Reporting Rape of Islamic Boarding School Student in Bandung on Detik.com and Republika.co.id

Abstract

At the end of 2021, the public was shocked by the viral rape case of 13 female Islamic boarding school students in Bandung by Herry Wirawan and has quickly seized public attention. The news was first published on December 9, 2021, by several online media, including Detik.com and Republika.co.id. This study aims to find out the framing of two online media reporting the news of the rape case of Herry Wirawan against his students. The paper uses the Zhongdang Pan & Gerald M. Kosicki framing model, which explores the media framing of syntactic, script, thematic and rhetorical structures. This study uses the constructivist paradigm and qualitative research as methods. The result of this study finds that despite Detik.com aggressively reporting the case, the news looks neutral. There is no tendency to cover up rape cases involving the name of the Islamic boarding school nor to judge the perpetrators explicitly. Although there is no term for neutral journalism, Detik.com presents the title, writes the news in smooth language, is packaged straightforwardly and carefully, and tends to be impartial. Compared to Republika.co.id, who frames the news in a more aggressive approach. It is portrayed from the explicit statements in the news presented, cornering the perpetrators for dragging and tarnishing the image of the Islamic boarding school for their rape case. It appears that Republika.co.id, with its Islamic ideology, is trying to uphold the truth of the facts concerning the views of religious people on the rape case that has occurred.