Son of New York Police Commissioner Accused of Rape, Media Smears Alleged Victim

For starters, you don’t begin a story about an alleged crime by editorializing, based on anonymous “sources,” that the accuser “was instantly enamored” of and “star-struck” by her reported attacker. You certainly don’t paint a picture of “48 hours of marathon sexting” before and after the incident early in a story, then bury that the source claims it was  a grand total of 17 messages. Perhaps, as the source suggests, the texts were “sexual,” but unless somebody’s changed how we measure time, 17 texts in a two-day period is nobody’s version of a “marathon.” Yet the New York Post managed to do all of the above in a single front-page story Sunday that put “rape” in scare quotes but not “sext foreplay.”

Regarding that post-incident communication, the paper’s anonymous sources claim that the accuser talked to Kelly either about “doing it again,” or asking him, “Why’d you do that?” So think twice before suggesting, like Rikki Kleinman blithely wrote in the Daily Beast, that “every new published detail appears to point toward consensual sex,” including “sexting before and after their date.”

Likewise, considering that there’s no proven correlation between bar décor and sexual assault, there’s no reason to breathlessly remark, as the New York Daily News does, that “Greg Kelly and rape accuser drank at East Side bar draped in bras.” Yes, readers, we all know what happens when you meet up in the bra bar. That’s practically a binding sexual contract! And while it’s just straight-up reporting to note that the accused claims that his exchanges with the woman were “flirtatious” and that their meeting was for “a sexual purpose,” you might want to throw in somewhere that flirting — and even arranging a hook-up with another man while your boyfriend is sitting at home — doesn’t mean you can’t possibly have been raped. While we’re at it, journalists, go ahead and retire the antiquated, Katie Roiphe BS phrase “date rape.” Here’s a memo from the 21st century to you: rape is rape, even when there is a date involved.

One doesn’t exactly expect responsible, unbiased journalism from the New York Post – especially regarding the police commissioner’s son, who anchors the news on the local Fox affiliate, owned by the same company as the Post. But what’s so dismaying about the media coverage of the Kelly story is how pathetically typical it is. There’s a sexual assault accusation? Well, let’s talk about the alleged victim’s attractiveness, like stories did when Lara Logan was assaulted in Egypt last year. Let’s talk about how she dresses, and whether she wears makeup — even when she is a child, like the victim in a Texas gang rape. Let’s note whether she was “flirtatious.”