I started writing a piece the other day called ‘From #NotAllMen to #NotAllMedia’, which I had yet to publish. I wanted to clarify yet again how my criticism of the reporting of the Cavan murders was a structural critique of sorts, aiming to start a conversation around the wider media climate and its impact on the real-life experiences of its audiences, and how making it personal and debating individual journalists’ performances and accomplishments would be to drastically miss the point. Naturally, I responded to requests to debate individual tabloid journalists on air with a firm ‘no’. I wasn’t going to engage with that level of debate at all.
Then the Crime Editor of the Irish Times went and published an opinion piece entitled ‘How #HerNameWasClodagh missed the media’s real failing’, launching the hashtag #AllVictimsMatter, and here I am. I will assume that I was at least to some degree included in the group he defends himself against, dubbed “one ill-informed corner of social media”, “spectacularly wrong” and an “echo chamber of social media and blogging” – and I would happily accept those monikers if it seemed as if the editor had understood at least the most basic ideas behind the criticism of the coverage he writes about, but alas. What this is, then, is not so much a defense of my views as it is an attempt to highlight the privilege behind such hashtags of blind self-righteousness.
“We were told journalists – all of them, it seems – wanted to package this case as a family tragedy and quickly move on.”
I have explicitly repeated over and over again that the journalists pointing out that they in fact did something right are catastrophically missing the point. I have also said explicitly on more than one occasion that I don’t think that journalists consciously went out on a mission to erase the memory of Clodagh. In fact, I have said the complete opposite: that we’ve all grown up as part of a society full of patriarchal tropes, and that what we need is a discussion around how we can avoid perpetuating said tropes. There is a narcissistic streak in the urge for a journalist to take my critique personally, similar to the narcissism that has fuelled hashtags such as #NotAllMen.
“Many of them hopelessly mistook the placing of Alan Hawe at the centre of the coverage as misogyny in a world where the actions of violent men are somehow accepted by the media and their female victims do not matter. The truth is that the case of the Hawe family was treated no differently to any other; with the media focused on the perpetrator over, and at the expense of, the victims. This has nothing to do with gender, no matter how hard some people try to make it so.”
The crime editor is privileged enough that he can compare the reporting of one case with the reporting of another like for like, completely disregarding the context in which those crimes take place and the role of media in augmenting or undermining certain accepted narratives in society. To think that the reporting of a case of brutal domestic violence has nothing to do with gender is not just naïve, but frankly irresponsible and, yes, misogynistic. But then again, that inability to see the bigger picture is inherent to all the aforementioned hashtags.
“Having had the same conversation with many people on the periphery of such cases, I have found that when people speak of a killer’s talents and strengths, they are not condoning or minimising their violence. They are pondering – often in shock – how the life of the perpetrator was apparently so “normal” and at odds with the violence they committed in their final moments.”
No one is criticising the people behind the quotes, those grieving and those in disbelief. It is the blind regurgitation of such quotes by media that is problematic. There is a reason why a seemingly ‘normal’ person committing such a horrendous crime is met with such disbelief and shock; and a media discourse that doesn’t silence but rather trust and support the voices of women who have experienced domestic abuse could significantly help us understand the culture that creates men like Alan Hawe. If we remove the spotlight from the Cavan killings for a moment and point it to the editorial offices of our mainstream media instead, we can start to talk about considered narratives as opposed to spontaneous reactions of shock, and we might be onto something.
“In these cases, local people who knew the family often feel freer, in my experience, to say more about the perpetrator, to whom they understandably have less loyalty, than the victims. This is especially so when, like Kilkenny man Alan Hawe, the perpetrator is not originally from the area where the murders and suicide have taken place but the victims and their extended family are, as was the case with Clodagh Hawe and her Cavan-based extended family.”
The entire history of tabloid coverage of murders, disappearances and similar goes against this theory, but even if it were true, media do not just choose what questions to ask; they also choose what to print. Is a ‘We just wrote what they said!’ kind of media really the kind the editor wants to associate himself with?
“It is interesting that the deaths of forgotten victims – women and men – from poorer social circumstances have not whipped up the same strength of feeling in the past from those most vehemently behind the #HerNameWasClodagh campaign. There are huge lessons in this case for the media, but not the gender-based ones suggested by the echo chamber of social media and blogging; the media needs to focus more on victims. #AllVictimsMatter”
Oh no he didn’t. But of course he did, in one punchy finishing line proving all his critics right. Because this is exactly what this is about: the privilege that won’t give way for scrutinisation; the literal interpretation of the notion of equality that refuses to accept that equal treatment of those without equal starting points does not equality make.
What does #AllVictimsMatter have in common with #AllLivesMatter and #NotAllMen? That people in positions of power and privilege accuse those criticising the status quo for forgetting to care about those already cared for by the status quo: women’s rights activists are accused of not spending enough time campaigning for men’s rights and #BlackLivesMatter spokespeople are accused of discrimination – but those lashing out, naturally, have never bothered to campaign for either cause. All victims do matter, but not all murder victims potentially represent thousands of other victims who are still alive and reading the papers, told that their side of the story won’t be heard. I was told when my piece went viral that Alan Hawe is the centre of attention because he had agency while the others didn’t. Oh the irony of the fact that journalists – those holding the pens that write the stories of how we view ourselves – consider that an unquestionably, already cemented starting point.
