Bad Press


This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 39, Summer 1999.

In February this year, The Mirror printed a lengthy report on a sensational murder case. Jennifer Cupit had killed another woman, Kathryn Linaker, in what the judge referred to as an act of ‘lust and jealousy’. That the events of this case were represented in stereotypically sexist terms will come as no surprise to feminists. But Isla Duncan thinks we can learn something by analysing the text more closely…

The popular press is a significant influence in many people’s lives. Politicians recognise the ideological clout wielded by media magnates like Rupert Murdoch, and court their favour unashamedly. Between them, the best-selling newspapers in this country, The Sun and The Mirror, attract eight million readers, who are identified in surveys as working class, conservative and predominantly male. The editorials of both newspapers imply traditional, insular and male-centred ideologies; events and people referred to in news reports ae made comprehensible by the use of categories like ‘mad dogs’ (Colonel Gaddafi and his allies), ‘mother of three’, ‘thug’, ‘schoolgirl mum’. Complexities are reduced to simple oppositions like ‘Brits’ and ‘foreigners’, ‘law abiding citizens’ and ‘evil criminals’, ‘home builders’ and ‘home wreckers’.

Here I am particularly concerned with the construction of categories for women and the portrayal of female experience in the tabloid press—a subject that is well illustrated by close analysis of a report that appeared in The Mirror on 3 February 1999.

The story

The subject of the report is the murder, in Cheshire in 1998, of deputy head teacher Kathryn Linaker, by her husband’s lover Jennifer Cupit. Jennifer Cupit was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge who presided over the six day trial concluded that the murder had been committed ‘out of lust and jealousy’.

Chris Linaker, the husband of the murdered woman, had conducted a sixteen month affair with Jennifer Cupit. He had also, it emerged, participated in group sex sessions with her and her husband Nick Cupit. Chris Linaker occasionally invited his brother-in-law Neal Allcock to these sessions. The Cupits and the Linakers had met at the Warrington Amateur Dramatic Society, of which all four were members.

Allusions to the opera and the theatre recur in the Mirror’s report, which is headed, on its first page, ‘Opera Killer’s Sex Secrets’ and on subsequent pages ‘Murder at the Operatic Society’. In keeping with the ‘dramatic performance’ theme, photographs of Kathryn and Chris Linaker, Nick Cupit and Neal Allcock, appear under the caption ‘Cast of a Tragedy’. The melodramatic quality of these headings, and the emotive vocabulary of the first paragraphs (which use words like ‘sex-mad’, ‘butchered’ and ‘temptress’) set the tone for a sensationalist and salacious report.

The report is spread over five pages. It begins on page one, where the ‘sex secrets’ are labelled ‘exclusive’, and is continued three pages later under the description ‘sordid secrets’. Three more pages expand on what is luridly called ‘the tangled saga of sex, lies and videotape (because video evidence of the group sex sessions was shown in court). There is an account of Jennifer Cupit’s life immediately prior to her sentencing, when she lived in a remand hostel and apparently enjoyed some degree of freedom. The next page assembles many direct quotations from acquaintances of the convicted woman and her husband, most providing unflattering details about Jennifer Cupit. On the final page, under the heading ‘The Victim’, is an appreciation of the dead woman, Kathryn Linaker.

Guilty of murder…or just sex?

Throughout the lengthy report, Jennifer Cupit is portrayed as not only murderous, but sexually depraved. At no stage do the reporters consider the culpability of the men involved in the story, though it is clear Chris Linaker has been unfaithful, deceitful and exploitative, while Nick Cupit seems to have played a role akin to that of a procurer. On the first page is a quote from Jennifer Cupit’s lawyer, who suggests that Chris Linaker ‘“degraded and used” his mistress’. This charge loses potency in part because the newspaper has used the pejorative word mistress, connoting immorality and treachery. The men in the case apparently remain untainted by their involvement in group sex sessions. Meanwhile the women in the ‘drama’ are easily slotted into the familiar categories assigned to women in patriarchy: either dutiful mother/carer or promiscuous sexual adventurer.

A headline on the third page, ‘From Blushing Bride to Sex-Crazed Killer’, is typical tabloid language, in which opposing stereotypes of female sexuality—modesty and excess—are exaggerated to the point of caricature. ‘Blushing bride’ perpetuates the patriarchal stereotype of a bride’s bashfulness and purity. ‘Sex-crazed killer’ is a description based, it later transpires, on the information that Jennifer Cupit ‘had sex with three different men while on remand at a bail hostel’. This hardly merits the hyperbolic ‘sex crazed’, which is reinforced by other references to Jennifer Cupit as sexually voracious: ‘sex mad’, a ‘temptress’ who ‘bedded a string of lovers as she waited to be tried for murder’. The verb ‘bedded’ is worthy of comment. As the linguist Kate Clark also found when she analysed the reporting of sexual violence in The Sun, women are accorded sexual agency by tabloid writers only when they are depicted as promiscuous and/or murderous. Whether Jennifer Cupit did ‘bed’ three men is not proven and not likely to be (the newspaper hedges with ‘it is claimed’), but the impression of her as extremely promiscuous is imprinted on the reader’s mind from the outset. The sentence ‘the petite blonde had sex with three different men while on remand’ uses two words (‘petite’ and ‘blonde’) that serve to further sexualise Jennifer Cupit.

By contrast, Kathryn Linaker is depicted as a paragon of personal and professional virtue. She is called ‘a wonderful mum and an inspirational teacher’, words that praise the principal functions—maternal and pastoral—allotted to women in patriarchal society.

Supporting actors

It is worth examining the way the report constructs the identities of the other four people in the story: Chris Linaker, Nick Cupit, Neal Allcock and Kathryn Linaker. The photos that appear under the heading ‘Cast of a Tragedy’ are captioned with sparse details intended to personalise the main characters. By providing such details as age and occupation the report attempts to make each individual seem more ordinary, more like Mirror readers themselves. But if we look at the details of these captions and at the photographs themselves there are subtle forms of bias at work here.

First, it is important to note that Jennifer Cupit is removed from the ‘cast of a tragedy’. Altogether there are four photographs of her in the report, but none is included in the column listing the ‘cast’, to which she is not admitted. This woman is far beyond the pale, an alien in the territory of ‘ordinary’ people, Chris, Nick and Neal, who are on first name terms with each other and with the reader. In their photographs they smile affably and engagingly at the camera, while in every shot of Jennifer Cupit she looks down or sideways. The reader is not allowed to look her in the eye; she cannot meet the reader’s gaze because she is a disreputable liar.

In the reporting of the details of the sexual relations involving Jennifer Cupit, Nick Cupit, Chris Linaker and Neal Allcock, more than ‘personalisation’ is going on: some of the worst prejudices of a male-centred value system are being disseminated. All three men were participants in sexual activity where the woman was an object of exchange; yet there is no discussion of this, no attempt to investigate its significance in the case. It is clear that one of the men must have taped some of the sex sessions, but the voyeuristic nature of that act is diminished by the form of the sentence ‘She was videoed having sex with him [Chris Linaker] and her husband Nick, 27’, where there is no agent made responsible for the videotaping.

In order to lessen the stigma of association with the murderer, and mitigate Nick Cupit’s involvement in group sex, his acting skills are trumpeted (‘a talented actor’). This commendation is offered by a woman who ‘preferred to remain unnamed’, who knew the Cupits in their early amateur dramatics days. She is quoted by reporters saying that Nick Cupit was ‘extremely talented’, basing her evaluation on the fact that he appeared ‘as an extra in Coronation Street and Brookside’. She remarks that ‘he could have gone on to do the big musicals but he didn’t make it because he married her [Jennifer Cupit]’. It is not made clear how the anonymous woman arrives at such a conclusion.

Unnamed interviewees provide much of the substance of the report of the case: they are either inmates of the bail hostel where Jennifer Cupit lived, local residents who chanced to see the woman in the neighbourhood, selected members of the amateur dramatic society or past and present associates of the convicted killer. A nameless woman from Jennifer Cupit’s past, who admits that she disliked her, supplies ten paragraphs of comment, disclosing details that suggest a close acquaintance.

None of the informants is made to appear in any way individual. The words which introduce them are consistently indefinite: ‘a pal’, ‘one friend at the hostel’, ‘one resident’, ‘a woman who knew Cupit in her teens’, ‘a friend’, ‘a former member [of the dramatic society]. This lack of explicitness is unusual in the tabloid press, where personalisation is an important tendency, a way of presenting the world as a collection of easily categorised individuals and events. The process of ‘individuation’ or personalisation is applied mainly to Jennifer Cupit. Both the informants and the reporters describe her as a thoroughly objectionable, immoral, cunning and dangerous killer. She is characterised in the reductive language of sexism as ‘man mad’, ‘a little madam’, ‘a spitfire’, ‘a terrible flirt’, ‘a petite blonde’ and ‘a mother of two’.

Another story?

Jennifer Cupit was found guilty of murder and will serve a life sentence for her crime. Her guilt, and the innocence of the woman she killed, are not at issue. The issue is the Mirror’s unfair and simplistic presentation of female behaviour and experience. If this goes unexamined and unchallenged it only becomes more extreme.

There is scarcely a reference in the entire report to Chris Linaker’s central role in the drama. He was Jennifer Cupit’s lover; a man, it would appear, who was deceiving his partner while enjoying the benefits of the ‘loving and stable home’ she provided. The reporters do not examine what the defence barrister called his ‘heavy responsibility for the events that led to his wife’s murder’; they attach no blame, nor even agency, to him. There is no discussion of the 16-month extra-marital relationship or the sex sessions. On the page of the report that concentrates on Kathryn Linaker, there is a photograph of the Linakers taken on the day their two young children were christened, some five days before Kathryn Linaker’s death. The photo caption reads: SPECIAL DAY. One might have expected some observation on the hypocrisy of a man who is able to position himself as a proud, devoted husband and father while at the same time being a cheat and adulterer.

Nothing whatever is written about Chris Linaker’s background, no details gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and neighbours. The following reference appears early in the report: ‘Mr Linaker, who now lives with his parents and the chilren, walked from the court with head bowed, refusing to comment’. Once again the journalists’ language reveals their biases. Of all the members of the ‘cast’, only Chris Linaker warrants a title (Mr), and in the sentence quoted above, the respectability suggested by the title is reinforced by the whole context. The reader is reassured that Chris Linaker is not alienated from his parents and that he is mindful of his responsibilities as a father. The word ‘bowed’ has connotations of dignity, as well as contrition (what a difference ‘lowered’ would have made). Presumably the Mirror regarded it as inappropriate to press the grieving husband for a comment, or ask the ‘devastated’ Nick Cupit how he enjoyed the group sex sessions.

In effect, then, Jennifer Cupit assumes all responsibility for the sexual dissipation of her partners. Testimonies to her lust and treachery are secured from various sources. Readers infer that because she was so ‘manipulative’ and beguiling, all the men were helplessly seduced and suborned. That there is, in this report, evidence of her mental instability, does not seem to be considered relevant or valid. It is revealed, for instance, that Jennifer Cupit is bulimic, that she suffers from depression and that she has tried to commit suicide more than once. One interviewee (less hostile than the others), a member of the dramatic society, explains that ‘most [of the members] were genuinely concerned for her welfare’. Yet despite these indicators of mental distress, there is no attempt to present her as anything other than a demonic, sexually voracious, brutal murderer.

She is depicted as the polar opposite of Kathryn Linaker, whose presentation is also distorted by sexism. Kathryn Linaker’s professional achievements as a deputy head teacher, a writer of children’s books and an actor are accorded less importance than her functions as a wife, mother and home-maker. The police superintendent who led the inquiry unwittingly articulates the ideology of the press by describing Kathryn Linaker as ‘an exceptional woman who led an ordinary life—one which we can all identify with’. Popular newspapers are concerned to ensure that their readers identify with constructs of ordinariness, and that they are suitably repelled by constructs of deviance. Anything that threatens that comforting binary opposition must be moulded and adjusted to conform to an appropriate category, whether it be social class, ethnicity or pattern of sexual behaviour.

Prurient, biased — and insidious

My intention in this piece was not to exonerate Jennifer Cupit nor show disrespect to Kathryn Linaker. Rather I wanted to show how the linguistic choices made by Mirror reporters convey their male-centred prejudices. Jennifer Cupit is designated an undesirable right from the start, when she is labelled a ‘sex-mad temptress’ who likes to ‘bed’ several men, in succession or simultaneously. After that kind of defamation it is difficult for her to attract any kind of understanding from the reader. This is to treat her unfairly, because it does not address the question of the role played by the men in this affair, and it does not admit the possibility that she is someone more complex than a ‘sex-crazed killer’.

‘Murder at the Operatic Society’ is both prurient and biased. It is also insidious, for it relies on the reader’s unquestioning acceptance of sexist and male-centred ideologies. Its presentation of stereotypes is comfortingly simple: the angel in the house, the vamp, the philanderer, the family man—they are all there in the cast, playing their gender roles, displaying the appropriate gender attributes. These gender categories are fundamental in patriarchal society. Sexist discourse such as that which flourishes in The Mirror ensures that those categories remain fixed and durable.

References

Kate Clark ‘The linguistics of blame’ in Michael Toolan (ed.) Language, Text and Context (Routledge, 1992)