[acb-hsp] Covering DV: How OJ Simpson . . .

Mon Jul 25 22:38:22 EDT 2011

Covering Domestic Violence: How the O.j. Simpson Case Shaped Reporting of Domestic

Violence in the News Media

by Kimberly A. Maxwell , John Huxford , Catherine Borum , Robert Hornik

Introduction

Despite the fact that domestic violence is not a recent phenomenon,1 the extent to

which it is perceived to be a public issue varies over time.2 We assume that media

coverage is a major determinant of that variation. The double murder of Nicole Brown

Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman was a major news story for nearly eighteen months

from June 1994 through December 1995. Because celebrity stories demonstrate that

domestic violence is a real-world problem that may affect anyone,3 we wanted to see

if the O.J. Simpson case exemplified how celebrity involvement may catapult a social

problem into the public eye and increase the press' coverage of the issue, as with

AIDS and the pesticide alar.4

The Simpson case was steeped in conflict, one of the fundamental criteria for determining

whether a story is newsworthy.5 In selecting the Simpson case as an example of celebrity

involvement in domestic violence, we cannot ignore the role that race played in the

story's coverage. On one level, the Simpson story questioned national ideals of power,

privilege, and success by revealing that domestic violence cuts across class lines

and occurs in the "best families."6 On another level, the vicious crime aligned Simpson

with the prevailing image of Black men in the media as dangerous criminals7 and evil

men.8 These racial stereotypes were further exploited, because Nicole Simpson was

an upper-class White woman, a member of a socially prominent group that typically

receives more media coverage than poor or Black victims of domestic violence.9 While

this study does not specifically address the issue of race, we acknowledge the importance

it held in the Simpson case.

Examining domestic violence newspaper coverage, we suspected that reporting would

move away from a narrow incident focus to a broader social focus. That is away from

the specifics of a domestic violence incident toward addressing the social aspects

of the issue. Rather than detailing how a woman was murdered by her husband, an article

would discuss legislation that seeks tougher punishment for abusers. To accomplish

this change in reporting we believed two major forces to be at work. First, the insatiable

need of newspapers for fresh material around old stories would prompt journalists

to consider-new ways of reporting the story. Consequently, articles about the social

issues of domestic violence would bea natural complement to the casespecific stories.

Secondly, because the story ran for so long, it provided an opportunity for the domestic

violence community to organize around this issue. They could affect the news through

their own actions (e.g., judicial action protests or opening hotlines), and the Simpson

case could provide a hook around which reporters would frame the stories. Subsequently,

an increase in coverage could be expected as anti-domestic violence campaigners learned

how to work with reporters looking for new angles, related stories, or experts to

quote,10 providing journalists with information subsidies.11

A core question was whether the coverage of the Simpson incident had any long-term

effect on the media portrayal of domestic violence. To answer this, we needed to

examine the reporting itself. How did the nature of press coverage surrounding domestic

violence change as a result of the Simpson case?

Background

Previous research provides valuable insights into the media's characterization of

domestic violence. However, it is often helpful to take a further step and test these

ideas and arguments with systematically chosen samples of text. To achieve this goal

of extended content analysis of domestic violence newspaper coverage, we began with

questions derived from (1) the existing analyses of domestic violence media stories

and (2) the more general conceptualizations found in the agenda-setting literature.

Although the media have reported on domestic violence since the early 1970s,12 investigation

on the content of domestic violence coverage is quite new. Fortunately, several studies

have provided useful insights into how the media frame domestic violence. Research

shows that the popular press discovered wife abuse in the 1970s when it began reporting

on domestic violence incidents which occurred outside society's accepted realm of

violence.13 At the same time, women's magazines typically published an individual

perspective that placed blame on the victim and held her responsible for solving

the problem.14 Analyses of newspaper articles have also found that within the mainstream

media, myths and stereotypes combine to blame the victim for her own death,15 as

the media tacitly accept the abuser's crime as individually aberrant behavior which

permitted a further shift to blame the victim.16 This pattern is reinforced when

journalists employ writing styles that reduce culpability assigned to the perpetrator.17

Furthermore, reality-based television programs reinforce the idea that domestic violence

is a problem confined to those with low incomes and little education, and that the

victim is often responsible for not pressing charges against her abuser, lending

legitimization to the existing stereotypes which persist even today.18

Generally, these studies have concluded that the media continually portray domestic

violence through sensationalized or cliched stories that focus on the individual

abuser and victim. The literature also suggests that the media have ignored larger

structural factors associated with race, class, and gender in a manner that facilitates

domestic violence by reinforcing patriarchal ideals.19 This research provides important

ideas about the media's characterization of domestic violence. However, much of it

was based on interpretive analyses of media content, which many not have used systematic

samples or a well-defined category procedure. We address these concerns here.

Along with the previously discussed domestic violence research, this study's framework

was also grounded in the agenda-setting literature. A number of researchers have

considered the media's role in agenda setting, and much of their work can be brought

to bear on coverage of domestic violence.20 Specifically, agenda setting has been

extended by the idea of "framing for content," which describes how an advocacy group

may alter an issue's image by shifting blame away from individuals and turning the

issue into a public problem. This strategy was successfully employed, for example,

by the anti-tobacco lobby.21 This effort is consistent with prior domestic violence

research that asserts that the mass media's attention to specific domestic violence

cases shifts responsibility from society to the individuals involved in the abuse.

Research Questions

Our first broad question was straightforward: were there changes in reporting during

the Simpson case's period of intense coverage and in the time since? Unsurprisingly,

we found that the quantity of domestic violence coverage rose sharply during the

Simpson case. However, we also asked whether there was a halo effect- did domestic

violence coverage unassociated with Simpson also increase during this period? We

also wanted to know whether there was a post-Simpson halo effect: did the increased

reporting during the Simpson case return to its previous level or did it remain elevated?

Our second broad research question asked what difference the Simpson case made in

the nature of coverage in stories primarily focused on domestic violence. We expected

a number of specific changes in reporting to reflect a shift from incident to social

coverage. We looked for increases in (a) the reporting of domestic violence statistics,

(b) coverage of law enforcement and judicial efforts related to domestic violence,

(c) the use of domestic violence experts as sources, (d) mentions of domestic violence

legislative actions or programs such as shelter openings, (e) social (e.g., limited

domestic violence resources or a patriarchal society) rather than personal (e.g.,

the abuser's jealousy or the victim's behavior) explanations of domestic violence

incidents, and (f) mentions of interventions taken by people other than the abuser

or victim including a neighbor calling the police. We reasoned that these particular

changes would lead to an overall perception by readers that articles have a social

rather than an individual focus.

We also hypothesized that as journalists realized that domestic violence could be

used as a story angle, they would use it more broadly to discuss social aspects of

the issue. Stories would include more detailed coverage and follow-up on non-fatal

domestic violence incidents, since these would, increasingly, be regarded as being

of public interest rather than purely private matters. There would also be greater

interest in covering an incident's history, and how the violence was perpetuated

or stopped, since this would be relevant to understanding the larger problem framed

now as a social issue by the media. To test our hypothesis of an increasingly broad

use of the domestic violence frame we looked for decreases in the number of domestic

violence stories that involved murder reports, and increases in (a) mentions of criminal

consequences for the abuser, (b) reported actions for the abuser to stop the violence,

(c) recommendations for the victim to break the abuse cycle, and (d) stories with

secondary references to domestic violence. Finally, we speculated that the domestic

violence issue would be referenced more frequently in articles that were not primarily

domestic violence stories, such as political stories expressing candidates' views

on domestic violence.22

Methods

Sample. The sample consisted of two Philadelphia publications with the highest circulation-the

Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News--together with the New York Times, chosen because

of its recognized status as a leading national news source. The analysis was conducted

on articles from January 1990-August 1997. To test whether there were any pre-existing

trends, the sample was separated into four periods based on the June 1994 Simpson--

Goldman murders: two pre-Simpson periods (1/90-12/91, 1/92-5/94) and two post-Simpson

periods(6/94-11/95,12/95-8/97). We observed that the first post-Simpson period encompasses

Simpson's criminal trial, while the second phase covers the civil trial, which attracted

less media coverage.

Domestic violence articles were obtained from the Dialog and LexisNexis electronic

databases using the following search term: (domestic or girlfriend or spouse or wife)

w/2 (abuse or beat or dispute or kill or murder or stalk or violence).23 The final

electronic search collected 10,568 domestic violence stories. Articles from the Inquirer

represented 39%, the Times 38"!, and Daily News 22% of the total census. This full

count is used in the first section of the results, when we consider the quantity

of domestic violence coverage by time and particular sources. However, when we studied

the overall nature of coverage, we selected the stories using a sampling procedure

stratified by time and news source (n = 598). For the detailed content analysis we

examined only those stories whose primary focus was domestic violence (n = 280).

When we compare newspaper articles within a time period we use the actual sample

sizes. However, when we offer an overall estimate, across newspapers or time, of

the nature of coverage we reweight the data reflecting its original population distribution,

so that it reflects the actual frequency of domestic violence stories in each newspaper.

Reliability. Three complementary approaches were used during pretests to ensure reliability

among coders. Krippendorf's alpha24 for our main variable of social versus incident

focus was .82.

Analysis. Changes in newspaper content were tested with a Fisher's Exact one-tail

test. To test for differences between the publications we performed logistic regressions

predicting presence or absence of a particular variable in an article from newspapers

and time, looking for an interaction effect of publication by date.

Results

Level of Coverage. Our first question was what, if anything, happened to the amount

of domestic violence coverage over time? As expected, the overall level of coverage

increased after the June 1994 murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman (Figure 1).

Several other features of Figure 1 are worth noting. First, we see that the 1994

Lorena Bobbit case did not cause substantial spikes in domestic violence reporting,

even though it was another high-profile story. Second, in the pre-Simpson period,

the Inquirer provided 37 stories per month, the Times 26 articles and the Daily News

17 stories. During the Simpson criminal trial (June 1994-November 1995) the Inquirer

increased its coverage by 75%, while the Times did so by 50% and the Daily News by

40%. We speculate that the Times covered the issue less than the Inquirer because

more of its coverage is dedicated to national and international news, so perhaps

local domestic violence incidents have a lower agenda for the Times. Although as

a tabloid the Daily News might have been expected to provide a larger diet of domestic

violence incidents, it has a much smaller news hole than the other papers. So, in

absolute terms, we infer the Daily News could not provide comparable coverage.

Finally, Figure 1 shows a long-term increasing trend in domestic violence coverage

before the Simpson case. This tendency is most apparent for the Inquirer, where the

upward trend is regular, and reasonably clear for the Times, while the Daily News

shows a much more irregular pattern. An estimate of each paper's trend is provided

by regressing coverage on time in months, for the period between March 1990 and June

1994. The slope for each newspaper is positive: the Inquirer is .33, the Times is

.23 and the Daily News is .09. That is, beginning in January 1990 the increase over

the 52 months prior to the Simpson event was about 17, 12 and 5 more articles on

average per month in the Inquirer, the Times and Daily News, respectively. However,

this small upward trend in domestic violence coverage before the Simpson-- Goldman

murders is replaced by a much more substantial increase in monthly coverage during

the Simpson case. Unsurprisingly, after the criminal trial drew to a close, each

newspaper shows a decline in total domestic violence stories.

We used this "quantity of coverage" data to address an additional question. Was there

a positive or a negative effect of Simpson coverage on non-Simpson related domestic

violence reporting during the trial? We found that for all three newspapers, the

Simpson-Goldman coverage enhanced the likelihood of covering other domestic violence

stories during the Simpson case (Figures 2, 3, and 4).

However, the post-Simpson declines tell a complex story. The three newspapers behaved

differently when coverage of domestic violence, excluding articles which mention

Simpson, were examined. While each publication showed a large surge in Simpson and

non-Simpson articles during the initial coverage, only the Times retained a level

of reporting consistently higher than was ongoing during the pre-Simpson period.

Indeed, the Times began to surpass the Inquirer's coverage. In contrast, both the

Inquirer and Daily News reporting of non-Simpson related stories declined to their

preSimpson levels, suggesting that the Simpson case did not have a long-term effect

on their coverage.

Type of Coverage. We first examined domestic violence coverage prior to the Simpson

case. Of all the articles that dealt with domestic violence, half have domestic violence

as their primary focus, while the rest give domestic violence a secondary mention.

When we focused on these primary stories, we saw few articles using a social frame-23%,

as reported in Table 1.

Rather, coverage centered on the specific incident and the individuals involved (77%).

Murder was the dominant event motivating media coverage in 48% of the primary stories.

Only a third of the stories either mentioned criminal consequences for the abuser

or recommended actions for the victim and a mere 1% of the articles recommended actions

for the abuser, such as the seeking counseling. Examining other indicators of social

coverage, we found that less than a quarter (22%) of the articles reported on either

domestic violence statistics, domestic violence-related programs, legislation or

judicial actions, or quoted a domestic violence source. Individual explanations for

domestic violence appeared nearly twice as often (40%) as social explanations (24%)

and only a nominal percentage of articles cited actions for either bystanders (8%)

or the general public (2%) to take against domestic violence. These findings suggest

that the primary domestic violence stories often covered particular incidents, in

which blame and solutions for domestic violence were often placed with individual

victims and abusers, rather than offering systemic solutions. These findings clearly

mirror prior textual analyses.25 Since news stories are typically event related,

this emphasis was not surprising. However, when we examined all stories that mentioned

domestic violence at least once, we found that the general pre-Simpson coverage already

had a substantial social bent; almost half (44%) of the stories were socially focused

rather than incident-centered.

We also asked whether the type of domestic violence coverage changed with the Simpson

incident. To conduct this analysis we included only those stories that dealt with

domestic violence but did not mention Simpson.

Our main hypothesis, that the Simpson case precipitated more social reporting, was

not supported. When we focused only on the primary domestic violence stories there

was no significant change in social reporting (Table 2.1). Fifteen tests of the social

focus hypothesis were completed: nine show no significant differences between coverage

before and after the Simpson case; two show pre-existing trends contrary to increasing

social coverage (decreasing reports of statistics and of social explanations); two

show a temporary increase during the Simpson trial (explanations for domestic violence

attributed to the individuals involved and social actions); and only two show longer-term

changes in the expected direction (increased reports of law or judicial efforts and

of recommended abuser-centered actions to stop the violence). When we looked at the

large sample we saw that the insignificant results were repeated (Table 2.2). Thus,

media focus on domestic violence did not augment the social coverage.

Newspaper Differences. A final question asked whether there were differences in how

the newspapers treated domestic violence after the Simpson event. We tested the New

York Times against the Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News combined, for two

reasons. First, the focus of preSimpson domestic violence coverage in the Inquirer

and the Philadelphia Daily News was essentially the same. Second, the Times is a

nationally circulated paper and the Philadelphia publications are regional papers

that are more likely to cover incident stories of local interest.

To understand the quality of domestic violence reporting, the regressions tested

two variables from the general sample (social focus and primary incident) and the

sixteen variables examined in the primary story sample. The results confirm that

the Times had a different type of coverage and rate of changing quality of coverage

than the Philadelphia papers. Publication had a significant effect for six variables.

Table 3.1 shows that within the general sample's post-Simpson period, the Times ran

more socially focused stories (58% vs. 42%) and secondary domestic violence stories

(62% vs. 46%), than the Philadelphia papers. Within the limited primary story sample

after the trial, the Times also published more socially focused articles (42% vs.

24%), mentions of domestic violence legislation or programs (29% vs. 12%) and reports

of an abuser's criminal consequences 40% vs. 31%). Further emphasizing its social

focus, only 40% of the Times' stories discussed individual explanations for domestic

violence, compared to half of the Philadelphia articles.26

The regressions also produced three significant interactions showing different rates

of changing coverage between the Times and the Philadelphia newspapers (Table 3.2).

>From the pre- to post-Simpson period, the Times decreased the proportion of articles

that mentioned domestic violence murders by 28%, while the Philadelphia papers increased

theirs by 6%. The Times also increased its reporting of male-centered explanations

of domestic violence from 24% to 40%, while the Philadelphia papers maintained their

earlier level at 46%. Additionally, the Times' decrease of social explanations was

much slower (-1%) than its Philadelphia counterparts (-13%). As a complete picture,

the significant effect of publication and the interactions show that the Times' character

of domestic violence coverage was more socially focused in the post-Simpson period

and changed at a different rate after the Simpson-Goldman murders, than the Philadelphia

publications.

Discussion

The results lead us to conclude that the celebrity Simpson-Goldman murder case was

associated with an increase in the level of domestic violence reporting, but caused

few changes in the character of domestic violence coverage in the Inquirer, Philadelphia

Daily News, and the New York Times. As expected, we found an overall rise in the

number of newspaper articles on domestic violence during the Simpson case, including

those not related to the incident. Neither the Inquirer nor the Daily News continued

this elevated level of coverage after the trial. However, we found that the Times,

the largest and most influential of the three newspapers, maintained a level of domestic

violence coverage consistently higher than in the pre-Simpson period by publishing

stories that discussed legislative actions against domestic violence and provided

secondary references to the issue.

Our second question asked what difference the Simpson case made to the nature of

domestic violence news coverage. Our main hypothesis that domestic violence reporting

would become socially, rather than incident, focused was not supported. While only

a quarter (23%) of the articles primarily concerned with domestic violence before

the Simpson event were socially focused, allowing room for movement from incident

to social focus within this limited sample, this shift did not occur. Examining specific

indicators of social coverage in the primary domestic violence articles we found

two important changes. First, during the Simpson trial, there was a temporary increase

in both the number of individual-centered domestic violence explanations and descriptions

of recommended actions the general public may take against domestic violence. Second,

only two variables showed a continued effect after the Simpson trial ended: increased

mentions of abuser-centered actions to end the violence and more reports of legal

and judicial efforts to combat domestic violence. While this last change reflects

institutional measures to stop the violence, it may also signal a pre-existing secular

concern with domestic violence because scholars have noted that recognition of and

discussion about a public issue prompt legislative responses that promote additional

news coverage. 27

The lack of a substantial effect on the character of coverage shows that the Simpson

case's framing effect was not strong enough to alter the quality of domestic violence

related coverage. We interpret this to mean that, in part, media advocates were apparently

not successful in reframing the issue for journalists. Furthermore, among all stories

mentioning domestic violence, the pre-Simpson level of social focus coverage already

constituted nearly half (44%) of the articles and did not change substantially during

the time frame in this study.

When we examined how domestic violence was used in a broader news frame, we found

a pre-existing upward trend in reports of domestic violence incidents that did not

result in murder. We also credited the Simpson event with increasing mentions of

"recommended actions" an abuser may take to break the cycle of violence. This last

indicator, combined with a small rise in the number of reported criminal consequences

for a batterer, shows that articles after the Simpson event focused more attention

on the abuser's unacceptable behavior. This shift to holding the batterer accountable

for his actions may be interpreted as a move away from solely blaming the victim,

a transformation which advocates have long championed as necessary. However, consistent

with earlier textual analyses, we found that the onus of responsibility remains with

the victim who is expected to end the violence through her own actions.

Beginning in 1990, we noted two downward trends in the number of stories reporting

domestic violence statistics and in the mentions of social explanations for domestic

violence (Table 2.1). These findings, together with the increasing tendency to provide

more individually focused explanations for domestic violence, may be interpreted

within a media advocacy frame. Research suggests that as a topic is recognized as

a public problem, reporting shifts from presenting descriptive social facts to covering

new legislation that addresses the issue. This new media coverage helps ensure that

public policies are enforced.28 Accordingly, we believe that decreased reports of

"hard data" and of social explanations illustrate the changing stages of the domestic

violence issue's life cycle in the press. This is reflected in the increased reports

of judicial efforts addressing domestic violence and of the batterer's criminal consequences.

Finally, testing for post-Simpson variances among the publications, we found that

the New York Times treated domestic violence differently than the Inquirer and the

Philadelphia Daily New combined. Specifically, the Times was more socially focused.

This emphasis included more mentions of social explanations for domestic violence,

consequences for the abuser and discussion of legislative efforts addressing the

syndrome. The Tines' social framing may reflect its greater national circulation

and issue-orientation than the Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

This study has several limitations that future research may address. First, a detailed

examination of domestic violence newspaper stories dating back to the 1970's would

provide useful insight into an apparent pre-existing trend of increasing domestic

violence coverage. Second, while our social explanations category contained references

to race, male attitudes, and class, we were not able to focus on these variables

because they occurred so rarely in our sample. Further analyses of how these perspectives

are covered in mainstream news stories about domestic violence is certainly warranted

using different techniques.

In summary, this study is the first detailed content analysis of national newspaper

coverage of domestic violence. It substantiates previous textual analyses that show

that most coverage of domestic violence incidents focuses blame on the individual

victim and abuser, while ignoring social factors that perpetuate violence. However,

this study differs from earlier work, in that we examined all stories that referenced

domestic violence, not just sensational stories about specific cases. With this larger

sample we conclude that the Simpson case did not substantially affect the media's

framing of domestic violence. Half of all stories mentioning domestic violence were

already socially focused, and the small changes within the primary article sample

are minor when observed in the larger picture. This finding suggests that the mainstream

media have been making social references to domestic violence since the early 1990s,

and likely reflects earlier media interest in stalking and rape cases. Our findings

offer insight into how the media treat domestic violence, and warrant continued explorations

of how events may affect the public understanding of domestic violence.

-1-

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com

Publication Information:

Article Title: Covering Domestic Violence: How the O.j. Simpson Case Shaped Reporting

of Domestic Violence in the News Media. Contributors: Kimberly A. Maxwell - author,

John Huxford - author, Catherine Borum - author, Robert Hornik - author. Journal

Title: Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Volume: 77. Issue: 2. Publication

Year: 2000. Page Number: 258+. © 2000 Association for Education in Journalism and

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