Another week, another Daily Mail sex-related scandal. And, what a surprise, it appears they’ve got the wrong end of the stick yet again! Earlier this week it appears the Mail published an article wrongly claiming that 14-year-old girls could be propositioned for sex by older men “within seconds” of joining Facebook.
The social networking giant is now threatening to sue as it wasn’t actually their site the reporter was using, and the Mail have since amended their online article, but this doesn’t change the fact that many people will now think that their teenage daughters are being instantly propositioned every time they go online.
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen and that people don’t need to be careful – a friend of mine in her 20s recently quit a free dating site after only a few days due to the number of sleazy messages she received – but newspapers do need to be careful when reporting stories like this. Just because there is sexual content, doesn’t mean it needs to be reported like a world-endingly-terrible sex scandal every time.
It’s not just the sex stories either; it’s the same for all news items. In the second series of BBC4 programme Newswipe, Charlie Brooker excellently covered the way news media feels the need to develop a sense of overwhelming fear regarding any given topic. Why do we have to be scared of everything all the time?
Another problem is that, when newspapers add their own spin and sensationalism to stories like this, it makes it easy for many people to overlook the underlying facts. When confronted with the headline “Ban erotic underwear ads from buses, says Tory MP Nadine Dorries”, would you dismiss it as another whiny Conservative requesting that you ‘please think of the children’, or read further to discover that Dorries is concerned that these images are contributing to “a wider trend towards the objectification of women”?
Newspapers really need to think more carefully when they add headlines to some articles, especially stories with sexual content. Okay, so we don’t want a world where 8-year-old girls desire breast implants to impress the boys at school, but we also don’t want those same girls growing up thinking sex is evil and the internet is full of people who are going to force you to do things against your will.
People need to be cautious, but being permanently afraid will do no good whatsoever.
Image via tiny packages’ Flickr