Deviance from the Ethical Standard of Reporting Child Sexual Abuse in Daily Newspapers of Bangladesh

Abstract

Since child sexual abuse (CSA) is one of the most serious public health issues, how CSA cases and victims are portrayed in the daily newspapers is a major concern to the public health and communication specialists. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree of the ethical standard of reporting CSA in Bangladeshi newspapers, as well as to identify the potential risk factors associated with unethical reporting. From January to December 2017, a total of 1093 news stories on CSA were collected from four top circulated Bengali newspapers and two English newspapers of Bangladesh. Berelson’s quantitative content analysis approach (only manifest content) was used to analyze these stories. For the coding and analysis purpose, news items (texts and news with photos) of spot news, editorials, and commentaries were included. Chi-square tests were used to evaluate the bivariate association of different case characteristics with unethical reporting, and multivariate logistic regression models were performed to assess the potential risk factors of disclosing the victim’s identity and needless detail in the news description. This study revealed that more than 40% of news stories on CSA cases did not follow the ethical standard of reporting. Episodic CSA cases were more unethically reported in newspapers, compared to the thematic stories (42.8% vs. 11.6%). Approximately 37% of news stories disclosed at least one identifying information of victims (i.e., name, parents’ name, family member’s name, or school name), and 23% of stories included sensual and/or excessive description of the event. Our adjusted model showed that victim identifiers were most likely to be reported in news stories when the victim was 13–17 years old (AOR 1.86; P = 0.027), the alleged perpetrator held influential social status (AOR 2.44, P = 0.005), the victim was familiar to the perpetrator (AOR 6.85, P < 0.001), and when public reaction against the CSA incident was reported (AOR 2.75, P < 0.001). In addition, if there was a public reaction to any CSA occurrence, the chances of unnecessary extensive coverage increased by 1.82 times. In conclusion, Bangladeshi newspapers often publish CSA stories without maintaining the ethical standard of reporting and thus ignore child rights.