The story of Jeffrey Epstein has been in and out of the news for years, but in a very particular way. Many news articles ask a specific question — which powerful men might be on “the list?”
The news focuses on unidentified elites who may be exposed or embarrassed, rather than on the people whose suffering made the case newsworthy in the first place: the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked.
Currently, history is entering a new phase. A federal judge has authorized the Justice Department to unseal grand jury transcripts and other evidence from the sex trafficking case of Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell. A court in Florida has approved the release of grand jury records from a federal investigation into Epstein himself, all under the new Epstein Files Transparency Act. Passed in November 2025, that law gives the Justice Department 30 days to release almost all files related to Epstein. The deadline is December 19th.
Journalists and the public are watching to see what those documents will reveal beyond names we already know, and if a long-rumored client list will finally materialize.
Alongside this, there has been a stream of reporting focused on survivors. Some outlets, including CNN, regularly featured Epstein’s survivors and their lawyers reacting to new developments. Those segments are a reminder that another story is available, one that treats the women at the center of the case as sources of understanding, not just as evidence of someone else’s fall from grace.
These coexisting stories reveal a deeper problem. After the #MeToo movement peaked, the public conversation about sexual violence and the news has clearly changed. More survivors now speak publicly under their own names, and some outlets have adapted.
Yet long-standing conventions about what counts as news — conflict, scandal, elite people and dramatic twists in a case — continue to shape which aspects of sexual violence make headlines and which remain on the margins.
That tension raises a question: In a case where the law largely allows victims of sexual violence to be named, and where some survivors are explicitly asking to be seen, why do journalistic practices so often withhold names or treat victims as secondary to the story?
What the law allows — and why newsrooms rarely do
The US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the government generally cannot punish news organizations for publishing truthful information taken from public records, even when that information is the name of a rape victim.
When states tried in the 1970s and 1980s to penalize stores that identified victims using names that had already appeared in court documents or police reports, the court said those penalties violated the First Amendment.
Newsrooms responded by tightening restraint, not loosening it. Under pressure from feminist activists, victim advocates and their own staff, many organizations have adopted policies against identifying victims of sexual assault, especially without consent.
Journalism codes of ethics now urge reporters to “minimize harm,” be cautious about naming victims of sex crimes, and consider the risk of retraumatization and stigma.
In other words, US law allows what the newsroom code of ethics discourages.
How anonymity became the norm and #MeToo complicated it
For much of the 20th century, rape victims were regularly mentioned in US news coverage – a reflection of unequal gender norms. Victims’ reputations were treated as public property, while men accused of sexual violence were portrayed sympathetically and in detail.
By the 1970s and 1980s, feminist movements drew attention to underreporting and intense stigma. Activists built rape crisis centers and hotlines, documented how rarely cases of sexual assault led to prosecution, and argued that if a woman is afraid of seeing her name in the paper, she may never report it.
Lawmakers passed “rape shield laws” that limited the use of a victim’s sexual history in court. Some states have gone further by banning the publication of victims’ names.
In response to these laws, as well as feminist pressure, most newsrooms by the 1980s moved toward a default rule of not naming victims.
More recently, the #MeToo movement has added a twist. Survivors in the workplace, politics and entertainment have chosen to speak publicly, often under their own names, about serial abuse and institutional cover-ups. Their accounts forced newsrooms to revise assumptions about whose voices should lead a story.
Yet #MeToo also unfolded within existing journalistic conventions. Investigations have tended to focus on high-profile men, spectacular falls from power and moments of reckoning, leaving less room for the quieter and ongoing realities of recovery, legal limbo and community response.
The unintended effects of keeping survivors faceless
There are good reasons for policies against naming victims.
Survivors may face harassment, employment discrimination or danger from the abuser if identified. For minors, there are additional concerns about long-term digital evidence. In communities where sexual violence carries intense social stigma, anonymity can be a lifeline.
But research on media design suggests that naming patterns matter. When coverage focuses on the alleged perpetrator as a complex individual — someone with a name, career and backstory — while referring to “victim” or “accusers” in the singular, audiences are more likely to empathize with the suspect and scrutinize the victim’s behavior.
In high-profile cases like Epstein’s, that dynamic intensifies. The powerful men connected with him are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to move forward, remain a blurred mass in the background. The anonymity intended to protect actually flattens their experience. Different stories of grooming, coercion and survival are reduced to one faceless category.
A window into what we think is ‘news’
That flattening is part of what makes the current moment in Epstein’s story so revealing. The suspense is less about whether more victims will be heard and more about what the name will do to the influential men. It becomes a story whose name counts as news.
The careful anonymization of survivors as they breathlessly chase after a client list of powerful men without intention sends a message about who matters most.
The Epstein scandal, in that framework, is not primarily about what has been done to girls and young women over many years, but about who among the elite may be embarrassed, implicated or exposed.
A more survivor-centered journalistic approach starts from a different set of questions, including asking which survivors have chosen to speak on the record and why, and how news outlets can protect anonymity, when requested, but still convey the individuality of the victim.
Those questions are not just about ethics. They are about judging the news. They ask editors and reporters to consider whether the most important part of a story like Epstein’s is the next famous name to drop or the ongoing lives of the people whose abuse made that name newsworthy.
Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin is the Frank and Bethine Church public affairs chair at Boise State University. This article is republished by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.