The language of rape reporting

I don’t want to tell the CBC how to do their job, but there’s something about this headline that rubs me the wrong way.

Call me crazy or overly sensitive, but it’s the wording of the headline that seems a bit telling. Is it me, or is the phrasing of the average “alleged crime” headline more passive and in favour of the victim when the act in question isn’t rape? When it comes to violent crime, we tend to see a lot of “man accused of this” or “person accused of that.”

“Woman accuses someone of this,” on the other hand, seems a little too… Well, a little too indicative of the way we deal with rape and stigmatize its victims and accusers, for lack of a more articulate way to put it.

And again, maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. I certainly don’t mean to trivialize the crime in question, even if it actually is an alleged crime at best in this instance. I just think the way in which the media chooses to report these stories can serve to do just that.

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