MediaBistro criticized the media for writing as if womanizing and assaulting sexually are interchangeable.
The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times’ Paul Whitefield, for example, both referred to claims or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “alleged sexual harassment and molestation” over the years as womanizing, according to MediaBistro.
As Media Bistro explained,
“Journalists, who make their living off language, ought to understand the difference between the two behaviors. One involves a consensual relationship. The other is a crime involving force. To refer to Schwarzenegger’s groping as ‘womanizing’ is to make light of sexual crimes against women.”
iMediaEthics wrote earlier this week about similar questionable wording issue in the reporting on the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. An ABC News story was headlined “Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Ladies’ Man or Sexual Predator?”