Child sex abuse in South Africa: the role of the media in constructing reality

Abstract

SUMMARY The recent intensive media coverage of child sex abuse provided an ideal opportunity to examine a socially constructed media crime wave. The actual occurrence of child sex abuse in South Africa is unknown, since it is a punishable offence and is therefore concealed. It can be said, however, that South Africa is clearly a child-abusing nation. The point of interest here is that South Africans have always abused their children but the media never reflected this practice in depth until 1988. Furthermore, when it did focus on the crime, it did so very intensively for a short period. The contention of this paper is then that the increased media coverage did not reflect an increase in incidence. Rather, an explanation for the coverage may be found in an understanding of the routines and professional practices of journalists and their reliance on institutional sources. Such routines and practices are dictated by the demands of daily news production and result in particular reality significations which have ideological and political consequences. This is all the more apparent in this study in that, because child abuse occurs within the family unit and is a closely guarded secret, journalists had to rely on information gathered by various social institutions, such as the police, the courts and social welfare institution. This paper focuses on the coverage of sexual child abuse in two Port Elizabeth newspapers, the Eastern Province Herald and the Evening Post, from January 1987 to December 1989. In order to probe the understandings of the journalists involved, interviews were conducted with members of the newspapers.