Earlier this month, singer Tory Lanez went on trial for allegedly shooting Grammy-winning rapper Megan Thee Stallion.

In July 2020, the two were leaving Kylie Jenners home when Megan says Lanez shot her in the foot, telling her to Dance, bitch. He pleaded not guilty to felony assault with a semiautomatic firearm, possessing a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and using a firearm and inflicting great bodily injury.

Months later, the singer put out an album in which he lodged a barrage of insults in Megans direction the day after news broke that the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor would not be charged. Lanezs unapologetic misogyny threw salt on the wounds of Black women everywhere.

Amid the quick hits about the grotesquely timed and vitriolic album, streetwear blog Highsnobiety took an incredibly rare stance.

This is the last time we will cover Tory Lanez, the blog declared in September 2020 to rounds of cyber commendations.

The rapper just added to his list of disgraceful behavior by dropping the most toxic album of the year, Highsnobietys statement read. He recently became a music industry pariah after Megan Thee Stallion revealed that he shot her during an incident that led to his arrest on July 12. However, rather than publicly apologizing to Megan or addressing the issue, he released an album instead, using the media attention from the shooting to promote his work.

The outlet was widely praised for the decision, but there were no similar public pledges from other publications.

Highsnobiety stood alone in its response.

Media outlets rarely take such a definitive position against misogyny, even when it becomes violent. Coverage of violence against women remains detached and exploitative and, in the case of Black and Indigenous women, almost nonexistent.

HuffPost spoke to experts on violence against women and domestic violence survivors to pinpoint exactly where media goes wrong with its reporting and the lack thereof.

The Celebrity Of It All

Highsnobietys statement demonstrated how celebrities have become the vehicle through which moral codes can be established. But that the majority of culture-focused outlets chose to instead capitalize off this misogynistic incident showed the inverse as well: celebrity culture also reflects societys worst structures.

In mid-November 2021, a video showing former NFL player Zac Stacy assaulting his ex-girlfriend circulated among media outlets. The Daily Mail placed the video, which showed him striking his ex-girlfriend before throwing her into a television, front and center on its homepage. The tabloids forcible and exploitative use of the video was just one snapshot of how the media still gets it wrong in its coverage of domestic violence.

During Stacys arrest, he told police that his ex-girlfriend staged the assault, and the majority of articles about the footage focused on his outlandish claim about his ex. Meanwhile, the footage also showed the arresting officers bemoaning the former running backs retirement as they detained him an alarming interaction that few outlets covered.

The former angle homed in on the drama of the situation rather than interrogating the cavalier attitude of the law enforcement officials toward an accused abuser. And while most reasonable individuals would have a hard time fathoming Stacys claim that the assault was staged as indication of anything other than him having a history of abuse, the widespread reporting around the claim nonetheless gave the retired NFL player who, by status and gender, already had a greater advantage a chance to control the narrative.

Years before the Stacy video went viral, the NFL appeared to undergo a reckoning on domestic violence. Between 2012 and 2014, there were 15 known domestic violence cases involving players in the league. Between 2014 and 2015, three well-established athletes Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy were all accused of domestic violence. Many sports critics and survivor advocates highlighted the NFLs domestic violence problem . And while the statistics prove the pattern, scholar Chris B. Geyerman found the compartmentalization to be problematic.

The media coverage of these cases diverted attention away from domestic violence as a widespread social problem and set up a dynamic which allowed the NFL to attribute its domestic violence problem to ignorance and reposition itself as part of the solution, Geyerman wrote in a paper titled The NFLs Violence Against Women Problem: Media Framing and The Perpetuation of Domestic Abuse.

Stacys attack and those of other male celebrities against women was ultimately treated by news media as an isolated celebrity saga. And recent history shows that, should Stacy ever want to return to the limelight, hell likely enjoy the luxury of a short-term media memory.

In a tape released a few months after his June 2018 death, late rapper XXXTentacion admitted to domestic abuse and other cruel acts of violence against an ex-girlfriend.

She fell through on every occasion until now, he said of the woman on the tape obtained by Pitchfork . Until I started fucking her up, bruh.

But the admission didnt deter Forbes , Rolling Stone , Yahoo and a handful of other publications from praising his posthumous musical milestones. His Sad! single reached 1 billion streams on Spotify one year after his death, and five of his previously unreleased tracks premiered as NFTs last May. Similarly, Chris Brown who admitted to violently attacking then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009 and has been the subject of a series of accusations involving assaults on women since enjoyed publicity by a handful of publications.