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Observers express concern about reporting of Reynhard case
Media observers and activists have raised concerns about the media’s framing of sexual violence issues in relation to the LGBT community.
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Convicted Indonesian serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga (Kompas.com/-)
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ollowing the conviction of Indonesian student Reynhard Sinaga for serial rapes in Manchester in the United Kingdom, the global media, including many outlets in Indonesia, have produced numerous reports about the shocking case.
With the case making headlines in the country, local media observers and activists have raised concerns about the media’s framing of sexual violence issues in relation to the LGBT community.
Over the week, Reynhard Sinaga, a 36-year-old PhD student living in the UK was on the front pages of worldwide news outlets after he was convicted of 159 counts of rape against men in Manchester. Police believe that Reynhard attacked at least 195 men during the 2015-2017 period based on the videos he recorded during the attacks on his two iPhones.
Dubbed “the most prolific rapist in Britain’s legal history”, he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 30 years after being found guilty of assaulting 48 men.
At home, however, media observers have found that some Indonesian media, in reporting the case, violated journalistic standards by promoting views and probing into Reynhard’s personal life that could further damage the credibility of journalism in Indonesia.
“The media in Indonesia is trying to contextualize the case by looking into Reynhard’s family background, his ethnicity and his past personal life and actually presented unrelated opinions with regard to his crimes. The media could have linked the case, for example, with the urgent need for the sexual violence bill to be passed in Indonesia,” Firman Imanuddin, an activist with Indonesian media observer community Remotivi, said at a discussion forum at the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) office in Jakarta on Sunday.
He criticized the lack of interesting story angles in Reynhard’s news coverage and said that the media only raced for sensational click-bait articles while ignoring the journalistic code of ethics.
