Progress And Persistent Problems

Abstract

Recent scholarship suggests that feminist intervention has made progress reforming news representations of women, prompting some feminist media scholars to call for documenting and explaining instances of the movement's success. This case study examines how a series of local television news stories about a campus sexual assault scandal exemplifies both progress and persistent problems as defined by the critical feminist literature. Drawing on a framing analysis of the nine-story series, including a semi-structured interview with the key journalist, I argue that progressive possibilities arose from the pairing of a feminist journalist with resources afforded by investigative reporting. Many of those possibilities were exploited to produce progressive framing, especially when they served both feminist values and market-driven news values. Adherence to a single news narrative guided by the news value of conflict sometimes mitigated prospects for feminist framing, though, preventing adequate attention to the role social structures play in causing and justifying sexual assault.

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