About Critical Mass [dot] Writing [dot] Reviews [dot] Contact
« previous entry | return home | next entry »

January 7, 2003 [feather]
Boalt bits

XLRQ points out that whether or not former Boalt dean John Dwyer is guilty of sexual harassment, as Jennifer Reisch charges, he is almost certainly guilty of drunk driving.

And Joanne Jacobs writes with a trenchant and damning clarification of journoethics. In his Daily Journal article on how bloggers have named Dwyer's accuser, John Roemer cites prominent SF media lawyer Jeffrey Bleich on why the mainstream media has not done so:


Traditional print and broadcast journalists typically withhold alleged victims' names when sex crimes are involved. "The nature of such complaints is sensitive and personal," said media lawyer Jeffrey L. Bleich, of San Francisco's Munger Tolles & Olson. "But Web sites are not held to journalistic ethical standards."

As I noted Sunday, Roemer uses this quote to demonize the investigative work that bloggers have done on the Boalt case while raising up the mainstream media's problematic silence on the issue as the right, moral, and professional way to handle cases such as this one. I noted, too, that there was a little problem with Roemer's use of this quote: Bleich is hardly an objective outside expert. He is a Boalt alum who has been teaching as an adjunct faculty member at Boalt for the past ten years--facts Roemer failed to note.

Joanne Jacobs wrote to point out another problem with Roemer's reporting here:


Traditionally, journalists don't name the victims of sex crimes without their consent. I don't think I'd call it a question of "ethics." Some journalists argue that sexual assault victims should be named like other crime victims; shielding them perpetuates the idea that it's shameful to be raped.

In any case, it's not traditional to shield alleged victims of sexual harassment.


Readers will recall that Reisch charged Dwyer with sexual harassment, not a sex crime. They will also recall that when Dwyer resigned, acknowledging that he had had an inappropriate encounter with a former Boalt student but stressing that it was "consensual," Reisch's lawyer went ballistic and told the media that Dwyer had "molested" her client. The language of sexual assault was introduced into the media by Jennifer Reisch's lawyer, Laura Stevens. It was a tactical move, one that Stevens openly declared was intended to prevent Dwyer from working again (the media, she also acknowledged, would be better able to accomplish this than the courts). The media then accorded Reisch the same sort of protection that she would have been accorded had she charged Dwyer with sexual assault.

Roemer fails to register the crucial distinction between Reisch's charge (that Dwyer sexually harassed her) and Stevens' strategic claim (that in reality, her client was molested). Instead, he handles the question of whether Reisch's name (and background, and motives) should be part of this story as if Reisch were a victim of sex crime. I have been arguing all along that the media has been playing into Reisch's hands. The fact that it treats her not as what her own charges say she is--an alleged victim of sexual harassment who does not warrant any special treatment from the media--but as a victim of sexual assault whose identity must be kept out of the media for her own protection, says it all.
posted on January 7, 2003 11:02 AM