By Celeste Laube and Quinlan Carnegie
Description of Case Study
In 2013, ABC News released a video feature on the life of Jazz Jennings, an 11-year-old transgender girl. This segment was a part of the 20/20 series hosted by Barbara Walters and was a follow-up to the first feature Walters and ABC News conducted about Jazz in 2007. In this segment, Walters interviews the Jennings family and gives the audience a deeper look into the life of a transgender girl.
Ethical Concerns
The first ethical concern I have with the feature on Jazz is how it plays into the ‘confessing society’ by framing Jazz’s transgender identity as a secret. The confessing society is a term coined by Foucault and expanded on by Alexandre Baril in his scholarly article, “Confessing Society, Confessing Cis Tem.” It refers to how Western society “leads us to believe that publicly disclosing our desires, ideas and selves is liberating.”[1] This idea of needing to confess is specifically problematic when framing transgender identity, as it correlates being transgender with having a shameful secret.
This is exemplified in the ABC News feature on Jazz. The video starts with Walters in a newsroom, as she sets up the story of Jazz. She says, “At just eleven years old she has taken what most children and their families would regard as a terrible secret and brought it smashing into the open.”[2] Through this sentence, Walters frames being transgender as “a terrible secret” and then praises Jazz for confessing and bringing her identity “smashing into the open.”[3] Instead of foregrounding Jazz’s voice, Walters chooses to highlight the dominant rhetoric. This pushes the idea that being transgender is shameful.
The second ethical concern I have with the feature on Jazz is the focus on Jazz’s body. In Baril’s article, he points out “when trans* people are asked to speak about our realities, public interest is often limited to extremely personal and primarily physical aspects of our transitions.”[4] The public’s invasive curiosity about transgender bodies has an impact on the way journalists tell transgender stories. As a result, journalists like Barbara Walters tend to focus on the physical aspects of transgender people, instead of on their lived experiences.
The ABC News feature on Jazz illustrates the trend of journalists focusing on transgender bodies as it repeatedly shows and discusses Jazz’s body intimately. In one scene, we see Jazz showing her mom her new bra. The camera slightly zooms in as Jazz puffs out her chest showing off how her shirt looks with a bra underneath. This scene is problematic as it is an invasive look into an 11-year-old’s body. Highlighting that Jazz wears a bra is not key information to Jazz’s story, but is used for shock value, playing into the public’s prurience about transgender bodies.
Another way the feature focuses on Jazz’s body is through the scenes of her swimming as a mermaid. In the scenes, Jazz is in a bikini top and a mermaid tail. The camera pans over her body as she swims in her backyard pool. This may seem like an innocent scene, but we need to question why it was included. The content of the scene is meant to showcase Jazz’s love for mermaids; however, the clip of Jazz swimming is not essential to Walters’ story and could have been swapped for a less invasive shot. Focusing on Jazz’s body does a disservice to Jazz and her story. When working with the transgender community, journalists should focus on illuminating transgender voices and should avoid using transgender bodies to gain viewership by satiating the public’s invasive curiosity. To be clear, this is not information the public needs; it’s information it wants.
Discussion Questions
- Baril argues that “…whether consent was given in biased circumstances or not, it should be possible, as with sexual consent, to withdraw it at any time.”[5] Do you agree with Baril’s suggestions to change how journalism practices consent? Do you think Jazz, who is now twenty-two, should have the right to remove her consent for the ABC News feature? What would this look like in practice?
- One could argue that focusing on transgender bodies provides educational opportunities to the public. Does the public have a right to know about intimate aspects of transgender people?
- Does the fact that the ABC News feature was made in 2013 change the way you see the ethical concerns laid out above? If the feature was made in 2023, would it take a different approach?
- Do you think journalists can be objective when telling the stories of vulnerable communities? Do you think Barbara Walters’ bias and point of view shape how she tells Jazz’s story?
Footnotes
[1] Alexandre Baril, “Confessing Society, Confessing Cis Tem: Rethinking Consent through Intimate Images of Trans* People in the Media,”Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 39, no. 2 (2018): 4.
[2] Barbara Walters, “Transgender at 11: Listening to Jazz Jennings | 20/20 | ABC News,” ABC News, 2013, video, 7:53, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJw3s85EcxM&t=165s&ab_channel=ABCNews.
[3] Barbara Walters, “Transgender at 11: Listening to Jazz Jennings | 20/20 | ABC News,” ABC News, 2013, video, 7:53, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJw3s85EcxM&t=165s&ab_channel=ABCNews.
[4] Baril, “Confessing Society, Confessing Cis Tem: Rethinking Consent through Intimate Images of Trans* People in the Media,” 5.
[5] Baril, 4.