Victim-blaming rises again

As soon as I saw video of David Dao, the Elizabethtown doctor yanked from the United flight, I set my stopwatch to see how long it would take for a news outlet to publish a “Dao isn’t an innocent victim” article.

And just like clockwork, reports starting to come in on Dao’s “troubled past” just a day later.

TMZ as well as the Louisville Courier-Journal reported about Dao’s past as the doctor was charged in 2005 with 98 felony drug counts.

As if issues from over a decade ago have anything to do with him being bloodied and bruised as he was dragged off that flight.

I hope if ever I’m mistreated that news doesn’t come out about me taking home hotel towels that one time years ago. I can see the headlines now: “Inquirer reporter José Torres: Serial towel thief.”

There are better follow-up questions to ask after that United incident. What was the policy in place for removing passengers on overbooked flights? What about those “aviation” cops? What’s their affiliation or partnership with local police departments? How about a story highlighting the issue of overbooked flights?

I agree with The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery, who wrote on Twitter, “that’s what I’m interested in reading. Journalism that applies pressure to those with power – not the powerless man ripped from his seat.”

Instead, we got another story vilifying the victim.

The Louisville Courier-Journal defended publishing their piece as Executive Editor Joel Christopher wrote:

“I want to urge anyone from a national or international perspective to understand the full scope of our coverage here. This is one of dozens of pieces that we’ve done on the story. Dr. Dao is somebody who is not unfamiliar to people in our coverage area. His original case was pretty high profile. It’s a name that doesn’t come out of the blue. To not acknowledge that history and context would be unusual, frankly.

“There are two things here: Some folks are just seeing that piece and not the full scope of our coverage. So if that’s the only piece you think we’ve done, of course you’ll zero in on it.

“Secondly, we didn’t account for the fact that some people might just hit on that piece, and we didn’t put the necessary context for a national or international audience to understand. We’ve since done that. There’s information that’s pretty vital that you wouldn’t immediately understand if you’re not from our market.”

Except the issue isn’t the Courier-Journal covering all their bases. Rather, it’s bringing unrelated news to a story. After a baseball game, when I interview the head coach who is also a running backs’ coach during the football season, I don’t ask questions about the football season. That is irrelevant to my story. Just like a victim’s past is unrelated to the incident at hand.

If the story is about the incident, why are we obsessed with “well does this person deserve my sympathy?”

You can pull up numerous instances of victim blaming in national news. I remember reading a story of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old killed by police, who described Brown as “no angel.” Sexual assault reporting has instances of victim blaming as well. “She shouldn’t have worn those clothes,” “She shouldn’t have been so ‘loose,’” “She had it coming,” etc. It’s as if we need the perfect victim in order to sympathize with them.

If a victim’s past is unrelated or irrelevant to the story, it shouldn’t be presented as “see! He’s no angel!” So if I’m ever bloodied and bruised, I sure hope those towels I got out of that Best Western years ago doesn’t result in a profile on me the day after.