|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Whose News? The Media and Women’s
Issues The media is supposed to report the happenings in society and transmit an impartial picture to the people. But sometimes the media takes over the role of reporting, scrutinising and deciding the events by giving its opinion about the role of the people involved. The opinions given regarding general public-related issues are required, but the opinions about actual issues can, at times, become like a trial by the media and hold a person guilty before a verdict by the court. It can build public opinion against or for a person before he or she is actually held guilty by the court. Though television and the Internet have succeeded in bringing news to our homes, the print media has its unique readership. The printed word has a unique attraction as the newspaper opens door to the world around us by presenting minute details of various incidents. This information becomes a topic of discussion in homes as well as at workplaces. Thus, our attitude towards the society and the system is formed. This book that became an international classic in 1994 has scrutinised the role of the media in covering gender issues. Human rights are important in a civilised society. However, when it comes to the weaker sections like women, children, Dalits and other vulnerable groups, their rights are usually violated. It is here that issues arise. And when women, the comparatively weaker section of society, are involved, the issue is distorted. "Nor are gender-related concerns considered good copy. When such questions do draw the attention of the media, they are often sensationalised, trivialised or otherwise distorted. In a nutshell, their coverage can be summed up as a series of hits and misses." Ammu Joseph and Kalpana Sharma start their discussion with this statement. Though the media is known as the Fourth Estate and is the eyes and ears of the people, it is this book that reads between the lines. It studies consistently over a period of time (10 years) as to how women’s issues have been covered. For this, the authors selected five issues related to women and observed how the prominent newspapers and magazines have covered them. The issues are dowry-related violence, rape, sex selection, Muslim women’s legal rights with special reference to the Shah Bano case and the practice of sati. The authors have linked the media with the women’s movement. Their plea is that women’s grievances are not highlighted in the right spirit. It is when one reads the book that one realises that the media has yet to evolve some ethics while covering gender-related news. For example, it took the women’s groups to highlight domestic violence. It was only after them that the media took up the issue and then wrote about it as a juicy piece of gossip. "A housewife commits suicide after quarrel over bonus money," screams the headlines of a newspaper. An insensitive headline that indirectly blamed the woman for her own death! Each journalist had his or her own version. None cared to probe further and none was sensitive enough to probe and come up with the true picture. Similarly in the Shah Bano case, a leading journalist wrote for different newspapers. While in one newspaper, he wrote about the pressure from the fundamentalists on Shah Bano to refuse the maintenance awarded by the court from her ex-husband, in another daily he wrote as to how the wife of Shah Bano’s younger son had been beaten up by her husband and her mother-in-law. Why was the writer trying to correlate two issues? Why did the newspapers try to muddle the issue? The media, at times, fails to reflect and ponder on the real issues. The book proves that the media is yet to take up its role seriously. The journalists need to have their head firmly on their shoulders, and need to be thinkers too.
|
