty long list of injuries to public understanding of violence against women.
But as the Armytage case shows, audiences are not helpless in this. They don't have to just sit back and wait helplessly for journalism to fix itself.
It's no secret that journalism is struggling to connect to loyal audiences and find ways to pay for itself. The endless march of journalists exiting newsrooms around the country is heartbreaking for those of us who care about the profession, and dangerous for a democracy that depends on journalists to report on the functions and abuses of power.
But one thing it does achieve is to put enormous clout into the hands of the audience.
When headlines make murderers invisible, or blame women for violence committed against them and readers just accept it, when they click on those headlines or even just ignore them and move on, there's no incentive for change.
Public protest can be powerful, and when the media is so desperately in need of trust and readership it can be an overwhelming force for transformation.
It is not difficult to acknowledge that victims of rape or sexual assault are not responsible for the violence done to them. It's not a challenge to understand that domestic violence is complex and wide-ranging, and is caused by power imbalances most commonly based on gender.
The evidence that almost all violent crimes are committed by men is irrefutable. It's not arduous to recognise that male victims and female perpetrators exist, but they are rare and it is precisely because they are so rare that such victims are shamed and have trouble accessing services. The gender stereotypes that tell women to be sweet and compliant do as much damage as the notion that men need to be stoic and invulnerable, and we can tell that story.
But it seems that we need a push. A strong one.
The recommendations in the Our Watch report could prove hugely effective, but the incentive to implement them must come from somewhere. If it's not there on the inside, it will have to come from the outside.
As the report acknowledged, making substantial change to what we think of as "the media" is complex. There's no governing body or industry representative that covers every form of media. Television, radio, newspapers, blogs, online publications, social media platforms, video streaming, freelance writers, newsrooms, hate groups, support groups and online communities are all part of the media, and it's incredibly difficult to reach all of them with a coherent message.
Even if we narrow the definition down to mainstream media, which could be loosely defined as newspapers, TV news, major online news sites and commercial radio, they're still spread out across several private and public organisations.
And the vast majority of them are still very male dominated.
The Women in Media report, released last year, found that about 70 per cent of content produced by the media came from men.
A staggering 48 per cent of women working in media have experienced intimidation, abuse or sexual harassment at work. This is higher than the rates at Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the Defence Force. The findings at those organisations led to investigations by the Human Rights Commission and a series of ongoing reviews and action plans.
It's well overdue that we, in the media, faced the problems in our own ranks. And if it takes a concerted public demand for change to make that happen, then bring it on. We need it, and you, the readers, can do it.
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