Assignment 1

Two-Sided Media: Depictions of the Matthew Shepard Case

The murder of 21 year old Matthew Shepard created a dialogue that extended out of Laramie, Wyoming. On national and international scales, people were moved to engage in conversation about the tragic event, as well as deeper and broader topics like equality, civil rights, and human nature. One main reason why people were pushed to question their own beliefs and even societal beliefs after the murder was because of the emotional response elicited by coverage of the events. At the time of the murder, countless newspaper journalists and news crews from all around the world flocked to Laramie to cover the case. These initial reports led to more emotional accounts, including “The Laramie Project” and “The Matthew Shepard Story”, both of which dig deeper into the story and Matthew’s life rather than simply reporting the facts. Despite covering the same event and having some similarities, these accounts differ greatly. They differ in how they approach covering the event, how they present the town of Laramie, the emotions that they push for, and the responses that they elicit. Because they differ so much, each form of media has a different influence on public perception and public reaction to the case. Personally, I felt that the plays were more successful in drawing an emotional response out of the audience, where the media was more successful in drawing worldwide attention to the case and the causes it represented.

The mainstream national media began to cover the Matthew Shepard murder like it would cover any other big event. Tons of journalists stormed the small, quiet town, bringing crowds like it had never seen before. The sole reason they were there was to get the facts about the murder and relay them to the public. In their attempt to gain the information that they wanted, the media was somewhat ruthless. In “The Laramie Project” the media is depicted as a frenzied mob that is so disorderly that the detective updating the public on Matthew’s health had to “ask that [they] respect [Matthew’s family’s] privacy, as well as Matthew’s” several times. Of course they would attempt to engage the public on an emotional level through the story that they produced, but they were not concerned with sitting down and talking to as many people of the town as possible when they entered Laramie. The mainstream journalists entered only to get the story. With the exception of a few interviews, they had a somewhat distant relationship with the townspeople. The people that they interviewed were questioned solely about the case, not necessarily their feelings toward the case.

The lack of a personal relationship had an effect on the portrayal of the town of Laramie. Although the mainstream media did not show the town in a negative light, it did keep its distance from the people, forcing viewers from the outside to conjure up their own image of the town. Piecing together what the media does say, either directly or indirectly, a viewer might suspect that Laramie is an intolerant town that is very conservative about issues regarding sexuality. The fact that the media made hate crimes and intolerance seem somewhat normal in Laramie may be what caused outsiders to have the opinion that the small town American West is, as Don Shewey puts it in his article “Town in a Mirror”, “a hotbed of Wild West homophobia.” Reactions like Shewey’s are shocking to someone who grew up in the West like me. Having lived in the West all my life, I felt like it was a reasonably open region of the country, especially compared to other areas. Although it’s impossible to have a place that completely lacks hatred, I don’t feel like the West is a place that is full of it either. But I understand how outsiders who only know that the crime happened in Laramie and who haven’t seen the people who live in the area could begin to hypothesize that hate crimes are commonplace in the region.

Despite being significantly less emotional than the plays that were written, the news reports did have some level of emotion to engage their audience. Without emotion, the media could not set up a dramatic story and no one would be interested in following that. Headlines are very important in a newspaper story; they are arguably the most important piece of the story because they are the first thing an audience sees. In an article titled “The Politics of Negotiating Public Tragedy: Media Framing of the Matthew Shepard Murder”, the authors note how the media approached the case and what the consequences were. To generate a story in the Matthew Shepard case, most of the initial reports put out by newspapers capitalized on the fact that he was gay. Even before all of the details were known, “the qualifier ‘gay’ that [began] each headline [constructed] the victim’s sexuality as the focal point of the story”. This targeted the GLBT community as a core audience, but also pushed the rest of the nation to focus on gay rights.

Moises Kaufman and his theater troupe approach the murder in a way that is completely different from how the media approached it. First, rather than coming in days after the murder, they came a month later. Next, instead of entering the town looking for facts about the case, they approached the townspeople as friends, seeking conversation rather than traditional interviews, and creating personal rather than distant relationships. In a letter titled “Into the West: An Exploration in Form” in American Theater Magazine, Moises Kaufman said they went to “learn more about why Matthew Shepard was murdered; about what happened that night; about the town of Laramie.”. In doing so, Kaufman set up an emotional conversation with the public.

In “The Laramie Project”, the people of Laramie use the close relationship between themselves and the troupe to clarify how they feel about the case and to combat how they are depicted by the media. For instance, several people state that when they heard about the murder, they had assumed and hoped that it was committed by someone from out of town because, to them, the people of Laramie would not do anything like that. They display shock and disappointment at the fact that the murderers were boys they knew from around town, and they reiterate that they still don’t feel that Laramie is a place where intolerance would be an issue. Unlike the mainstream media which tells the nation and the world that Laramie is a place where a violent hate crime could happen, the plays give the people a voice and a chance to say that Laramie is not that kind of a town. They voice the idea that Laramie is a “live and let live” kind of place.

The level of emotion that can be found in the plays is much higher than that in coverage by the mainstream media. Local media also has a high level of emotional appeal compared to the national media. Articles published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle attempt to show the local effects of the case. Headlines right after the murder in the Tribune-Eagle read “UW Shocked by Beating” and “Politicians Condemn Attack.” Words like shock and condemn attempt to talk about feelings; the plays took those feelings a step further through demonstration. “The Laramie Project” included several scenes with characters in tears, making it hard for the audience not to do the same.

Mainstream media coverage and more personal coverage of the Matthew Shepard murder accomplished several things, some similar some different. Mainstream media reporters brought the story to the world. Before that, few people were talking openly about gay rights. Dialogue, movements for hate crime legislation, and an acknowledgement of the gay community were results of media coverage of the story. Coverage like that found in plays written about Matthew Shepard came later and fueled all of those things. They allowed the public to get personally attached to the causes that came from the murder and push those causes further ahead. Both types of media worked separately from each other, but accomplished similar goals.