Mormon Sex in Chains Case - Coverage in The Media

Coverage in The Media

The coverage in British newspapers in the final months of 1977 was extensive and highly prominent. Some newspapers sought to obtain "scoops" on the story, and to undermine each other as they managed to obtain and publish exclusive information. For example, the Daily Mirror researched McKinney's past and reported over several days that she had been a nude model. The Daily Mail attempted to devalue the Mirror's reports by advertising itself as "The paper without Joyce McKinney."

Brian Whitaker observes that the case provided "light relief" for the newspaper-reading public, from more serious stories about politicians. Roger Wilkes states that the coverage of the case "cheered Britain up no end." A Church of Scotland working party on obscenity in 1979 observed the "gusto" with which newspapers covered and followed the case, noting the accompaniment of the coverage by "the kind of illustration which a decade ago would have been under plain sealed cover."

The coverage was extensive in part because the case was considered so anomalous, involving as it did the issue of rape of a man by a woman. Backhouse and Cohen reported in 1978 that many men, privately, expressed their disbelief of such a possibility.

The case was documented in Joyce McKinney and the Manacled Mormon, a book by Anthony Delano in 1978, who based his work on assembled Daily Mirror coverage.