Reporting guidance and research on media coverage of domestic abuse victims.
In consultation with a coalition of domestic violence experts and victims' families, Level Up produced the UK's first media guidelines on how to report domestic abuse deaths. Endorsed by both press regulators IPSO and IMPRESS, the guidelines challenge headlines that frame femicide as "crimes of passion" rather than the predictable outcome of sustained coercive control.
Every three days in the UK, a woman is killed by a partner or ex-partner. Level Up's research found that 2 in 3 families bereaved by domestic homicide had their grieving process negatively impacted by irresponsible media coverage. We have compiled the key guidelines, research, academic evidence, and regulatory submissions from the Dignity for Dead Women campaign in one place.
Level Up has trained over 500 journalists using our AIDA framework — Accountability, Images, Dignity, Accuracy. If you come across relevant journalism, research, or guidance on this issue, please share it with us so we can add it to the collection.
Sign the petition →The UK's first media guidelines on reporting domestic abuse deaths, endorsed by both IPSO and IMPRESS. Built around the AIDA framework — Accountability, Images, Dignity, Accuracy — and used in CPD-accredited training for over 500 journalists.
Download PDF →The second edition of Level Up's landmark media guidelines — the UK's first evidence-based guidance for journalists on how to report domestic abuse deaths accurately and with dignity. Structured around the AIDA framework (Accountability, Images, Dignity, Accuracy), the guidelines are endorsed by both press regulators IPSO and IMPRESS, and have been distributed to every newsroom in the country. They form the basis of Level Up's CPD-accredited journalist training programme, attended by over 500 journalists to date.
Level Up's research into the impact of media reporting on families bereaved by domestic homicide, produced in collaboration with victims' families and the charity AAFDA. The report finds that 2 in 3 families who participated said their grieving process was negatively impacted by media coverage of their loved one's death. The findings were presented to IPSO's Head of Standards in February 2020 and form a central pillar of Level Up's campaign for regulatory change.
The peer-reviewed academic article by Level Up's Janey Starling and Jade Hammond, published in the New Statesman, setting out the theoretical and evidential basis for the Dignity for Dead Women campaign. The piece argues that media reporting of domestic homicide is not merely a question of taste but of public health — that inaccurate, sensationalised coverage actively impedes societal understanding of coercive control and prevents the systemic change needed to save women's lives.
Level Up's formal submission to IPSO's 2023 Editor's Code Committee review, endorsed by the domestic abuse sector as a whole, calling for a specific sub-clause to be added to Clause 4 of the Editor's Code of Practice. The submission draws on Level Up's families research, the AIDA framework, and five years of campaign evidence to make the legal and ethical case for binding regulatory standards on reporting fatal domestic abuse. Accompanied by a petition of 26,703 signatures delivered to IPSO headquarters in March 2023.
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