Comedy Central's The Daily Show debunked some of right-wing media's favorite myths about campus sexual assault, highlighting the high levels of the crime occurring at colleges and universities, the low instances of false reporting and the rarity of punishment for those accused.
During a March 25 interview on The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart spoke with Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, the director and producer of The Hunting Ground, a recently released “exposé of sexual assault on U.S. campuses,” and discussed many of the most widespread misconceptions about campus sexual assault. The segment highlighted the harmful implications failing to address the issue has across the country:
Many of the myths highlighted by The Daily Show are baseless falsehoods that continue to be peddled by right-wing media outlets in order to downplay the epidemic of campus sexual assault. Here are three of right-wing media's favorite myths about campus sexual assaults, debunked:
MYTH: False Reports Of Sexual Assault Are A Widespread Problem
Despite a recent push by The Wall Street Journal to highlight men who “say colleges are too quick to believe an alleged victim's testimony,” suggesting that false reports of sexual assault are on the rise, instances of false allegations are actually very rare.
“False reporting of rape is exactly the same as any other crime, and you don't hear people concerned about the false reports of carjacking, or the 2 percent of false reports of burglaries,” explained Ziering to Stewart. “But it is statistically not anomalous. That is what everybody needs to keep in mind.” Indeed, according to a report by the National Center for the Protection of Violence Against Women, “methodologically rigorous research” has found the rate of false reports to be extremely low -- between 2 and 8 percent.
MYTH: Efforts To Address Campus Sexual Assault Constitute A “War On Boys” And Men
Conservative media figures like Fox News' Andrea Tantaros often hold up efforts to address sexual assault as proof of a “war” on men on boys, but many institutions actually favor alleged perpetrators when investigating the crimes.
As the The Hunting Ground's director Kirby Dick noted, “It is more likely that somebody who is sexually assaulted will leave school than the perpetrator will be kicked out ... A very small percentage of perpetrators are actually kicked out. The numbers are astonishingly low.” A national survey conducted for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) supports Dick's assertion, finding that many colleges and universities “afford certain due process elements more frequently to alleged perpetrators than they do to survivors” and that schools often fail to penalize perpetrators.
MYTH: Claims Of A Campus Sexual Assault Epidemic Are Exaggerated
After the White House released a report on addresesing campus sexual assault in 2014, conservative media rushed to try to discredit findings that one in five women experience attempted or completed sexual assault while in college. In the time since, media have continuously questioned statistics finding a high prevalence of the crime, with right-wing media figures like Rush Limbaugh going as far as to claim that “it's not happening” at all."
But as Dick pointed out, “The reality is that rapes are happening at all schools. In epidemic proportions.” Numerous organizations have spoken out defending these findings. Right-wing media's efforts to dismiss the epidemic of campus sexual assault further stigmatize a crime that according to the Rape, Abuse, And Incest National Network already goes unreported up to 60% of the time.