“Pretty as a peach”: Some thoughts on the gendered representations of Reeva Steenkamp’s murder in three South African publications
Some thoughts on the gendered representations of Reeva Steenkamp’s murder in three South African publications
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- Submited: October 11, 2022
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Published: October 13, 2022
Abstract
South Africa’s media are often touted as lacking ethics in favour of sensationalism (Cronin, 2010).
Wasserman (2007) argues that this could be a consequence of the increased circulation of daily
tabloids in the country, which has been a result of an emerging new public that was marginalised
by the mainstream press of the apartheid era. However, by taking this argument forward, one
becomes entrenched in the wrongful assumption that tabloids are a journalistic evil, and are the
epitome of “bad journalism” (Ornekring & Jonssen, 2004). This paper uses the example of the
Sunday Times and City Press newspapers’ coverage of Oscar Pistorius’ arrest and bail application
in February 2013 to demonstrate how two of South Africa’s most widely read traditional Sunday
newspapers represented Pistorius in the same manner as You magazine, South Africa’s most
widely read English tabloid style magazine. The paper acknowledges that tabloid-style reporting
is not necessarily as “bad” as its critics maintain, but argues that ethically, reporting could (and
should) have been handled differently. The paper analyses the stereotyped representation of
Steenkamp and Pistorius in all three publications, and following the work of Clifford Christians
(2009), uses these examples to highlight problems with the traditional utilitarian frameworks that
govern modern news reporting.
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