Two Years Later: The Ghomeshi Effect
It has been two years since the Jian Ghomeshi scandal unfolded before Canadian audiences. The Toronto Star investigative reporter and editor who broke the story, Kevin Donovan, came to Ryerson University to speak to students about his new book that launched early October that details his experience covering the case, and the impact the case still has two years later.
While Donovan spoke about his investigative journey of the Ghomeshi case, he also discussed the long-lasting effect the case had on raising these issues of sexual assault publicly in Canada.
In recent years, we have seen an ascent of the audience and how regularly, the audience’s reception to a news item becomes the story. Indeed, the process of information being consumed and utilized by audiences has drastically shifted and as a result, deviates the narration of storytelling in the 21st century. Audiences are no longer passive users and are encouraged to comment and engage with information that is being put out by media (i.e comment sections). As a result of comment sections, internet forums, online groups and communities emerge and discuss issues presented by the media, which demonstrates precisely how our society gathers and dissects information.
During the Ghomeshi trail, former Montreal Gazette reporter Sue Montgomery started the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported to express her disgust with people questioning the credibility of the anonymous women who started coming out and accusing Ghomeshi of sexual assault. Montgomery, who up until that day never came out publicly about her own experiences with rape, shared her story using the hashtag and within hours, it became an internet sensation.
Fast-forward to 2016 and we saw the same level of audience participation with a similar internet hashtag with reference to a sexual assault accusation. After Donald Trump’s infamous video was leaked where he openly bragged about being able to sexually assault women because of his status, and the recent sexual assault allegations that followed, Vox correspondent Elizabeth Plank was provoked to create another Twitter conversation, using the hashtag #WhyWomenDontReport.
Similar to the Ghomeshi case, people questioned why the women who were accusing Trump of sexual assault were only reporting it now, and not earlier. This hashtag was created with the similar intention of encouraging young women to share why they didn’t report their stories and illustrate the complexities encompassing whether survivors chose to report or not.
Both cases are wonderful examples of the power of citizen journalism and how sometimes repressive issues can amplify a profound liberating outcome. These citizen journalism approaches are important because it’s these particular tactics that help keep the conversation going on an issue that should remain topical. The continuous discussion reveals the crisis our country is facing and reminds survivors they don’t need to suffer in silence.
Essentially, mainstream Canadian reporting touches the basis of sexual violence in Canada, and often perpetuates rape culture, but I think citizen journalism is a potential outlet that can be utilized to address sexual violence more effectively than our current mainstream media does. Citizen journalism has the capacity of being able to display sexual violence in another context that not only addresses the issue, but also tackles it and encourages audiences to recognize it as a very prevalent crisis.
