TV news channels revive media interest in dowry harassment

IN Media Practice | 01/01/1900

Dowry was out of the news for a long time until Nisha Sharma and TV channels revived the media’s interest in covering the issue.

Hindi papers, on the other hand, fared better in the number of cases they reported -- in a sample of 14 papers of that period--- 7 cases of dowry had been reported -- i.e.a case every other day. The reports again were sketchy. It was as if the torturing a woman for dowry to the extent that she is forced to leave her house, commit suicide or even be murdered did not merit a bigger story.

And suddenly some weeks ago after Nisha Sharma spurned a greedy groom, her photos and story hit the front page in India and abroad and continue to merit the headlines even weeks later. Cases of other women who refused to tie the knot with greedy grooms were also highlighted and the issue of dowry was once again a topic of debate and discussion.

How did print suddenly wake up? We have to thank our 24-hour newly launched and re-launched news channels for this.  The manner in which they captured the bold  young girl against the dowry goodies as background, the abandoned pandal where the jai-mala was to take place captured mass interest. Though print could not capture the drama or give hourly updates of which celebrities  visited Sharma, it could not afford to ignore the story.  Farzana, a burkha-clad girl from a lower middle class family in the walled city and her parents were actually featured in our celebrity-obsessed news dailies, and now with unfailing regularity the issue of dowry is getting many more column inches.

Around the same time, the channels were also capturing the story of Latha`s missing new born baby in Hyderabad. The manner in which the mother was pining for her baby, the hospital authorities who were trying to foist an abandoned baby girl on her and the efforts of the police in trying to trace her baby had all elements of human drama and real life mystery. Many babies go missing and are swapped at hospitals and but never ever earlier has such a case been covered in the detail it was this time by the press. And again it is thanks to television that this issue was highlighted. 

Extracts from the  main study

Women in Print

Aims:

• Examine the space women get in newspapers
• When do women make news?
• Who are the women who appear in photos and in print?
• Is the coverage biased?
• To see the quantitative change in terms of space allocated to women now and the qualitative change in coverage over the last 50 years.

Sample Base and Period:
In all 84 newspapers in Hindi and English were picked at random from different parts of the country to get a national `feel`. News columns, feature pages, edits, letters from readers, photos and illustrations were studied  over three time periods:  The early fifties which provides the baseline for the study.
The mid-seventies, a period when nationally and globally women’s issues started getting noticed;
and lastly the turn of the century 2000-01. 

MAIN FINDINGS:
Presence Inches Forward
Women`s presence in newspapers has been inching forward since the early 1950s. Then they did not have much of a presence and occupied on an average 3.6 per cent of news and feature space in English and 4.8 per cent in Hindi.  In one paper in the sample women had only 0.04 per cent space. Twenty years later the lowest was still 1.2 per cent and by the twenty first century, a paper could still be devoting less than 5 per cent of its space to articles and photos acknowledging women as members of the society. In fact, half of our sample papers of this period, had women occupying only ten per of total space.

Till the 1970s the increase in women`s presence in English papers averaged 1.3 per cent every ten years. The speed picked up subsequently to average 2.3 per cent in the 80s and 90s. This was largely due to the introduction of glossy supplements where women models, film stars and socialites appeared. Hindi papers mirrored a trend similar to the English papers.  But the appearance of women on their pages registers a slower growth in the 80s and 90s because they have been slower in introducing the glamour/leisure supplements. Women today get only about 13.2 per cent space in English newspapers and 11.1 per cent space in Hindi dailies. In the main section of the English papers women occupy a mere 10.3 per cent.

Graphs showing the average space devoted in newspapers to women

 

 

 

 

The Rise of the New Global Stereotype

There are more chances of seeing a stereotypical image of a woman now than in the 70s in both English and Hindi papers. Among the reasons: The 70s had a powerful iconic figure in Indira Gandhi; there was excitement about women entering in what had been male domains and these were being covered by the media. Women were being shown as participants in public life -- as voters, demonstrators, cadets, scientists.

But today the media has reinvented women as the Global Stereotype with perfect looks and a revealing figure. It uses her as a bait to get the reader to pick up the papers which once sold on the strength of their news coverage, edit pages and even classified advertisements.  A Mumbai paper had a photo of scantily dressed samba dancers performing in Japan on its cover page. A Hindi paper showed a Ms Chinese International crowned in Hong Kong on its cover while a leading daily from South India thought it fit to put a Miss Teen USA on its front page.
On the other hand here has been no let up in portraying women in their traditional roles -- as spouses, devotees, mourners, housekeepers or as passive onlookers. And in articles, women figure mostly as victims of crime. 

A Rise in the Reporting of Crime Cases

Over the decades there has been a distinct rise in reports on crime on women.  Articles on murder and murderous attacks on women went up four times over the last three decades. Of the 53 cases of murder, rape, ill-treatment of women, dowry and robbery that were reported in the 28 English papers of 2000-01, 21 of them, i.e. 40 per cent are mere briefs -- one to two para stories. Eleven others are just single column stories less than four paragraphs each. In effect, 60 per cent cases are dismissed summarily and the identity of the culprit is not given.

• Fifteen cases of rape and sexual violence were reported in our 2000-01 sample, up from just one case in the seventies when newspapers were shy of even mentioning the word `rape` but couched it in phrases like "outraging a woman`s modesty" or "assault". This failed to convey the seriousness of one of the worst crimes on woman. With the entry of women in journalism, the crime phraseology changed. However, many of the reported rape stories are still found wanting in the manner in which they are written.
• Suicide cases by women invariably make the one-para stories. There is little effort to find out what drove the woman to suicide.  For example, a Hyderabad-based paper carried a report of a 16-year-old who took poison and died. The report read: The victim resorted to the extreme step due to frustration. It does not state what the frustration was.
• Cases of marital dispute, ill-treatment by the family and at the workplace have started getting noticed by the media.  Terrorist attacks and instances of caste violence on women are new categories of crime that are being noticed.  Though crime makes up the bulk of stories on women, it gives only a partial picture.

What is Wrong with the Way Rape and Sexual Crime is Reported ?

• The papers show a strong urban bias in reporting rape. The rape of rural women or Dalit women is usually dismissed in a para. There is just no follow up of rape cases unless  a politician is involved. "Minor raped and murdered by cousin"  gets a two para slot on the bottom of the page in a Mumbai paper. A Kashmir paper gives a para again on the rape of a teenaged girl. A Dalit girl gang-raped in Alwar also gets a para in a leading national daily servicing northern India. The culprits are not named in any of the cases.
• The study showed that whenever a politician is involved in a rape case, the police takes it upon itself to paint the victim as a liar.  This practise was rarely questioned or commented on by the papers in our sample, except once, when the journalist drew the readers` attention to the facts of the case and the statements being put out by the police. The report stated that the police was under pressure as the rapist was connected to important politicians. The raped woman, who was handicapped, was made out to be `fickle` and called `a liar` by the police. The journalist reminded the readers that the medical examination of the girl had proved that she was raped. If the person she pointed out to be her rapist did not rape her as the police said, then who did?
• In another story, a senior IAS officer who held the post of the transport secretary, alleged sexual harassment by a former transport minister.  But the paper did not focus on the woman`s complaint against the minister. Instead the lead was that the man had moved court to quash the FIR registered against him.

A paper from Assam carried an item of how a man who had raped an 18-month old baby had his sentence commuted on the ground that he had two daughters who had to be married. The media did not seek the opinion of what women felt about the judgement. Didn`t women and other men think that the young girls were better off having a rapist father in prison and that having him at home was a risk to them and spoilt their chances of marriage? The shocking judgement was buried on an inside page. If the media was gender sensitive, it would have got an important slot on the Front page. The paper also kept mum --no comments or an edit on such a senile judgement.

Shree Venkatram runs a feature agency Unnati that focuses on development news. For more information on  the study contact:   unnati@vsnl.com