Victim of Crime Also Knows the Needs of a Journalist
Monday, October 26th, 1987
LOGAN, UTAH, Oct. 26 — Perhaps the germ was born 18 years ago in Cory LaBianca, when her father and stepmother were brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family in Orange California, and their deaths became intertwined with the Sharon Tate murders.
A former school newspaper staffer and eventual journalism major herself, she related to journalists and their need to get a story. But in the summer of 1969, at the age of 21, she discovered how it felt to be the relative of a victim of a sensational crime, and how victims feel about the news coverage they receive.
The germ grew and matured over the years, and it bore results last spring when Ms. LaBianca completed her master’s thesis for the Utah State University communications department, titled “Crime Victims and the Media.”
“I began by looking at all crime victims,” she said in a recent interview at USU’s communications department, where she teaches. “But I found that I had to keep narrowing my focus, until l finally narrowed it to victims of mass murders in Southern California, and how the Los Angeles Times covered the events and treated the victims.”
She researched the news coverage of five sensational mass murder cases in the L.A. Times circulation area over a 16-year period.
“I looked at the coverage of the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969, the Cal State Fullerton massacre in 1976, where a man in a tower began shooting people on the campus, and killed seven.
“I also looked at the Hillside Strangler cases in 1977-78, the mass killings of customers at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, Calif., in 1984, and the ‘night stalker’ killings in 1985.”
She looked at the location of the articles in the newspaper, she said, as well as the number of inches devoted to the story and the types of photographs used (“were they lurid, sensational and exploitative, or did they portray the victim in a sympathetic manner?”).
She concluded that the L.A. Times is a more responsible newspaper today in as attitude toward victims than it was in 1969, when her father, Leno LaBianca, and her stepmother, Rosemary LaBianca, were murdered in their home on Aug. 10, the day after actress Sharon Tate and four others were murdered at the mansion Ms. Tate and her director-producer husband, Roman Polanski, had rented.
“My father and stepmother became part of a big news story because their murders were related to the murder of an actress, Sharon Tate,” said Ms. LaBianca. “If it hadn’t been for that, it would have just been another murder.”
But it was sensational and the victims in the news accounts were treated like objects in a sensational story instead of like warm, human, feeling people, she added.
She also thought the news accounts seemed to focus on negative aspects of the victims, “with quotes in the papers about Sharon Tate and her friends as ‘rich hippies,’ and saying things like ‘they lived freaky, they died freaky.”‘
The newspaper accounts seemed to follow what ethics professors have termed “the just world theory,” Ms. LaBianca said. “They wanted to feed this belief that in a just world bad things don’t happen to good people, they only happen to bad people,” she said.
Because some of the victims of the Hillside Strangler in the Los Angeles area were prostitutes, that became the focus of the story,” Ms. LaBianca said. “There were many victims who were not prostitutes, but just regular people minding their own business. But they were all lumped into the focus of the story about the murders of prostitutes.”
In the Tate-LaBianca coverage, her father and stepmother didn’t know Sharon Tate or the others murdered in Ms. Tate’s home, but they became part of the story, and they became objects, she said.
“My father loved horses,” she said. “But the stories in the newspapers never mentioned that, they mentioned that he was a gambler.”
The family was disturbed that the television movie later made about the case depicted her father, “in a way that was not him at all. He was an educated man who owned a grocery store chain, who dressed well and had good manners. The movie depicted him as something other than that.”
But often, because of the emotional mood relatives of victims are thrown into because of the tragedy, the relatives want their loved one known publicly as the good, respectable human beings that they were and not just as objects, she said.
“We never did receive a call from a reporter asking about what our father was like,” she said.
But now reporters seem more interested in telling the victim’s story than they were 16 years ago, she said. The other side of that problem, however, is the danger of invading the privacy of the victims or their relatives.
The victims of the night stalker, the murderer who would break into homes at random during the night and kill his sleeping victims, were treated in a more sensitive way by the media, said Ms. LaBianca, who plans to include some media ethics issues in her beginning writing classes at USU.
“But I feel that the treatment of victims as human beings, with their own story to tell, by the media is a reflection of the trends in society. Society as a whole is becoming more aware of and more sensitive to victims.”
Ms. LaBanca, in her academic duties, has the advantage of seeing the ethics issue of victims and the press coverage of a crime from both perspectives. She was able to understand the news accounts of her tragedy better than her mother and siblings, because, she said, she can relate to how journalists think.
“It was a story,” she said, “and reporters have to get the story.”
But she hopes to inject a good dose of sensitivity into her own journalism students so when they become reporters, they can try and balance sometimes seemingly conflicting needs between the rights and feelings of victims and the public’s right to know.
“I understand that reporters need to find out what they can and dig into stories in order to get the story to the public,” she said.
“But the next time a newspaper or television station runs a picture of a person in a body bag, I wish they would think about the people who love that person, who will be reading the newspaper or watching that television station.”
By PAUL ROILY
Right on, Cory! 👍❤️
My sentiments exactly Louise! I guess writing and teaching runs in the family. Glad I checked in tonight. Nice to hear from you again.
Thank you, same goes for you! I am getting a little closer to making a trip to LA and doing a little research but nothing definite yet. I’m interested in checking out the Italian American museum and things like that. There are a few photos of the LaBianca family there, most posted online, but not too many good ones of my dad. Sigh–I am such a procrastinator, I have all the good ones 😎
Hi Louise,
It’s good to see you again. Yes you should make that trip to LA. I intend to make a trip there myself, as I mentioned to you last year. Time flies by so quickly and so I need to firm up my own plans.
Cory sounds to be a very grounded and sensitive soul, much like you. I’m sure her teachings has made young minds focus on the good and harm that can come from how a story is told., The written word is a mighty weapon, a double-edged sword, particularly today in the era of ‘click bait’ journalism that can influence the mindset of a worldwide audience.
I look forward to hearing about your trip to LA in due course.
Kind regards,
Paul
PS … did you eventually speak to Tom?
Yes on the PS note. Nothing much came of it as he was looking for some new bit of sensationalistic info which I promptly rebuffed ! Great to hear from you 🙂
I had hoped that you would get something new from Tom to add to what you already know. Bravo for trying Louise. I suppose it’s not entirely unexpected that Tom would be looking for material for his next tome.
I am a little surprised that ‘Chaos’ makes no mention of Scientology or The Process Church of the Final Judgment. That seems a strange omission as Manson himself talks about his involvement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkkQzeqMq9E
Errata
There are two references to Scientology …
“I’d gotten in a shouting match with Tom Cruise about Scientology; Gary Shandling had somehow found a way to abandon me during an interview in his own home; and I’d pissed off Alec Baldwin, but who hasn’t?”
O’Neill, Tom; Piepenbring, Dan. Chaos: The Truth Behind the Manson Murders (p. 13). Random House. Kindle Edition.
“Stuck in prison for the long haul, Manson took up the guitar and dabbled in Scientology.”
O’Neill, Tom; Piepenbring, Dan. Chaos: The Truth Behind the Manson Murders (p. 30). Random House. Kindle Edition.
I get it but this post is about victims of crimes and their families .
Point taken Louise. I think the article about Cory and victims of crimes and their families speaks for itself. My additional commentary was just conversation. I shall try and stay on topic in future.
Well, this is the point that for decades the focus has consistently been on the criminals. You’re not the only one. Manson is world-renowned, albeit for bizarre reasons. No getting around it! Nevertheless it is a rather odd feeling for me to see a photo of my sister and an interesting article about her work and then me start chatting about Manson’s mindset. It feels somehow disrespectful if I were to do that. I’m trying to explain from a personal perspective how that actually feels.
As Cory points out in the article, the link with big-time celebrated in Hollywood was the only reason the LaBianca name is even familiar to people. Otherwise it would have been just another murder. More oddness. I guess I just need to take a break again as normal life goes on for me. Thank you for listening 🙂
All that said, I am pretty sure she would have declined an interview with news reporters anyway had they asked back then–especially during the trial. As I recall, we got an unlisted phone number after 1969 and privacy was a reason.
You were, and still are, directly affected and I can see that from your perspective, victims and their families seem to be marginalized when there is any discussion of those tragic events. It’s important to remember all the victims and their loved ones equally.
That phrase ‘just another murder’ struck a chord with me because it’s true in the sense that the LaBianca name will forever be attached to the celebrity of Tate. This alone has kept your private grief in the public domain via headlines that persist for more then half a century. The victims and families of ‘just another murder’ are no less important than the victims and families of a celebrity. I guess that you would prefer to be allowed to grieve in a peace that is denied to you because of that celebrity link.
Look after yourself, Louise.
Thank you, all good here 🙂
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