Abstract
When rugby league star Blake Ferguson was arrested and charged with indecent assault in June 2013, for squeezing the vagina of a woman at a Cronulla night spot, the story made headlines around the country. It was the first sexual crime involving a National Rugby League (NRL) player to be reported since Brett Stewart was acquitted of sexual assault in 2010, and reporting of previous cases focused largely on footballers’ attitudes towards women, women’s behaviour towards footballers, and use of alcohol. Using mixed methods discourse analysis, this article shows that the first 2 weeks of print media reporting created a frame for the case that had nothing to do with sexual crime, attitudes towards women, or gender relations. Although Ferguson had a history of inappropriate behaviour towards women, and alcohol abuse, the alcohol frame was almost unanimously chosen, marginalising the sexual crime and Ferguson’s actual victim. In contrast to reporting of previous cases, the focus was overwhelmingly on the impact on Ferguson’s career, his well-being and the game (including teammates, fans, and the NRL). The primacy of sport, and use of language to represent the case, impedes serious consideration of problematic attitudes towards women and the seriousness of sexual crime.
Sexual crimes involving elite male athletes attract a large amount of media and public attention and are guaranteed to make headlines from the first report of an allegation to the conclusion of a trial. Worldwide, such cases are reported with concerning frequency, although convictions are comparatively rare—in Australia, only two elite footballers have been found guilty of any sexual offence, despite more than 25 cases being reported involving players from the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League. No convictions were recorded. Although conviction rates are low generally, they are higher than for footballers. A Victorian study (Millsteed & McDonald, 2017) found 8.9–17.2% of reported sexual offences resulted in a proven charge (likely around 14%) with figures for rape much lower than for indecent assault. 1 The fact that cases involving a high-profile athlete are nearly always media events means that they are central to key national (and international) conversations about sexual violence, and an important site where problematic attitudes towards sexual crime can be reinforced or challenged. In one of these cases, a 2013 indecent assault perpetrated by Indigenous NRL star Blake Ferguson, media reporting employed an “alcohol use” news frame and focused on the implications for Ferguson and the game at the expense of consideration of the gendered dimensions of sexual crimes. Sport was of prime importance.
In June 2013, Ferguson was arrested and charged with indecent assault, for putting his hand up the dress of a woman he didn’t know and (allegedly) squeezing her vagina, while at a nightclub in Cronulla, on Sydney’s south coast (Ritchie & McCullough, 2013). CCTV footage showed that the woman immediately slapped him and pushed him. It was the night before Ferguson was due in camp to prepare for State of Origin Game II, an annual best-of-three competition between representative sides for Queensland (Maroons) and New South Wales (NSW Blues) and one of the biggest events on the rugby league calendar. Ferguson was out drinking with his white teammate, Josh Dugan, who had been sacked from the Canberra Raiders earlier that year after he and Ferguson were caught taking selfies while drinking on a rooftop when they were supposed to be at training. Ferguson was dropped from the Origin side when charges were laid and suspended for five weeks by the NRL. Dugan was not implicated in the assault and maintained his spot.
Ferguson was found guilty of one count of indecent assault in December 2013, a crime carrying a maximum penalty of 5 years’ imprisonment, and was consequently deregistered by the NRL and sentenced to a 2-year good behaviour bond in February 2014 (Walter, 2014). He appealed, and the sentence was halved with no conviction recorded in June 2014; the (male) judge ruled in favour of Ferguson’s claim that he touched the victim’s inner thigh rather than the victim’s claim that he squeezed her vagina (Partridge, 2014).
The Ferguson case is unique among Australian footballer sexual crime cases as it occurred in public, and the victim was a complete stranger. The study aims to uncover whether media representational strategies, and thus the news frames employed, differ significantly from previous cases where alleged perpetrator and victim were acquainted. Sexual crimes against strangers are typically considered more serious and blameworthy than those where perpetrator and victim are acquainted (Viki, Abrams, & Masser, 2004), and it might be expected that media reporting would be more sympathetic towards the (alleged) victim. However, this article will show that the first 2 weeks of media reporting created a frame for the issue that had nothing to do with sexual crime, attitudes towards women, or gender relations at all. Although Ferguson had a well-publicised history of alcohol abuse and inappropriate behaviour towards women he did not know, including harassing and making unwanted advances towards female journalists (Weidler, 2013), an “alcohol” frame was almost unanimously chosen over a “behaviour towards women” frame. The (alleged) crime was rarely described, and sometimes not even named, with the overwhelming focus on Ferguson’s need for “help” and detailing the impact on rugby league’s image and Ferguson’s career. Quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that the dominant narrative—whether overt or implied—was that Ferguson had let rugby league and himself down by going out drinking the night before State of Origin training began. Indecently assaulting a stranger was almost incidental to this narrative. Through marginalising the assault, or eliding it altogether, the victim and the sexual crime were thus “symbolically annihilated,” a term used for the widespread marginalisation of women in media (Tuchman, 2000), including the dearth of women’s sports coverage (Duncan, 2009). It captures the symbolic violence of erasing the victim from reporting around the crime committed against her and rendering women’s bodily autonomy unimportant. The problems of representation are not limited to gender, and despite some previous research suggesting that reporting of earlier cases avoided racist constructions (Baird, 2009), Ferguson’s positioning as an Indigenous man is more complex. Although some constructions were also applied to non-Indigenous footballers, the particular combination of discourses around alcohol and infantilisation related to Ferguson evoked race-based stereotypes damaging to him and Indigenous Australians as a group.
Sexual Violence in the Media: An Overview
Since the early 1990s, numerous scholars have investigated the subject of athletes and criminal behaviour, particularly sexual violence. Several U.S.-based studies suggest that athletes are overrepresented among those reported for sexual assault, and/or holding rape-supportive attitudes, compared with the rest of the relevant population (Boeringer, 1996; Brown, Sumner, & Nocera, 2002; Crosset, Benedict, & McDonald, 1995; Sawyer, Thompson, & Chicorelli, 2002). Although there is no hard data on Australian athletes, Flood and Dyson (2007) note that later research explores “risk factors” that “have been hypothesised to increase male players’ risks of perpetuating sexual assault” rather than basic correlation. These include “male bonding” and “sexualisation and subordination of women” (pp. 40–41). Some recent Australian work has focused on intervention programs for elite athletes, particularly targeting “bystander” intervention (Albury, Carmody, Evers, & Lumby, 2011; Corboz, Flood, & Dyson, 2016; Dyson & Flood, 2008). Research aimed at reducing the likelihood of athletes committing sexual assault is vital. Although in numerical terms, athletes are not the main perpetrators of sexual violence, as Messner (2007, p. 109) argues, “the world of sports is a key institutional site for the construction of hegemonic masculinity, and thus a key potential site for its contestation,” and thus media representation also remains critically important. In his influential explication of news frames, Entman (1993) argues that they “define problems,” “diagnose causes,” “make moral judgements,” and “suggest remedies” (p. 52). Significantly, they “simultaneously direct attention away from other aspects” (p. 54), thus discouraging the audience from considering other problems, causes, and remedies.
In media portrayals of high-profile sexual crime cases, in a range of national contexts, problematic representations of victims/complainants and/or (alleged) perpetrators are common, reinforcing gendered myths and stereotypes that blame the victim and/or deny a claim of rape (Benedict, 1992; Bonnes, 2013; Cuklanz, 1996; Garcia, 2012; Kitzinger, 2009; Korn & Efrat, 2004). When athletes are the alleged perpetrators, victim-blaming discourse is common in the United States and Australian case studies, with complainants cast variously as “gold diggers,” “groupies,” “predatory women,” “seductive temptresses,” and “evil manipulators,” and athletes portrayed as not responsible for their behaviour (Baird, 2009; Moorti, 2002; Philadelphoff-Puren, 2004; Toffoletti, 2007; Waterhouse-Watson, 2009, 2013). Myths such as “she’s lying,” “she asked for it,” “she wanted it,” and “he’s not the type” (Franiuk, Seefelt, Cepress, & Vandello, 2008; Franiuk, Seefelt, & Vandello, 2008) are also commonly endorsed. Although this research shows that sexual violence is often marginalised, with victims rendered objects rather than subjects of discourse, the cases are nevertheless framed as problems of gender relations or treatment of women, remaining within a sexual violence paradigm.
Studies show that race-based myths and stereotypes are also common in sexual crime reporting, particularly when the alleged perpetrator is a man of colour (K. Brown, 1999; Moorti, 2002; Russell-Brown, 2009). As bell hooks (1994) writes, “the black male body continues to be perceived as an embodiment of bestial, violent, penis-as-weapon hypermasculine assertion” (p. 75). Baird (2009) found that racist constructions of Indigenous Australian footballers alleged to have committed rape were absent from media reporting of early cases; however, Baird concludes that this only means that all footballers can “occupy a normatively white Australian subject position” (p. 377), as they can “secure the race-privileged position that professional football in Australia delivers as long as they comport themselves as athletes and not, for example, as radical spokespersons for their race” (p. 377). The current study shows that while race was not overtly present in news reporting on Ferguson, as Kearney (2012) argues (p. 937), representations of Indigenous athletes work to “reveal and hide the Indigenous male body, through a process of designifying the body of its non-white ethnicity to reconstruct it as the powerful sporting body that is without difference.” In the case of Indigenous footballer Andrew Lovett, charged with rape in 2009 and acquitted in 2011, Kearney (2012) argues that Lovett was “marked” as Indigenous through discourse that subtly positioned his blackness as “deviance” (p. 946). Despite a lack of overt signifiers of race, racial stereotypes can nevertheless be evoked.
Method
This article undertakes a mixed methods discourse and narrative analysis (qualitative and quantitative) of articles that were substantially about Ferguson and/or primarily about footballers’ off-field behaviour, published in a 2-week period after the story was first reported, June 18, 2013, to July 2, 2013. 2 Print news sources were selected as these give a reliable data set to analyse the prevalence of discourses identified. Despite early predictions that online media would soon set mainstream media’s agenda (Chaffee & Metzger, 2001), a review of research shows that while social media can influence the mainstream, this is not (yet) the norm, and traditional media retains an important agenda-setting role (Weimann, Weiss-Blatt, Mengistu, Tregerman, & Oren, 2014). A search for “Blake Ferguson” was conducted using ProQuest Newsstream Australia and New Zealand database for 2 weeks from when the case was first reported. Only major newspapers in states/territories with a team in the NRL were included, plus national paper The Australian: Courier Mail (Brisbane), Daily Telegraph (Sydney), Sydney Morning Herald, Canberra Times, Herald Sun (Melbourne), and Age (Melbourne). Articles focused on football that only mentioned Ferguson in passing (e.g., as “suspended”) were not included. A total of 94 articles were gathered, 31 of which were published on the day the story broke, and coded using NVivo Pro 11, in order to examine broad patterns across the data. Emergent coding was used, with all categories derived from the data rather than an imposed theoretical model; a total of 15 codes (including sub-nodes) were generated and applied to the data. Qualitative discourse and narrative analysis was also undertaken, examining discursive strategies including language choice, grammar, and syntax as well as narrative aspects of individual texts. Narrative aspects include story structure, narrative perspective, and narrative style, as a means of exploring how individual pieces construct the event and the patterns observed in the coding apply in these individual texts. As narrative and discursive strategies always operate simultaneously within texts, and can both contribute to the same overall representational strategy, elements of both will be used throughout the detailed analysis.
Findings and Analysis: Marginalising Sexual Crime
In contrast to previous research, cited above, which showed that much media reporting focused on the alleged victims’ behaviour, the victim in this case was almost absent, and Ferguson’s behaviour towards her at times marginalised to the point of erasure. As Entman (1993) argues, in framing, what is omitted “may be as critical as the inclusions in guiding the audience” (p. 54). Figures 1 and 2 show the number of articles where each theme was identified, illustrating the relative prevalence of items sympathetic to the victim or perpetrator and the ways in which the events were coded. It could be argued that as an accused person is innocent until proven guilty, there is some justification for not overemphasising the criminal charge. However, this is not an accepted journalistic convention, and by devoting so much more space to other issues and minimising the potential impact on the victim, the effect is to downplay the seriousness of the offence itself. This further marginalises the specific victim as well as other victims of sexual crime, subtly reinforcing the category of rape myths that insist “no harm was done” (Burt, 1998).
First day of reporting, June 18, 2013.
Initial reporting, June 18, 2013, to July 2, 2013.
As Figure 1 shows, only 8 of the 31 first-day articles (26%) described the alleged crime in even the most basic terms, for example, stating that Ferguson (allegedly) “groped the crotch of a woman” or “squeezed her vagina.” Just two articles in the remainder of the initial reporting did so (3%). Only 20 first-day articles (65%) even named the charge—as did 75% of the 94 initial report articles. Articles that did not name the charge and/or describe the crime instead used “euphemisms” (28 on the first day; 70 in total), although even some articles that focused mainly on the events of the evening, including some description of the alleged crime, also employed one or more euphemisms. This downplayed the seriousness of the named crime. Examples of euphemisms include “indiscretions” (4) with its connotations of consensual adultery; “bad behaviour/misbehaviour” (19), which portrays it as childish rather than criminal; an “alleged altercation” (2), which assigns equal responsibility to the victim; “drama” (8), which implies that the attention is overblown; “incident” (59); and “trouble” (11). Drama, incident, and trouble render the assault an act without a grammatical agent, deflecting responsibility for what he did away from Ferguson. “Bad/mis-behaviour” was also coded as “infantilising footballers” (35), a code which included five further references to “misbehaviour” in relation to other players; eight references to Ferguson and Dugan as the NRL’s “bad boys”; four references to Ferguson or another footballer as a “kid”; and adjectives such as “unruly” and “naughty.” Infantilisation recasts potentially criminal acts as “innocent, childish playing” (Waterhouse-Watson, 2013, p. 152), which downplays their seriousness as well as diminishing footballers’ responsibility for their actions.
This downplaying was reinforced through a false equivalency commonly created between Ferguson’s indecent assault and other off-field behaviours including, but not limited to, minor crime. It was often discussed alongside a drink-driving charge against another Origin player, James Tamou (Maori); George Burgess (White), who threw a street sign through a car window (Hinds, 2013); and Maroons coach Mal Meninga (South Sea Islander) getting ejected from a bar for entering a restricted area (Koch, McDonald, & Honeysett, 2013). In 42 of the 94 articles, they were presented as virtually equivalent; for example, they were referred to as “a string of off-field incidents” (Carayannis & Lane, 2013) or a lead paragraph decried “misbehaving players,” listing Tamou, Burgess, and Ferguson (Mascord, 2013). All of the players’ problematic behaviour was brought under the one umbrella which downplayed the seriousness of the sexual crime. This is not to say that drink-driving and property damage are not serious; however, this representation implies that intentional violation of another person should be considered the equivalent of property damage, behaviour that is criminalised because it risks causing harm (but not causing harm intentionally) and a nonaggressive, noncriminal act. It further erases the gendered aspect of the act.
Alcohol Use as “Crime”; Ferguson and “the Game” as Victims
Rather than behaviour towards women, alcohol was the dominant theme, and overemphasis on “harm” to Ferguson and rugby league saw them take the place of victim. While, as Rob Cover notes (2015, p. 146), alcohol is often a prominent feature of news reporting on football “scandals” of all types, it does not typically replace the substance of the scandal as in the Ferguson case. Alcohol was mentioned in 29 of 31 first-day articles (94%) and 72 of the total 94 (77%). An average of 3.1 references appeared per article across the sample period, including several where players’ alcohol use was the main focus. Previous research on alleged sexual assault cases from 2004 and 2009 found that, through grammar, syntax, and semantics, alcohol was used to excuse footballers’ behaviour (Waterhouse-Watson, 2012). Of the problematic constructions identified in that study, the majority (110) positioned alcohol as an implicit cause of sexual assault; 10 positioned it as a harm-causing agent where the game of football was the victim. Although several examples used euphemisms like “problems” or “bad behaviour,” sexual assault remained the dominant news frame. Similarly, Hill and Fuller (2016, pp. 12–13) found alcohol was sometimes positioned as a “cause” of or explanation for rugby players’ acts of domestic violence, but it was by no means the main frame. By contrast, in the present case study, with sexual violence virtually absent from reporting, using alcohol and victimising the game were the dominant themes. Although alcohol was sometimes positioned as the cause of footballers’ problematic behaviour—for example, in the phrase “booze-fuelled madness/incident” (7)—in reporting on Ferguson, it was often portrayed as a problem regardless of whether the player did anything inappropriate or criminal while drinking—as the “real” crime. With harm to the actual victim absent from the discourse, the game (and even Ferguson himself) replace her as victims of Ferguson’s drinking, resulting in a paradigm shift.
The distribution of headlines (Figure 3) illustrates how media reporting emphasised the impact on football and Ferguson: while only 4 focused on the charges and/or the crime, 18 highlighted negative impacts on the sport and 21 focused on the perpetrator’s welfare, including the negative impact (10), those speaking out in his defence (4), and those arguing that he could be “redeemed” (7). Twelve were about another player/coach (e.g., Meninga). None mentioned the victim, and only 1 of the 94 highlighted abuse of women: “The Modern War on Women,” a Daily Telegraph article mentioning Ferguson’s indecent assault in the context of other instances of abuse and expressions of sexism (Marquand, 2013). One headline that seemed to call for respect for women, “Treating People without Respect” (Kent, 2013), only decried lack of respect for Ferguson’s coaches and teammates—“people that have publicly backed him.” The victim is entirely absent from this category of “people,” with the assault replaced with “a court date,” again highlighting the consequences for Ferguson rather than the victim.
Main theme of headlines.
When sympathy for the perpetrator vastly outweighs sympathy for the victim, then the perpetrator is effectively the real victim—of a woman’s negative actions. There was frequent sympathetic discussion of the impact of the charge on Ferguson, which is common in media coverage of high-profile sexual assault cases (Messina-Dysert, 2015, p. 61; Moorti, 2002, p. 91). Forty-six articles included at least one statement evoking concern for Ferguson’s welfare (Figure 2), including 28 that mentioned the negative impact on him with implicit sympathy (as distinct from naming the penalties imposed on him) 3 , for example, “Ferguson…has been stripped of his wing spot in the NSW side for next week’s Origin II, and is in danger of having his Raiders contract torn up” (Garry, 2013). “Stripped” connotes an assault, and “in danger” positions him as under threat. An article in the Australian (Read, 2013a) detailed Greg Bird’s 4 sympathy for Ferguson, including comments that he was “massively disappointed for” Ferguson, describing him as “a kindhearted kid,” and referring to his “plight.” Twelve articles referred to the importance of looking after Ferguson’s welfare more generally, including several quoting his cousin, boxer Anthony Mundine, who extensively detailed all he had done to help Ferguson (e.g., Walshaw, 2013). Others quoted Raiders CEO Don Furner on the importance of determining “the best course of action for Blake, the Raiders and the NRL” and “[providing] the appropriate level of support and counselling” (Honeysett, 2013). A further six included statements suggesting Ferguson could be redeemed—“turn his life around,” for example (Walter, 2013). Sports leagues are obligated to take some responsibility for rehabilitating players (Kelly & Hickey, 2008); however, when this is at the expense of concern for the actual victim, it enacts symbolic annihilation.
For comparison, only two articles in the sample period mentioned the impact on the victim; the first was a single, unspecific, and comparatively unemotive sentence in a Daily Telegraph editorial: “Community concerns are with the young woman alleged to have been assaulted” (Editorial, 2013). The second was in a quote from NSW coach Laurie Daley, also unemotive, especially compared with the surrounding language used for Ferguson: “You can’t toss him away, even if he has done something wrong. Obviously the main concern we have is with the female, but to discard Blake is not right” (Weidler, 2013). “The female,” as a term typically reserved for nonhuman animals, embeds disrespect, and Daley does not explicitly mention concern for her welfare; emotive language like “toss him away” and “discard” is reserved for Ferguson alone, which casts anything other than supporting Ferguson as treating him unfairly—like garbage.
An article by chief sports writer for the Telegraph, Riccio (2013), which praised Ferguson for showing remorse, provides an extended example of the widespread disregard for the victim in the press: Ferguson, who was axed from the NSW squad after being formally charged with indecent assault of a female at a Cronulla nightclub last Sunday night, appears to comprehend the impact of his actions, how he let his teammates down and the damage he’s caused ahead of the state’s biggest game in eight years.
Just two articles across the sample directly connected Ferguson’s actions to sexism, including a brief mention in “The Modern War on Women” (Marquand, 2013 see above); however, a Sun Herald column (the Sydney Morning Herald’s Sunday edition) still ultimately sympathised with Ferguson and marginalised the complainant (Weidler, 2013). Columnist Danny Weidler explicitly connected Ferguson’s “strife” with his attitudes towards women, beginning with a warning Weidler had previously issued Ferguson about unwanted advances and late-night phone calls to female journalists. However, the remainder of the article was sympathetic towards Ferguson, downplaying his responsibility and focusing on other causes of his behaviour: alcohol and his difficult upbringing. Weidler outlined an “emotion-charged chat” he had with Ferguson after Origin I, focusing on Ferguson’s struggles with alcohol and desire to win at rugby league, later asserting the inevitability of an “error”: “Sadly, he was destined for some kind of major error” (my italics), due to his upbringing and alcohol use. Grammatically, this places responsibility for Ferguson’s actions on external forces. Weidler also elides the (alleged) crime; despite asserting that the charge is “serious,” he refers to it only as “Ferguson’s night out.” It could be argued that readers might be familiar with the case after 5 days of coverage; however, journalists are typically aware that this is not the case. For example, numerous court reporters I spoke to in anonymous interviews in 2016 told me that in order to meet the requirements of balance, they must always include basic information about a case (e.g., the charge and the accused’s plea) in every article they write, as they cannot assume that a reader has read any previous articles or remembers the information even if they have. Thus, despite the article’s promising beginning, it ultimately erased the victim in favour of sympathising with Ferguson and foregrounding the journalist’s personal relationship with the player and league.
The game—variously referring to Ferguson’s clubs, teammates, fans, the state, the NRL, and the sport of rugby league itself—is also frequently portrayed as victim, and the harm is portrayed as both literal and metaphorical. Reporting on sport-related scandals, like NRL salary cap breaches, also emphasises harm to the game (Andon & Free, 2012, p. 140); however, this is reasonable for scandals related to “cheating” in sport, as the game and its fans are primary stakeholders. Previous research has shown football representatives’ discourse in earlier sexual assault cases similarly implied that the impact on the players and leagues was of paramount importance (Waterhouse-Watson, 2013, pp. 53–55), despite the fact the alleged actions were against another person and not within the domain of sport, although it was not a dominant feature of media reporting on the cases in general. As shown in Figure 1, on the first day of reporting, more articles mentioned the negative impact on the game (24) than named the charge (20). The harms to the game cited included hurting the clubs’ chances of winning, for example, “NSW’s preparations for the second State of Origin game are in turmoil” (Read, 2013d) and damage to the league’s reputation: “The fans do not want to see the game tarnished and neither do the players”—NRL CEO Dave Smith (Ritchie & McCullough, 2013). The negative impact on fans and the game is sometimes likened to the aftermath of a physical assault, for example, “NSW Fans Reeling” (Rothfield, 2013), as if from a blow; and “NRL Cops Another Black Eye” (Massoud & Uhr, 2013), emphasising the seriousness through metaphor. Three articles called the assault a “distraction” for NSW or Raiders teammates (e.g., Riccio, 2013), implying they are the only ones potentially harmed and what Ferguson did to the victim is irrelevant to the real issue of winning games of football.
Alcohol Use “Victimising” the Game
Close narrative and discourse analysis of individual texts shows how these elements—Ferguson’s alcohol use and the portrayal of him and the game as victims—can be directly connected in media reporting. The connection is neatly but uncritically summarised as an “all-too-familiar tale” in rugby league thus: “A player has had too much to drink. A woman takes offence to his behaviour. The game gets dragged through the mud” (Read, 2013b). The use of “takes offence” positions the player’s behaviour as not inherently problematic or harmful, as it is the woman’s choice to be offended (or not); alcohol is the first cause. Other examples of Ferguson drinking, and when his form improved after he gave up alcohol for 6 weeks earlier in 2013 (e.g., Honeysett, 2013), are stages in a narrative that leads to his sacking, although they do not necessarily appear chronologically, according to news conventions. This implies that the most recent offence is similar to the rooftop drinking session, over which Dugan was sacked. These articles also show how some of the problematic patterns shown in previous research can still be seen in this case, including the use of grammatical constructions to deflect responsibility for their actions away from footballers (e.g., Waterhouse-Watson, 2013) and constructions damaging to the victim. I have previously argued that football representatives’ claims of victim status in the context of alleged sexual crime position the complainants as the antagonists (Waterhouse-Watson, 2013, pp. 53–54). This occasionally occurs in the Ferguson case; however, alcohol use is frequently portrayed alone as the cause of harm, with the victim and crime absent or irrelevant to the problem identified. This compounds the symbolic annihilation of the victim.
Narrative and discursive strategies in an opinion article by Read (2013c), senior sports writer at The Australian, illustrate this logic at work. Read’s main argument is that, despite no wrongdoing, Josh Dugan should be given the same penalty as Ferguson, with the lead paragraph reading: “BLAKE Ferguson is gone and Josh Dugan should follow him out the door. They let down their teammates and their state the moment they made the misguided decision to head out for a drink on Sunday night.” This implies that, even had Ferguson gone home without assaulting anyone, or any other incident, the penalty should have been the same. Dugan’s crime according to this logic is not prioritising the game, with comparisons made to a teammate who did everything he could to recover from an injury rather than going on a “bender.” While the indecent assault is mentioned, it is not until Paragraph 3 and is followed by insistence that Ferguson needs to stop drinking altogether. Taken together with the insistence that Dugan is equally culpable, this renders the indecent assault, and consequent harm to the victim, irrelevant compared with the harm to the game.
The game’s victimisation is portrayed more clearly towards the end of the article, but the concluding paragraphs also crystallise an implicit assertion that alcohol removes footballers’ moral responsibility for their behaviour while drinking: What started as one of the feel-good stories of the year has become a public relations disaster for the state and the code. It continues an Origin series which has been blighted by trouble. The game’s image has been dragged through the mud. The NRL made a stand with James Tamou (drink-driving) and Ferguson. (my italics)
Many other articles position consuming alcohol as the cause of Ferguson’s downfall similarly to Read, particularly in lead paragraphs, for example: THE last time Josh Dugan and Blake Ferguson were on the drink together, it ended with Dugan being sacked by Canberra. Less than three months on, Ferguson (pictured) has been stripped of his wing spot in the NSW side for next week’s Origin II…(Garry, 2013).
Then-Canberra Times sports editor Chris Wilson (2013), who was once media manager for the Canberra Raiders, wrote an extraordinary extended commentary which crystallises the trends I have identified across media coverage generally. Alcohol use and the consequences for Ferguson are emphasised, with the victim sidelined; in addition, Wilson’s narrative choices actively inhibit the reader from empathising with the victim, constructing her as an antagonist where she appears while Ferguson is passive. Structuring the piece as a “choose your own adventure” story, Wilson uses second-person narration to align the reader with Ferguson and invite them to assess his choices from their own perspective. Wilson thus narrates the events of the night in detail—except for the crime itself. Beginning the story with the euphoria of Origin selection and what it might mean for Ferguson/the reader, three moments of “choice” are presented: going out for a drink with Dugan, continuing on to Bar at 2230, and sneaking back in to 22:30 after being denied reentry. At each point, the alternative is going home to bed (or in other words, ceasing to drink). The narrative of the final choice, sneaking in to the bar, not only elides the assault but presents the cause of the charges as a mystery: How did this happen? You’re in a police station answering questions about your night. The police inform you that a woman has made a complaint against you and you’ve been charged with indecent assault. You’re kicked out of the NSW Origin squad. Until your day in court, you’re told you’ll be suspended from the game without pay and forced to undergo alcohol counselling. All that work you’ve done during the previous three months has unravelled in one night. Your club is standing by you, but until that court date there’s no guarantees. This could be the end of your career.
The role of alcohol in the narrative amplifies the parallels made between drink-driving and indecently assaulting someone while drunk identified above. The focus of the whole narrative is on making better choices, with each choice being whether to stop drinking. It is portrayed as like a “time bomb,” suggesting that if you choose to keep drinking, at some point, something bad will happen—to you. The assault is implicitly the inevitable result of continuing to drink rather than disrespect for women. Wilson reinforces this further in connecting the narrativisation with “reality”: “this re-creation above highlights just how many choices Blake Ferguson had to avoid putting himself into this situation. Instead, he has left his fate in the hands of others.” According to the narrative, the only choices he made were in choosing to continue drinking, and thus alcohol is the cause of the negative consequences detailed. “[P]utting himself into this situation” is the only other construction where Ferguson is a grammatical agent, and as Philadelphoff-Puren (2004, p. 42) argues, in this kind of construction, the “situation” footballers need to avoid is implicitly “any situation where a woman can accuse them of sexual assault” rather than one where they might harm a woman.
Racial Stereotyping
Ferguson’s positioning as an Indigenous man (allegedly) committing a sexual crime is a complex one. While race was not emphasised in the reporting, in accordance with the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) Journalist Code of Ethics (MEAA, 1999), Ferguson played in the rugby league Indigenous All Stars representative side in 2010 and 2013 and was well-known as an Indigenous player at the time. In addition, his actions were often portrayed as equivalent to those of white or other non-Indigenous footballers, to whom some of the same discursive strategies were applied. However, Ferguson’s Indigeneity was covertly signalled, and colonial stereotypes evoked even though the rapacious black man stereotype was not present as the indecent assault was largely elided. This is particularly significant, given the long history of discrimination against people of colour in the justice system (Kennedy, 2005; Smallacombe, 2004).
As a former British colony, Australia has a long history of colonial oppression and mistreatment of Aboriginal people based on racist, social Darwinist beliefs about their “primitive” nature and inability to care for themselves (Bielefeld, 2012, pp. 528–529). More recently, the “drunken Aborigine stereotype” has developed: As Saggers and Gray (1998) note, “many non-indigenous people cling to stereotypes in which all indigenous people misuse alcohol and are believed to be indifferent to the consequences of such misuse” (p. 12). Even though his career ultimately suffered little, and marginalisation of the victim was more overt, language that reinforces such stereotypes is damaging to Ferguson, specifically, and to the wider Indigenous community. Of the four problem players/coach discussed along with Ferguson, none are Indigenous, while two (Dugan and Burgess) are white; however, it would be reductive to assume that because infantilising language and critiques of alcohol use were also applied to non-Indigenous players, there can be no race-based consequences. The intersection of discourses around Ferguson’s need for help, the infantilising language so frequently used, and the portrayal of his relationship with alcohol reinforces stereotypical ideas about Indigenous people. Ferguson’s relationship with alcohol was portrayed somewhat differently from other footballers’: Several articles connected Ferguson’s complete renouncing of alcohol for 6 weeks in early 2013 with his selection for Origin I (e.g., Honeysett, 2013). Calls for Ferguson to stay away from alcohol permanently (e.g., Read, 2013c; Walshaw, 2013) were not directed at Dugan, Tamou, or Burgess, despite these players’ repeated offences involving alcohol.
Anthony Mundine was most frequently the figure offering Ferguson help, often quoted as saying that Ferguson needed to give up alcohol permanently, which to an extent removes the figure of white paternalism. However, although Mundine is also a prominent Indigenous man, he is considered an exceptional case. Well-known to be a practising Muslim and teetotaller, he is a rarity, with only 1,140 people identifying as Indigenous Australian Muslims in the 2011 census—less than 1% of the Indigenous population (Rogers, 2014).
Infantilising language such as “misbehaving” and “naughty” was often used for other footballers’ less serious offences along with Ferguson’s actions; however, when infantilisation is part of a narrative that insists on an Indigenous athlete’s need for help, and his problems with alcohol, this taps in to colonial ideologies in which Indigenous people are believed to be “childlike, but with dangerous adult strength and animal passions” (Hollinsworth, 2006, p. 33), which have long featured in media representations of Indigenous athletes (Coram, 2007). This is disempowering for Ferguson, as it positions him as unable to take control of his own life. Further, reinforcing this stereotype is problematic for wider Indigenous Australia, as government policy continues to treat Indigenous people and communities with paternalism—for example, in income management laws restricting how welfare payments in some communities can be spent, which mainly target Indigenous people (Bielefeld, 2012) and many policies of the Howard government, 1996–2007 (Bielefeld, 2010). Most notable of these is the notorious “Northern Territory intervention,” which brought many Indigenous communities under military control and imposed restrictions on alcohol and pornography, among other measures, without consulting Indigenous leaders or communities; although modified somewhat, the intervention remains in place until 2022 (Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, 2016). Implying that Indigenous Australians are unable to care for themselves in other contexts reinforces the idea that such interventions are justified. Thus, the intersection of discourses around race and gender has far-reaching implications for victims of sexual crime as well as Indigenous Australians.
Conclusions
This study has shown that, rather than greater sympathy than in “acquaintance” cases, an even more complete symbolic annihilation of Ferguson’s victim was enacted in the news media by telling a story primarily about how alcohol can damage a footballer and a football league, with a sexual crime as its virtually absent centre. In an interview, Age court reporter Adam Cooper commented that reporting of footballer sexual crime had generally improved, describing 2004 coverage as a “circus,” and the Ferguson case was arguably less salacious and sensationalised than 2004 reporting (see, e.g., Waterhouse-Watson, 2013, pp. 20–26). Nevertheless, this article shows that not all changes are necessarily beneficial to victims of sexual crime or people of colour. By offering an abuse of alcohol frame rather than an abuse of women frame, the central problem presented, its cause and remedies all relate to alcohol and curbing its use, effecting a paradigm shift away from questions of gender and sexuality. Within mainstream reporting, there is therefore no impetus towards improving attitudes and behaviours towards women, or space for feminist perspectives, which Lisa Cuklanz (1996) argues is a key benefit of public discussions of sexual violence (p. 37).
One justification for downplaying the indecent assault may be that it was not as serious as rape or sexual assault, the other alleged sexual crimes involving footballers; however, it is still an act which disregards the bodily autonomy of women, and given the history of rugby league players disrespecting women (e.g., Halloran & Magnay, 2003), including Ferguson himself, the choice of alternative frames for the story cannot be dismissed lightly. Emphasising the consequences of a sexual crime for the perpetrator and others, at the expense of the victim, implies that the she—and by extension, all women—is not important in comparison with male footballers and the sport itself. The racist implications of Ferguson’s portrayal also indicate a need for greater awareness of the ways in which damaging Indigenous stereotypes can be reinforced, particularly as they are more subtle and thus difficult to challenge than recent cases of overt racism. For example, Adam Goodes was famously called an “ape” by a spectator in 2013 (Crawford, 2013). Given the possibility that social media can influence the mainstream (Weimann et al., 2014), future research could also examine comments on online articles and social media commentary, to establish whether these correlate with or contradict mainstream media representations in these kinds of cases.
There is a need for cultural change within newsrooms, which remain male-dominated and can be hostile to feminist influences and ideas (North, 2009, pp. 165–172). Further research is needed into sports journalists’ attitudes towards sexual crime and race, and the many levels within media organisations that affect the production of news, to establish how change can best be achieved. As a starting point, as North (2009, p. 218) suggests, if gender studies components were added to journalism education courses, “potential young journalists would be better prepared to understand, negotiate, and perhaps challenge gendered (and raced) work practices,” including reporting of sexual crime.
Like many athletes convicted of sexual crimes, the emphasis on harm to the perpetrator was (arguably) overstated (Waterhouse-Watson, 2014), as Ferguson resumed his career with the Sydney Roosters in 2015 and was selected for numerous national and international representative rugby league fixtures in 2016–2017. In rugby terms, the consequences were serious but short-lived. It is not known how long the impact on the victim will last.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Macquarie University Research Fellowship scheme under Grant number 9201401010.