Women and Children issues under represented in the media

Sep 20, 2010 News

– Report

On Wednesday last, Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Priya Manikchand launched a report on a study commissioned to examine coverage of women’s and children’s issues in the media between 2008 and 2009. The report which is a collaborative effort between the Ministry and UNICEF, was authored by Dr. Paloma Mohamed.
“In Guyana, women and children make up about 85 percent of the total population of the country. Yet women and children are consistently under-represented in almost every axis of power in social life in Guyana. Representation of women’s and children’s issues in the media is no exception.”
The study looked at more than 2000 newspapers between June 2007 and September 2009. The content of the four dailies, the Guyana Times having been included from its inception in June 2008, was coded under three themes: general coverage of women and children in the media in Guyana, specific images of women and specific images of children. The data set was enlarged with the inclusion of electronic media in the form of TV newscasts such as NCN, Capitol News, VCT Evening News and Prime News from July 2009.

Dr. Paloma Mohamed, author of the Media Trends Report

According to the report, ‘Stories of Guyanese women and children together accounted for only 2.9 percent of all stories in the media for 2008 and 2009. Women’s issues were covered five times more than those of children in the press and 3.5 times more on the television newscasts surveyed. Coverage of women’s issues was higher on the television than in the press.’ In Dr. Mohamed’s analysis of the data, she notes that over 1,000 advertisements coded during July to September 2009 on four television newscasts included women.
The report says “In the Print Media it was observed that there was a noted rise in sensational news about women and the reporting of identifying information about women. Also significant was the rise in stories about women in leadership positions as well as placement of women’s stories on prominent pages such as the front, third, center and back pages of the newspapers.”
It was stated that “about six percent of all stories written about children in the press between 2008 and 2009 used some form of identification. This would have included the child’s age (0.2 percent), gender (1.7 percent, group or school (1.0 percent), name (1.4 percent) and other forms of identification such as address (1.3 percent).” The report also went on to say “that the use of photographs of children in news stories has risen significantly between 2008 and 2009. The pervading portrayal of Guyanese children in the media over the last two years would have been that of victim or victimiser.”
The report also addressed specifics of the newspaper coverage of women’s and children’s issues. It was pointed out that ‘In terms of individual media coverage, Stabroek News and the Guyana Times have been the most consistent and have cumulatively carried the highest coverage on almost all categories of children coded. It must however be noted that Kaieteur News in the first quarter and to some extent in the second quarter of 2008 had published close to as many and sometimes more children centered stories than Stabroek or Chronicle.’
In her analysis of the results of the study, Dr. Mohamed writes, “The data indicates that stories of women and children as both victims and perpetrators of violence and crime have also risen.”
She posits that perhaps those reports indicate “some concern for women and children” but then goes on to say that the ‘sensational nature’ of the reportage tends to create other and perhaps unintended effects. She pointed out that there are several issues inherent in such reporting: providing too much detail and graphic images of how crimes were perpetuated and a public chronicling of the victims’ pain and suffering which does not take into consideration the rights and well being of the victims, be they women or children. The third issue she noted was that ‘the lack of follow up on apprehension and punishment for perpetrators creates a fallacious perception that these things can be done to women and children and nothing happens as a consequence.’
In her analysis, Dr. Mohamed also notes that ‘In the case of children and young people below the ages of 18 we see less than one percent of them in the media. Children and young people are less than one percent of producers of mainstream media.’ Dr. Mohamed points out that the absence of child-sensitive coverage and reporting does two things: it alienates children which, ‘robs society of a rich and important perspective from an important section of its population.’ The other effect, she notes, is the creation of feelings of anxiety, insecurity and fear in other children who may be observing via reports since media coverage tends to objectify and victimise specific children.
She closes her analysis of the data as a whole by saying, “Another consideration for why women and children may not be proportionately represented in media coverage may be located in the editors’, owners’ and journalists’ definition of what is news and what is newsworthy, their orientation towards and knowledge of social issues, their access to information about these subjects and their personal conscientiousness. All of this is impinged upon by the structural realities of the country and the industry which has one of the highest turnover rates in Guyana.’