Misogyny in the press
Why we must #ChangeTheStory and challenge misogyny in the press
Hacked Off’s Senior Campaigns and Research Officer Alice Watkins shares what the campaign has been doing to eradicate misogyny in the press to #ChangeTheStory for women and girls. This article was originally published by Hacked Off.
By Alice Watkins
A woman is killed every three days by a man in this country. On average, 62% of these women will have been killed by a current or former partner. The Met police force was found to be institutionally misogynistic, racist and homophobic – in a damning review published earlier this year, prompted by the murder of Sarah Everard by a Met officer. Convictions of police officers for murder and rape have confirmed that the culture of misogyny is endemic throughout British policing.
We are in an epidemic of male violence against women and girls – and the need for journalists to report on violence against women, both accurately and ethically, is more important now than ever.
And yet women’s treatment by the press goes far beyond the acceptable standards we should accept in modern society. Only last week, an external independent review of Lancashire Constabulary’s response to reported missing person Nicola Bulley, The mother of two who went missing in January 2023 whilst walking her dog along the River Wyre and, tragically, was later found to have died in the river, was implicitly critical of press reporting. It cited coverage in the Daily Star, The Sun, The Daily Mirror and The Independent as “speculation and opinion”, which distorted the public’s understanding of the case.
Police were criticised after releasing personal information about Ms Bulley during the course of the investigation. But the press also bears responsibility for the way in which they reported on the story.
On the very same day the family called for an end to groundless speculation with that statement, The Sun published an article about Nicola, the early menopause, and questioned: ‘is it linked to alcohol addiction’? , while another Sun article also reported that Nicola had ‘significant issues’ with alcohol.
Even if Nicola’s mental health had played a role in her disappearance, it is difficult to identify the public interest in disclosing this information.
From our monitoring of the press, victim blaming is also prevalent when it comes to coverage of fatal domestic abuse.
Last month, the Daily Mail published an article which attributed ‘marital issues’ as justification for the killing of a 30 year old woman in the US, by her ‘armed and dangerous’ husband.
Another article in The Times, published back in May described the ‘Disbelief at ‘kind and gentle’ fiance linked to murder of primary school teacher Marelle Sturrock.
And the coverage of the murder of Emma Pattison and her daughter is another striking example of editors’ flagrant disregard for the victims of fatal domestic violence. For example, a Mail headline read, ‘Did Living in the Shadow of his High Achieving Wife Lead To Unthinkable Tragedy?’ The article claimed that the couple were experiencing marital problems, with one of the issues being “Emma’s high-profile and very demanding job”. It refers to his failed business, and describes her as outgoing and him as quiet.
The Telegraph published a similar piece which read ‘Behind the closed doors that led to the Epsom College tragedy.’
While The Sun lamented that the perpetrator was “jealous of school headmistress wife’s success before tragic murder-suicide“.
Ethical and accurate reporting of domestic homicides, issued by the expert advocacy group “Level Up”, require that coverage should “place responsibility solely on the killer, which means avoiding speculative “reasons” or “triggers”, or describing the murder as an uncharacteristic event.” The Mail and Telegraph’s coverage not only speculated on possible triggers, such as the career success of Emma Pattison, but honed in on a speculative “trigger” which shifted accountability away from the culprit and on to the victim (whom, we are led to believe, bore an element of responsibility for her death, by how successful she had been).
This message, that men’s egos are so fragile that they can only react to their partner’s success with violence, is an archaic patriarchal trope.
But in the press, this message was everywhere.
Two years ago Hacked Off released a film, The Press and the People, which featured cases of people who have been intruded upon by the press after bereavement.
As part of that project, we spoke to Luke and Ryan Hart who became victims of press intrusion after their father killed their mother and sister. They said that media coverage showed an overwhelming sympathy towards their father.
Ryan Hart said,“Our father was influenced by what he read in the media, his murder notes were constructed by previous reports on other domestic homicides. He was definitely looking to see what the media response would be before he committed the murders.”
Luke added,“Being a man, whatever the standard for that is, means that you can murder your family and (according to the press) you’re still a good guy.”
This kind of reporting seems unique to domestic violence cases, with male-on-male violence yielding fewer headlines, and rarely much speculation on circumstances or potential “triggers”.
For too long, reports of domestic homicides have been seriously inadequate. Coverage has sought to justify the actions of perpetrators. The conduct of victims has been questioned, and the dignity of women who have lost their lives has been ignored.
For the press it seems more convenient to blame women than to confront the reality of what it means to live in a country where a woman is killed every three days, and the institutional and societal failure that represents.
In 2018, Cressida Dick, then head of Scotland Yard backed a call for police to prioritise tackling burglary and violence instead of recording incidents of misogyny. This came during a review into whether misogyny should become a hate crime, with Sara Thornton the chairwoman of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), commenting that officers should not have to deal with reports of misogyny.
Whilst some attitudes and behaviours may be dismissed as small or low level, we know that these all contribute towards a culture of fear and misogyny that can lead to more extreme cases of violence.
The role of a free and accountable press ought to be to hold the powerful to account and stand up for ordinary people and marginalised groups. Reporters should be pursuing analysis of this endemic, examine the cultural and societal roots of this behaviour and the attitudes of the men who commit these crimes. The press should not legitimise misogynistic narratives which risk fuelling violence, or otherwise diminish the experience of women and girls – at a time when there is already not enough protections available to them.
But the misrepresentation of women and the lack of urgency to improve reporting comes as no surprise. Diversity figures for newsrooms remain poor and last year a report found that women still feel excluded from having power in the UK news media industry. While research conducted by Women in Journalism found 70% of female journalists complain that senior roles are still taken by men, with 74% saying that the workplace culture remains intimidating.
And IPSO, the press complaints handler popular with national newspapers, is not independent or fit for purpose.
IPSO has only ever upheld one complaint of sexism in the press in its entire history. And this was only after a Sun article sparked overwhelming public outrage, when it published an article detailing Jeremy Clarkson’s dream for Meghan Markle to be attacked in the street.
IPSO is forced to use a standards code which has been written by newspaper editors themselves (who are, by majority, white and male) and they have shown they are unwilling to amend it to protect the public. In fact, it is packed with loopholes to avoid meaningful change which might address issues around misreporting.
The code says that the press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religions, sex, gender identity and other protected characteristics. But buried in the small print, it states this clause ‘does not cover generalised remarks about groups or categories of people’.
As a result, newspapers and journalists can express sexist, racist and discriminatory views, even where those views are likely to cause harm to those already at risk of marginalisation in our society.
In contrast, an independent regulator would be able to control the code themselves.
It would also have the power to launch proactive investigations and have meaningful sanctions, including the capability to launch investigations into standards and issue fines.
We currently have one independent regulator in the UK. Impress has a broad discrimination clause which allows complaints to be brought and considered on a far wider basis than the editors code. It also has a justice clause which protects victims of fatal domestic abuse, outlawing victim blaming.
While improving press coverage won’t dismantle the problem of widespread societal misogyny overnight, it is an important and long overdue first step to changing the way women are publicly perceived.
For the first time, in surveys about social attitudes ‘the youngest cohort surveyed have significantly more extreme misogynistic attitudes than the oldest’.
We all have a part to play in calling out misogyny.
A good first step is to engage in conversations with men around press reporting, discuss the language used in articles and encourage recognition of the prejudice.
We believe that journalists should listen to the experts on the issues of misogyny and domestic violence reporting. Level UP developed guidelines for reporters, in consultation with academics in the field and victims’ families. But journalists aren’t actually under any obligation to uphold these standards because they haven’t been added to the editors code. You can write to the editors code committee and ask them to change the code, so that IPSO would have to enforce these standards.
Because until fatal domestic violence reporting guidelines are reflected in a standards code, which is properly enforced by an independent press regulator, press reporting is unlikely to improve.
Alice Watkins is the Senior Campaigns and Research Officer at Hacked Off. The Hacked Off Campaign was established in 2011 in response to the phone-hacking revelations and campaigns for a free and accountable press for the public.