Illicit Military Behavior as Exceptional and Inevitable: Media Coverage of Military Sexual Violence and the “Bad Apples” Paradox

Abstract

How can we understand consistent public support and trust of the military even in climates of high rates of public awareness about military sexual violence? This article examines how the phenomenon of military sexual violence is mediated to the public through a media content and discourse analysis of newspaper reportage about military sexual violence in Australia. The analysis covers an almost thirty-year period (1989–2016) during which several “sex scandals,” some of international import, broke out. We analyze several frames used to depict the issue and conclude that military sex scandals, like other illicit military behaviors, tend to be publicly framed either as (1) a rarity that is atypical of the institution (“bad apples”) or (2) inevitable and so typical of the institution as to be unremarkable. The article then seeks to demonstrate that these seemingly disparate frames are not contradictory, but rather unify into a singular narrative. The narrative cohering these disparate frames is that military sexual violence is a phenomenon that cannot be prevented or addressed and is therefore unproblematic for the institution.