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Summit
calls for greater media diversity
Gender Links
September 11, 2006
http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article.php?a_id=609
Johannesburg
- The second Gender and Media summit closed in Johannesburg Friday
with a call for greater media diversity in all areas - ownership,
content and audiences.
Democracy, good
for business" the summit highlighted a number of ways in which
the media is failing in one of its core functions - giving voice
to the voiceless.
The summit,
convened by Gender Links (GL), the Media Institute of Southern Africa
(MISA), and the Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) Network
brought together 224 media practitioners, editors, media marketing
executives, as well as gender activists. The two day programme featured
81 examples of good practice in diversifying sources, markets and
ownership of the media.
These case studies
included submissions to the Gender and Media Awards that attracted
187 entries in twelve categories. Winning pieces ranged from an
article on challenges women face in accessing credit to a beauty
queen who finds out she is HIV positive.
A key note presentation
by Indian media expert Ammu Joseph underscored the extent to which
globalisation has concentrated media ownership and the dissemination
of news in a few hands, and exacerbated the tendency to portray
women as sex objects rather than holistic beings.
Several new
pieces of research came under the spotlight at the summit. The Global
Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) launched in March this year found
that across the globe women constitute 21 percent of news sources
(19 percent in Southern Africa). The HIV and AIDS and Gender Baseline
Study launched on World Press Freedom Day on 3 May showed that HIV
and AIDS constitutes less than four percent of media coverage and
that People with HIV constitute less than three percent of sources
on the topic.
The Malawi Broadcasting
Corporation, Kaya FM, the Times of Zambia, Mauritius Broadcasting
Corporation and Defi Plus from Mauritius gave case studies of how
they have developed HIV and AIDS and Gender policies as part of
the Media Action Plan on HIV AIDS and Gender coordinated by the
Southern African Editors Forum (SAEF). The Times of Zambia reported
that the death rate among staff as a result of AIDS-related illness
dropped from 7 (out of 270 employees) in 2004 to two in 2005 after
the policy (that includes providing ARV treatment) had been adopted.
With a strong
emphasis on media marketing, the summit show cased the 13-country
Gender and Media Audience Study (GMAS) that shows that women and
men across the region would like to see women portrayed in a more
diverse range of roles; that the kind of topics that interest women
most (like education, HIV and AIDS and social issues) get short
shrift in the news; and that women and men would like more local,
human interest and positive news stories.
Media houses
in Mauritius, Namibia and Malawi that have run the audience survey
for themselves urged that more media marketing departments should
start to actively seek feedback from their audiences. They emphasised
that media audiences in the region need to be better educated about
their rights as media consumers. Gender Links has piloted a gender
and media literacy course for the public that is now being rolled
out in the region through networks like GEMSA, MISA and the Zimbabwe
Women’s Resource Centre Network.
A key recommendation
of the summit is the establishment of a Gender and Media Diversity
Centre that will coordinate knowledge sharing and information, based
on a feasibility study commissioned by GL. Other action points identified
include:
Research
and monitoring
- Do research
on why women aren’t forthcoming as sources; build the capacity
of women to be more confident in their dealings with the media.
- Development
of resource directories for journalists.
- Extend gender
and media monitoring to areas such as soap operas and advertising.
Policies
- Launch HIV
and AIDS and Gender policies being developed by about 80 media
houses across the region as part of the Media Action Plan on HIV
and AIDS on 1 December, World AIDS Day.
- In collaboration
with UNAIDS, accredit media houses that have developed policies
and journalists who undergo training on HIV and AIDS.
- Ensure that
media NGOs also develop HIV and AIDS and gender policies before
the next summit in two years time.
- Develop
editorial codes of good practice on images.
- To do a
baseline survey on the current status of ICT policies and their
gender responsiveness in all 13 countries in the SADC region;
use this to ensure that gender considerations are mainstreamed
in ICT policies.
Media
ownership and management
- Provide
training in management and financial negotiation for women in
media.
- Investigate
the reason for ‘drop-out’ of women journalists at middle-management.
- Conduct
a study of emerging media enterprise models, and particular barriers
faced by women in becoming media owners.
Audiences
- Devise simple
tools for the media to inter act more with its audiences, including
simple audience questionnaires that can be administered by E Mai,
SMS, poll questions on web-sites and questions on radio talk shows;
encourage women to participate in these.
- Increase
gender and media literacy in the SADC region; particularly people
in the rural areas with a special focus on audio/radio literacy.
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