Criminologists have often highlighted how the news media tends to disseminate simplified and stigmatised narratives to represent violence against women. Furthermore, these narratives often interweave with class-based fears, sensationalism, and mythology. However, recently, several authors have begun to examine the potential of new media sources (podcasts, documentary series, social media) to subvert these narratives. Drawing on a case study examining the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in West Cork, Ireland (December 1996), the current chapter examines the ways in which three recent new media examinations of the case subvert and reinforce these narratives. The chapter demonstrates that while the new media sources foreground the victim's biography and background, give voice to her family, and situate the case within broader social and political contexts, they also reinforce class-based stereotypes relating to deserving and undeserving victims and problematically focus on the mythical elements of the case for entertainment purposes.
TopIntroduction
On the 23rd of December 1996, just outside the small seaside village of Schull in West Cork, Ireland, French national Sophie Toscan du Plantier was violently murdered at her remote holiday home. This had been the first murder case in the local area in almost one hundred years and given that the victim was a married mother enjoying a holiday so close to the festive period, the case sent shockwaves throughout the community (Sheridan, 2014). The subsequent media coverage (Irish Examiner, 1998, 1999, 2000) of the case had all the hallmarks of a moral panic and attracted sustained media coverage both nationally and internationally.
In examining the media coverage, moral panic is obvious in declarations that this represented a watershed in the transformation of a multi-cultural rural idyll on the southwestern seaboard, to a modern community beset with fear of crime and risk of violence (Garland, 2000), murder, and other social problems. Another element of moral panic is visible in fanciful theories concocted to explain the murder. These ranged from discussions of French hitmen (Bailey, 1997), a Garda plot to cover up the murder by a member of the force (Sheridan, 2014), to folkloric stories involving castles and ghosts, to the most bizarre theory – that Sophie was killed by a horse (Sheridan, 2014).
The case took a particular sensationalist twist when the lead local journalist covering the case – Ian Bailey – was arrested and labeled the chief suspect by the media and the Gardai Siochana1 (Netflix, episode two). In the years since, there has been intense focus on the character of the prime suspect, the victim’s family’s insistence that he is guilty, and his attempts to sue the Irish state and a variety of British and Irish tabloids for defamation of character (Sheridan, 2014). More recently, attention has turned to the chief suspect’s conviction in absentia in a Parisian court, and subsequent attempts to have him extradited to France to serve his sentence (Brent, 2021). This recent legal struggle between the French and Irish justice systems has reinvigorated international attention to the case.
Having heard of the legal controversy, two London-based crime podcasters launched an in-depth multi-episode coverage of the case, which in turn sparked interest from Sky Atlantic and Netflix, both of whom released documentary series examining the case. While these series have in many ways been typical of the true-crime genre in their focus on the “who done it” element of the case (Rawlings, 1995), the supposed character flaws of the prime suspect, and their focus on the folkloric, sensationalist, and scandalous elements of the case, there is a more nuanced and comprehensive engagement in the case than is typical. This in-depth, International, and nuanced engagement provided the impetus for the current study and prompted two central research questions. These are:
- 1.
To what extent is the recent podcast and documentary series coverage of the case like the gendered, classed, and sensationalised coverage of violent crime against women that the criminological canon (Heidensohn, 1985; Jewkes, 2011) has long highlighted?
- 2.
To what extent does the podcast and documentary series format present an opportunity to offer a more nuanced and academically rigorous analysis of violent crime against women?
In addressing these research questions, the current chapter will be unconcerned with the question of guilt, or the specific details of the crime (except where they are relevant to the research questions), and various issues relating to Garda corruption, differences, and clashes between justice systems. Instead, the chapter will take this case study as an opportunity to compare traditional media (newspaper) and new media (podcast and documentary series) in terms of their gendered, classed, and sensationalised representations of violence against women.