10 Daily reported on the murder of Amie Harwick last week. Kind of.
They didn’t give her a name or an identity in the headline. Her life was defined only by a relationship she had two years ago with a semi-famous man. Despite the implication of the headline, Drew Carey had nothing to do with Amie Harwick’s murder.
The man who has been charged with her murder is her ex-partner, Gareth Pursehouse. She had two restraining orders filed against Pursehouse before she was killed.
The New York Daily News obtained court documents detailing Harwick’s 2011 and 2012 restraining orders, in which she alleged that there were “multiple arguments in which Gareth Pursehouse choked me, suffocated me, pushed me against walls, kicked me, dropped me to the ground with force, force-restrained me, slammed my head into the ground, and punched me with a closed fist.”
Pursehouse, the abuse allegations and the murder charge did not make it into 10 Daily’s headline. Because apparently the most important thing to report about a murdered woman is that she was once engaged to a game show host. Not that a man was charged with her murder, or that there were allegations of him being violently abusive during and after their relationship.
I don’t care that this was written by an entertainment reporter (keep in mind the reporter almost certainly did not write the headline) for the entertainment section. Success does not protect women from abuse and any masthead publishing about murdered women should, at the very least, recognise that women are people, not objects owned by men. And that erasing men accused of murder from headlines about their alleged crimes is lazy, irresponsible and inaccurate journalism.
FixedIt is an ongoing project to push back against the media’s constant erasure of violent men and blaming of innocent victims. If you would like to help fund it – even $5 a month makes a big difference – please consider becoming a Patron
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