Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide

Amy Baumann  Grau

doi:10.29333/ajqr/10929

Amy Baumann Grau ¹ ^*

More Detail

AM J QUALITATIVE RES, Volume 5, Issue 1, pp. 185-205

https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/10929

OPEN ACCESS 1170 Views 1391 Downloads

Download Full Text (PDF)

Abstract

There has been more discussion by and from the media in recent years over the issue of domestic violence, this has largely overlooked instances of fatal family violence. This project examines 340 cases of parents or stepparents who killed their children between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2013 and reported in the U.S. national news media. A content analysis of the news coverage identified themes of positive, negative, and sympathetic portrayals of offenders and victims as well as the minimization of victims. News coverage of offenders depicted them as multifaceted persons with details that could humanize or other offenders while victims were minimized with more focus on the harm done to them than the lives they led. As the focus on offenders occurred in conjunction with the minimization of victims, it is concluded that news media coverage is offender-centric and such media coverage needs to be more balanced in portrayals of victims and offenders to better address and respond to the issue of fatal family violence.

Keywords: Filicide, Family Violence, Media Portrayals, Victims, Victimization.

References

AP. (2006, July 15). Ex-commerce dept. official kills son , self. The Associated Press News Service.
AP. (2007, October 2). Arundel teen ordered committed after death of newborn, MD. The Associated Press News Service.
AP. (2007, October 24). Death penalty won’t be sought for mother who killed daughter, IL. The Associated Press News Service.
AP. (2007, December 9). Man who killed baby daughter was in court that morning, TN. The Associated Press News Service.
AP. (2008, April 12). Mother of infant found in trash charged with murder, KY. The Associated Press News Service.
AP. (2009, April 15). OC man returns to face charges of killing daughter, CA. The Associated Press News Service.
AP. (2009, December 9). Calif. man indicted on charge of killing daughter. The Associated Press News Service.
AP. (2010, March 4). SC father gets life, killed son with broom handle, SC. The Associated Press News Service.
AP, & Goldman, A. (2008, April 4). NYC man gets up to 29 years in killing of stepdaughter, 7, 4th Ld-Writethru, NY. The Associated Press News Service.
AP, & Hannah, J. (2008, September 4). Ohio woman in microwave case spared death penalty, 5th Ld-Writethru, OH. The Associated Press News Service.
AP: Hawaii Tribune-Herald. (2009, October 28). Father who killed son gets 2 years in prison, 1st Ld-Writethru, HI. The Associated Press News Service.
AP: Tucson Citizen. (2009, February 26). Jury selected in Tucson child killing trial, 1st Ld-Writethru, AZ. The Associated Press News Service.
Barlow, C. (2015). Silencing the other: Gendered representations of co-accused women offenders. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 54(5), 469–488.
Barnett, B. (2005). Perfect mother or artist of obscenity? Narrative and myth in a qualitative analysis of press coverage of the Andrea Yates murders. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29(1), 9–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859904270053
Barnett, B. (2016). Motherhood in the media: Infanticide, journalism, and the digital age. Routledge.
Battaglia, T.S. & Angel, C. (2009, November 19). Mich. man accused of killing son who admitted “inappropriate contact” with toddler. Detroit Free Press.
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Anchor Books.
Berns, N. S. (2004). Framing the victim: Domestic violence, media, and social problems. Routledge.
Bowen, B. (2005, June 15). Mother gets 52 years in scalding death. Copley News Service: The Journal Star.
Brown, T., Tyson, D., & Fernandez Arias, P. (2018). Filicide in Australia. In T. Brown, D. Tyson, & P. Fernandez Arias (Eds.), When Parents Kill Children: Understanding Filicide (pp. 145–166). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63097-7_8
Cavaglion, G. (2008). Bad, mad or sad? Mothers who kill and press coverage in Israel. Crime, Media, Culture, 4(2), 271–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659008092332
Cavaglion, G. (2009). Fathers who killed and press coverage in Israel. Child Abuse Review, 18, 127–143. https://doi.org/10.1002/car.1028
Cohen, S., & Fitz-Gibbon, J. (2010, March 19). NY mom says she killed daughter for being “rude.” USA Today.
Collins, R. E. (2016). ‘Beauty and bullets’: A content analysis of female offenders and victims in four Canadian newspapers. Journal of Sociology, 52(2), 296–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783314528594
Coorg, R. & Tounray, A. (2012). Filicide-suicide involving children with disabilities. Journal of Child Neurology, 28(6), 745–751. https://doi.org/10.1177/0883073812451777
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). SAGE.
Deckert, A. (2019). Indigeneity matters: Portrayal of women offenders in New Zealand newspapers: Crime, Media, Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659019873771
Dekel, B., Abrahams, N., & Andipatin, M. (2018). Exploring adverse parent-child relationships from the perspective of convicted child murderers: A South African qualitative study. PLOS ONE, 13(5), e0196772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0196772
Dekel, B., Andipatin, M., & Abrahams, N. (2020). Exploring adversities among parents convicted of killing their children. PLOS ONE, 15(7), e0235812. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235812
DiBennardo, R. A. (2018). Ideal victims and monstrous offenders: How the news media represent sexual predators. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 4. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023118802512
Duncan, S., & Newton, J. (2012). Hacking into tragedy: Exploring the ethics of death reporting in the social media age. In The Phone Hacking Scandal Journalism on Trial (pp. 208–220). Abramis.
Durose, M. R., Harlow, C. W., Langan, P. A., Motivans, M., Rantala, R. R., & Smith, E. L. (2005). Family violence statistics: Including statistics on strangers and acquaintances (June 2005, NCJ 207846). Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvs03.pdf
Elizabeth, V. (2016). ‘I’d just lose it if there was any more stress in my life’: Separated fathers, fathers’ rights and the news media. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 107–120. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v5i2.312
Eriksson, L., Mazerolle, P., Wortley, R., & Johnson, H. (2016). Maternal and paternal filicide: case studies from the Australian homicide project. Child Abuse Review, 25(1), 17–30.
Father kills son, himself at YWCA offices in NH. (2013, August 12). The Associated Press News Service.
Fishman, J. M. (2017). Death makes the news: How the media censor and display the dead. NYU Press.
Greer, C., & Jewkes, Y. (2005). Extremes of otherness: Media images of social exclusion. Social Justice, 32(1 (99)), 20–31.
Gruenewald, J., Chermack, S. M., & Pizarro, J. M. (2013). Covering victims in the news: What makes minority homicides newsworthy? Justice Quarterly, 30(5), 755–783. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2011.628945
Hightower, K., & AP. (2011, July 5). Casey Anthony acquitted of killing daughter. The Associated Press News Service.
Huckerby, J. (2003). Women who kill their children: Case study and conclusions concerning the differences in the fall from maternal grace by Khoua Her and Andrea Yates. Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, 10, 149–172.
Jewkes, Y. (2015). Media & crime (3rd edition). SAGE.
Krumer-Nevo, M., & Sidi, M. (2012). Writing against othering. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(4), 299–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800411433546
Lavoie, D. (2011, June 29). APNewsBreak: Appeal filed in mother- baby killing. Associated Press Archive.
Léveillée, S., & Doyon, L. (2019). Understanding the motives behind male filicides to better intervene. European Review of Applied Psychology, 69(2), 73–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erap.2019.03.002
Little, J. (2015). “Family violence happens to everybody”: Gender, mental health, and violence in Australian media representations of filicide 2010-2014. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 29(4), 605–616. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2015.1025366
Little, J. (2018). Filicide, journalism and the ‘disempowered man’ in three Australian cases 2010–2016: Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918809739
Loller, Travis. (2013, April 26). Tenn. woman gets 51 years in newborn twin deaths. Associated Press: US News Online.
Lune, H., & Berg, B. L. (2017). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences (Ninth edition). Pearson.
McAlinden, A. M. (2014). Deconstructing victim and offender identities in discourses on child sexual abuse: Hierarchies, blame and the good/evil dialectic. British Journal of Criminology, 54(2), 180–198. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azt070
Meyer, C. L. & Oberman, M. (2001). Mothers who kill their children: Understanding the acts of moms from Susan Smith to the “prom mom.” NYU Press.
Mulder, A. (2006). Media. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3), 289–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276406062683
Naylor, B. (2001). The “bad mother” in media and legal texts. Social Semiotics, 11(2), 155–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330120018292
Niblock, S. (2018). “He just snapped”: Gender narratives of parents killing their children in the UK press. Journalism Studies, 19(16), 2451–2469. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.135011722
Nikunen, M. (2006). Parenthood in murder-suicide news. Idealized fathers and murderous mums. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention, 7, 164–184. https://doi.org/10.1080/14043850601029430
O’ Brien, A., & Culloty, E. (2020). Reporting familicide-suicide in broadcast media: An Irish case study to inform better practice. Journalism, 146488492097802. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920978028
Peelo, M. (2006). Framing homicide narratives in newspapers: Mediated witness and the construction of virtual victimhood. Crime, Media, Culture, 2(2), 159–175. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659006065404
Pemberton, A., Mulder, E., & Aarten, P. G. M. (2019). Stories of injustice: Towards a narrative victimology. European Journal of Criminology, 16(4), 391–412. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818770843
Perez, E. S. (2010, July 15). Dallas-area mayor apparently kills daughter, self. The Associated Press News Service.
Pollak, J. M. & Kubrin, C. E. (2007). Crime in the news: How crimes, offenders and victims are portrayed in the media. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 14(1), 59–83.
Resnick, P. (1969). Child murder by parents: A psychiatric review of filicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 325–334(3). https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.126.3.325
Saavedra, L., & Oliveira, J. M. de. (2017). Transgressing motherhood: Media reports on infanticide. Deviant Behavior, 38(3), 345–355. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2016.1197007
Schwalbe, M., Godwin, S., Holden, D., Schrock, D., Thompson, S., & Wolkomir, M. (2000). Generic processes in the reproduction of inequality: An interactionist analysis. Social Forces, 79(2), 419–452. https://doi.org/10.2307/2675505
Strauss, A. L. (1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511557842
Thompson, C. (2004, May 28). Mother accused of gruesome killing of baby had asked for help two days earlier. Associated Press Archive.
Tuchman, G. (1978). The news net. Social Research, 45(2), 253–276.
Tucker, E., & Associated Press. (2011, August 8). Md. Mom who killed son agonized over school costs. The Associated Press News Service.
UPI News Service. (2008, August 21). Prosecutors: Vodka remedy killed baby. UPI News Track.
Walklate, S., Maher, J., McCulloch, J., Fitz-Gibbon, K., & Beavis, K. (2019). Victim stories and victim policy: Is there a case for a narrative victimology?: Crime, Media, Culture, 15(2), 199–215. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659018760105
Wardle, C. (2007). Monsters and angels: Visual press coverage of child murders in the USA and UK, 1930—2000. Journalism, 8(3), 263–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884907076461
Williams, P., & Clarke, B. (2018). The black criminal oher as an object of social control. Social Sciences, 7(11), 234. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7110234

Citation

Grau, A. B. (2021). Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 5(1), 185-205. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/10929

Grau, A. B. (2021). Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 5(1), pp. 185-205. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/10929

Grau AB. Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide. AM J QUALITATIVE RES. 2021;5(1), 185-205. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/10929

Grau, Amy Baumann. "Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide". American Journal of Qualitative Research 2021 5 no. 1 (2021): 185-205. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/10929

Grau, Amy Baumann "Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide". American Journal of Qualitative Research, vol. 5, no. 1, 2021, pp. 185-205. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/10929

Grau AB. Multifaceted Offenders and Minimization of Victims: U.S. National News Media Coverage of Offenders and Victims in Coverage of Filicide. AM J QUALITATIVE RES. 2021;5(1):185-205. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/10929