Not in years had the Des Moines Register published anything that drew such passionate national response. For five days beginning in February, the Register (weekday circ. 210,000) ran meticulously detailed stories about a 29- year-old mother who had been abducted and raped. The series contained a graphic account of the assault and the woman's subsequent experience as a witness at her assailant's trial. To many Iowans, the most riveting fact about the series was that the victim chose to let the Register use her real name. By going public, said Nancy Ziegenmeyer, she hoped to focus attention on this underreported crime and thereby prevent other women from being raped.
The Register's editors, who expected a torrent of canceled ads and subscriptions, were surprised by Iowa's overwhelmingly favorable reaction. Even more calls of support poured in after a story about the series was front- paged by the New York Times last week. Geneva Overholser, the Register's editor, believes strongly that the American press should be franker in reporting sexual assaults. "We are participating in the stigma of rape by treating victims of this crime differently," says Overholser. "When we as a society refuse to talk openly about rape, I think we weaken our ability to deal with it."
The Register series appeared at a time when the U.S. press seems to be abandoning its largely self-imposed rules about protecting individual privacy. The press once routinely shielded the identity of juvenile defendants. Now stories often name youths who have been arraigned on offenses major enough to warrant their trial as adults. Even mainstream publications have begun to practice "outing" -- that is, disclosing the homosexual preferences of closeted celebrities. Most papers now clearly state in obituaries that individuals died of AIDS. Within days of Malcolm Forbes' death, several journals noted rumors about the publisher's gay affairs.
$ Rape has long been treated by the American press as a special situation. Hiding the victim's name, the argument went, protected her from the secondary trauma of exposure to prurient public attention. Journalistic policy elsewhere varies. The Code of Practice, drawn up by Britain's Press Council, prohibits newspapers from naming rape victims without their consent. In France, on the contrary, adult rape victims are usually named. In the U.S. three states have confidentiality laws that protect the identity of rape victims. But these are in limbo, largely because of the 1989 Supreme Court ruling in Florida Star v. B.J.F. The court overturned a $100,000 damage judgment against a Jacksonville weekly that had been charged with violating Florida's law by printing the name of a rape victim, even though she had been identified in a police report.