This file is a short single-author polemical commentary. Written in June 1991, it treats the William Kennedy Smith Palm Beach rape allegation as a case study in media ethics, feminist theory, criminal credibility, and punishment. Rothbard’s central thesis is that public reporting should not be curtailed to protect the privacy of an alleged rape victim once a criminal accusation has entered public institutions, and that the sexual circumstances surrounding a rape allegation may matter legally without nullifying the coercive character of rape.
The essay is structured around two declared “Problems.” The first concerns whether NBC and the New York Times acted wrongly by naming the alleged victim after the tabloid Globe did so. Rothbard rejects the then-dominant view that such naming was immoral. His argument begins from a blunt theory of journalism: public interest, not protection from embarrassment, defines newsworthiness.
The prime business of the media is to report the news, to report what will be to the interest of the readers or viewers.
From this premise, Rothbard argues that requiring an alleged victim’s consent to publication would imply a general veto over news reporting. His libertarian conceptual move is to treat privacy claims as potentially limitless restraints on the circulation of public facts.
But that is indeed the logic of the absurd view that the media must get the rape victim’s agreement to publish her name. For that means that everyone in all walks of life would have a veto power on his or her name ever being mentioned.
He then turns against what he presents as feminist inconsistency. If rape is described as violence rather than sex, he argues, rape victims should be treated like other crime victims whose names are ordinarily reportable. But Rothbard himself rejects the slogan that rape is only violence; he insists that rape is a distinct crime because it joins coercion to a sexual act.
Rape is sex plus violence; why is it difficult to get this point across?
The second main move is jurisdictional: once an accusation is made to the police, Rothbard claims, it ceases to be merely private. This is the point at which his media argument and his theory of public criminal process converge.
The rape became public as soon as PATTY BALDWIN reported it to the police and charged William Kennedy Smith with the crime.
He also stresses asymmetry: the accused man’s name was publicized and stigmatized, while commentators demanded special protection for the accuser’s identity. Rothbard does not deny that rape carries shame for victims; rather, he argues that such “gentlemanly” restraint cannot override public knowledge of legal accusations.
But I don’t think this gentlemanly consideration outweighs the media’s obligation to report the news, and the public’s right to know public events.
The essay’s second “Problem” concerns whether the press was wrong to publish details about the accuser’s past and conduct. Rothbard grants a key legal principle: rape is coercion and remains criminal regardless of the victim’s sexual history or moral status.
It is true, very true, that rape is coercion, and that rape is a crime, regardless of the sexual or virtuous status of the victim, that is, whether she is a nun, a monogamous wife and mother, a swinging single, or a hooker.
But he immediately qualifies that concession by arguing that such details can still be relevant to credibility and punishment. Because rape cases often lack third-party witnesses, he claims the accuser’s credibility becomes unusually important.
By its very nature, rape—in contrast to mugging or simple assault—almost always takes place without witnesses.
Rothbard’s most controversial conceptual distinction is between guilt and degree. He says prior consensual intimacy or imprudent circumstances do not excuse coercion, but they may affect how severely the crime should be judged. This is the basis of his distinction between “date rape” and “stranger rape.”
Note that I am not saying that “leading the guy on” justifies or exculpates later coercion and rape; but it should mitigate the severity of the crime and the ensuing punishment.
The relevance of the essay lies less in factual investigation than in its polemical intervention into early-1990s debates over rape, privacy, feminism, and press freedom. Rothbard’s argument combines libertarian hostility to restrictions on publication, skepticism toward feminist rhetoric, and an older moral vocabulary about sexual conduct. Its core moves are to redefine the naming controversy as a public-right-to-know issue, to insist that rape is both sex and violence, and to argue that context may matter for legal judgment even where coercion remains criminal.
This work was divided into 2 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 2 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian