This article examines the reporting of rape trials in six newspapers for six selected years between 1951 and 1992. Newspapers included in the study were Daily Mirror, The Times, News of the World, Sunday People and (London) Evening Standard. Results of the examination reveal that a much lower proportion of rape trials has been reported in these newspapers in the early 1990s than formerly. The amount of reportage devoted to sex-related offenses in the British press, however, appears to have increased particularly in areas such as reporting sex crimes from abroad and sexual harassment cases adjudicated by industrial tribunals. The effect of The Sexual Offenses (Amendment) Act 1976, which banned the media from publishing the name of the raped woman in a court case and prohibited the courts from inquiring into her previous sexual history except at the discretion of the judge, is offered as a possible partial explanation for the decline in rape reporting. Tables, references