Lucile Laugerette

Media organizations increasingly adopt editorial standards to govern coverage of sensitive topics, yet their effectiveness as policy instruments remains unexamined. This paper evaluates newsroom guidelines designed to improve reporting on gender-based violence in France. Between 2018 and 2025, I document the staggered adoption of editorial guidelines across 42 local newspapers, which simultaneously discourage euphemistic terminology, mandate legally precise language, and often require provision of emergency resources. Combining exhaustive femicide event records with article-level text analysis and departmental helpline and petition data, I estimate effects on both coverage patterns and victim help-seeking behavior. Event-study estimates reveal that guideline adoption reduces passion-framed articles by 79% and increases legally precise terminology by 87%, with no reduction in coverage volume. These reporting shifts translate into measurable behavioral responses: departments with greater circulation of compliant coverage are associated with higher calls to the national domestic violence helpline. These findings suggest that editorial guidelines are a scalable and low-cost policy instrument through which media organizations can reshape narratives around gender-based violence.