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The first national workshop for women in journalism
New
Delhi, January 28-30, 2002
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The
three-day first national workshop for Indian women
in journalism concluded in New Delhi on Wednesday,
January 30, 2002. An average of 100 women journalists
participated in the workshop, including approximately
60 from 16 cities / centres in 14 states. Among
the participants were journalists working in at
least a dozen languages. The workshop was facilitated
by Voices, a Bangalore -based NGO, and supported
by UNESCO.
The inaugural session on January 28 -- chaired
by Nirmala Lakshman, joint editor, The Hindu,
and presided over by Abdul W Khan, assistant director
general, UNESCO -- featured reports on the year-long
process leading up to the national workshop, including
summaries of the activities and experiences of
local collectives of women journalists formed
in a number of places across the country in the
wake of three regional workshops covering the
south and west (Bangalore, November 2000), the
north and east (Jaipur, April 2001) and the northeast
and east (Shillong, September 2001).
A
presentation showcasing preliminary quantitative
data from a pilot survey on women in journalism
provided a glimpse of the situation of women in
the profession across the country. The two thought-provoking
and inspiring keynote addresses -- by Aruna Roy,
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (on the Right to
Information and the Media) and Dr Krishna Kumar,
Delhi University (on Education and the Media)
-- helped set the tone for the entire workshop.
 The
afternoon of the first day saw participants breaking
up into groups to discuss issues of particular
concern to women in the media, which were identified
during the regional workshops. Among them were
issues relating to employment, working conditions,
work assignments, harassment, and freelancing
/ stringing. The main points that emerged from
these parallel group discussions were presented
to and further discussed in the plenary the next
morning.
A
music performance featuring thumris by
the well-known Hindustani vocalist, Vidya Rao,
rounded up day one of the workshop. A panel discussion
on key issues confronting the media, was chaired
by Seema Mustafa, political editor, The Asian
Age, during the pre-lunch session on January
29, the second day of the workshop. Subhashini
Sehgal Ali (All India Democratic Women's Association)
spoke on Globalisation, Gender and the Media;
Anuradha M Chenoy (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
on Militarisation, Gender and the Media; and Tanika
Sarkar (JNU) on Communalisation, Gender and the
Media.
 Each
of their interesting and informative presentations
was followed by lively discussions. In the post-lunch
session, participants again formed groups to discuss
issues of concern relating to the media vis-a-vis
its role in society (which had also emerged from
the regional workshops).
Among these were: economic liberalisation / globalisation
and the media, the special challenges before small
and medium-sized media establishments and sections
of the language press, emerging priorities and
preoccupations in media coverage, journalistic
ethics and standards, and trends in the portrayal
of women and coverage of gender issues in the
media.
The
outcomes of these group discussions were also
subsequently reported back to and discussed in
the plenary. A new documentary film (Hashiye
Par Zindagi / Life on the Margin) -- produced
by the Violence Mitigation and Amelioration Project,
directed by Arun Kumar, and focussing on the widows
of political massacres in Bihar -- was specially
screened for interested participants on Tuesday
evening.
The
extraordinarily long second day of the workshop
continued with a pre-dinner panel discussion on
Women Covering Conflict, chaired by Harish Khare,
deputy editor, The Hindu. Among the speakers
who helped spark off discussions were Jill McGivering
(BBC), Catherine Philip (The Times, UK),
Padma Rao (Der Spiegel), Aasha Khosa (The
Indian Express) and Barkha Dutt (NDTV). Since
a number of participants had also covered conflicts
of different kinds in different parts of the country
over the years, an animated discussion followed
their opening remarks.
The
special dinner afterwards helped partially revive
participants who had by then been on the go for
nearly 12 hours! In any case, judging by their
voluble, indeed vociferous, participation in the
discussions on networking the next morning, they
were none the worse for the wear! Two sub-committees
had been formed on the first day of the workshop
to begin discussions on the proposed national
network (the idea of which had been unanimously
endorsed during the regional workshops) and the
desirability / feasibility of a website for the
network (which was established through a questionnaire
distributed to workshop participants).
The
convenors of these made brief presentations during
the morning session on January 30, the third and
final day. What followed was an extraordinary,
clamorous session during which everything -- including
the name, structure, fundamental principles and
aims and objectives of the network (and each word
of each of these!) -- was hotly debated until
some level of consensus was achieved.
A
participant's suggestion that the workshop could
not conclude without issuing a statement based
on the discussions that had taken place over the
three days was accepted and another sub-committee
was formed to draft such a statement over lunch.
Other participants met over lunch in geographically-defined
groups to select coordinators from each centre
as well as one representative from each region
to serve as the core group / coordinators of the
network for a year.
The post-lunch session witnessed more spirited
debate -- this time on the draft statement (see
Charter). But, in the
end, decisions were taken that obviously had the
concurrence of most, if not all, the participants:
- The
network was to be known as the Network of Women
in Media - India (NWMI).
-
It was to function as an informal, non-hierarchical
organisation linked up with independent local
collectives through coordinators (one for each
centre where local groups exist, with the understanding
that more centres and coordinators would join
in due course) and a core group of five persons
representing the five regions (northeast, east,
south, west and north).
-
This arrangement would be reviewed after a year
and further decisions on the structure, mode
of functioning, etc., would be based on the
experiences of the interim period.
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In
The Line of Fire
The Indian
Express, February 10, 2002
Will the Network of Women in the Media
change anything at all, asks Jyoti Punwani
- "I
wasn't paid for three months. When I asked
my editor, he said 'the municipal elections
are due, you will be getting money from
the candidates anyway.'"
-
"Can we call those stringers bichari
who sleep with the editor and then decide
who gets hired and fired?"
- "'Soft'
stories are actually those which require
the hardest work, whereas 'hard' political
stories require the least."
- "The
entire Manipuri press closed down for
a week, and not a word appeared in the
so-called national press."
- "No
rural reporting -- a written directive
saying this was sent to the newsroom."
- "When
Delhi was paralysed with workers blocking
the streets, not one paper thought fit
to send a reporter to talk to the workers.
They remained a faceless mass inconveniencing
the lives of the middle class."
Does
a forum exist for media professionals to
discuss such issues? Working conditions
and sexual harassment, professional ethics
and current trends in the media? Well, it
just got formed. Last week, more than 100
mediawomen from 16 states got together in
Delhi to launch the Network of Women in
the Media, India (NWMI). The three-day workshop
initiated by a group of concerned women
journalists, facilitated by the Bangalore-based
NGO Voices and supported by UNESCO, saw
women debating not just issues concerning
them as female media professionals, but
also issues concerning the current state
of the media as a whole.
It's
not just women journalists who don't get
paid for months, be it in AP or Bihar, or
who face the brunt of militants and the
army in the North East. But there exists
no forum for journalists to raise these
concerns, let alone try and do something
about them. Journalists' unions are weak,
as they are in all sectors these days, and
press clubs are nothing more than drinking
joints where occasionally a good press conference
is organised.
A
case in point is the large turnout of both
male and female journalists at the only
panel discussion in Mumbai on the media's
coverage of the Afghan War last year, which
was organised by the informal women's journalists
group there. The coverage of Kargil and
the current war hysteria in the media came
up more than once in the Delhi workshop,
with one participant from Bihar criticising
both as a 'celebration of war', specially
on TV, with minimum coverage given to its
consequences, not just in terms of casualties,
but also for civilians, for example, the
displacement of villagers on the border.
Significantly,
this 'celebration' was being done by both
male and female reporters, though there
was consensus that women generally covered
conflict far differently from men. For one,
they talked to women, which few men did;
this gave their reports a different perspective.
For another, the human story interested
them more than how many got killed. A perfect
example was the coverage in this paper of
the recent riots in Malegaon.
In
the extensive coverage of all aspects of
the riots, it was the female reporter who
met every one of the families of those killed
in the police firing. Their accounts brought
out both the tragic pointlessness of the
violence and the indiscriminate nature of
the firing. In traditional journalist terms,
she would have been described as doing the
'soft' riot story. The sexist division between
'soft' and 'hard' stories was a recurring
theme in the workshop.
It
was a two-edged sword: women resented not
being automatically assigned the 'hard'
political stories the way men were. Perhaps
never would a male reporter -- not even
a trainee -- be sent to cover a 'rose show',
just the same way that a photograph of such
a show would never show a male looking at
the roses. At the same time, women pointed
out that many of the so-called 'soft' stories
that were looked down upon, for eg, the
human interest stories, the environment
/ health / education beats assigned to them,
required more legwork, for one had to visit
the site and speak to a number of people,
while political stories often originated
from routine encounters with politicians.
The
complexity arose when it became clear that
despite this caste system (which existed
everywhere, including the bureaucracy, as
Magsaysay Award winner Aruna Roy said in
her inaugural address), many women who took
their profession seriously, chose the 'soft'
beats. Cabinet reshuffles or Mantralaya
intrigues just didn't interest them as much
as starving tribals in Melghat or the unchanging
criteria by which poverty lines continue
to be calculated.
The
shrinking space for such 'soft' stories
was a great cause for concern, seen as a
result of increasing commercialisation of
the media. (again, to quote Aruna Roy, 70
per cent of India occupied barely any space
in the press). At the same time, other 'soft'
stories: eg, Page 3 glamour stuff, was occupying
more and more space. The fallout of this
extended to working conditions: female TV
journalists complained that they were asked
to look 'presentable' before being sent
on an assignment, while if they happened
to be good-looking, they simply didn't get
sent, but instead were made the anchor /
newsreader.
If
this sounds like 'you can't please women,
whatever you do', take a look at their working
conditions, specially in the Indian language
press: no salaries for months, no separate
toilets, no night shifts because of hostel
timings (which meant no promotions), sexual
propositions from the boss just when promotions
are due, pay day becoming 'Terror Day' because
of the drunken orgies by male colleagues
(this stopped when more women were employed
in that particular paper), daily wages with
no weekly offs for TV reporters.
So
is the NWM going to change all this? Primarily,
it will fulfill the need to reach out and
end the isolation many mediawomen, specially
those outside the main metropolitan media
centres, spoke about to freelance journalist
Ammu Joseph when she wrote her book Women
in Journalism - Making News, (The Media
Foundation/Konark Publishers, 2000). The
book was the catalyst for the three regional
workshops of mediawomen held over the last
year in Bangalore, Jaipur and Shillong.
The
Delhi meet was the culmination of these.
Already, the informal collectives set up
over the last year after these workshops,
have made a difference. Kerala mediawomen
reported their higher visibility now in
the Kerala Union of Working Journalists
after they discovered that the state level
committee had not a single woman member.
But the NWM will not replace existing journalists'
unions.
Women
hope that it will act as a support group
for victimised mediawomen as well as a pressure
group on existing institutions, which are
supposed to protect women's rights but rarely
do. The small but important achievements
made by the informal collectives show the
direction which the NWM will have to take
-- and avoid. In some states, the workshops
provoked a severe backlash against the participants
because their proceedings were reported
extensively in the main newspapers; in others,
the gap between the English and the Indian
language journalists gradually reduced.
The
most significant gain perhaps was the end
of the isolation of NE mediawomen. Incidentally,
their experiences revealed not only the
peculiar problems faced by the media in
an insurgency-riven region, but also that
men and women there not only faced the same
problems but also supported one another.
Will that ever happen all over India?
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Our
centres
(2002-07) |
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Ahmedabad
i) Malti Mehta, Producer, Educational Multi
Media Research
Centre & Head, Centre for Development
Communication: maltimehta@yahoo.com
ii) Dr.Rupa Mehta, Programme Executive,
Doordarshan Ahmedabad:
rupamehta41@hotmail.com
Bangalore
i) Dipti Nair, Incharge-, Sunday Herald,
Deccan Herald: diptidavenair1@hotmail.com
2. Vasanthi Hariprakash, Radio Anchor with
Radio City 91.1 FM: vasti_em@hotmail.com,
Bengal
i) Ananya Chatterjee-Chakravarty, filmmaker
and journalism faculty: cinemawoman2004@yahoo.co.in
ii) Manjira Mazumdar, independent journalist:
manjiramajumdar@yahoo.com
Delhi
i) Sonal Kellogg, Special Correspondent,
Asian Age: kelloggsonal@yahoo.co.in
ii)Parul Sharma, Chief Sub-editor, Jansatta:
parul.delhi@gmail.com
Hyderabad
i) R Akhileswari, Spl Correspondent, Deccan
Herald, r_akhileshwari@rediffmail.com
ii) Gayathri, Communications Consultant,
geyapandalaneni@rdiffmail.com
Kerala
i) Renu Ramnath, Reporter, The Hindu, Kochi:
renuramanath@hotmail.com
ii) R Parvathi Devi, Co-ordinator, Journalism
Institute, Trivandrum Press Club: rparvathidevi@yahoo.com
Mumbai
i) Anindita Ramaswamy, Independent journalist:
aninditaramaswamy@yahoo.com,
ii) Meena Menon, Spl Correspondent, The
Hindu: meenamenon@gmail.com,
North East
i) Manipur: Anjulika Thingnam, Freelance:
thingnam@yahoo.com
ii) Meghalaya: Linda Chhakchhuak, Grassroots:
lindachhakchhuak@yahoo.co.in
iii) Assam: Teresa Rehman, Principal Correspondent,
Tehelka: teresa_rehman@yahoo.co.in
Orissa
i) Manipadma Jena, independent development
journalist and communications consultant
(manipadmajena2001@yahoo.co.in )
ii) Sanghamitra Pradhan, News Editor, Hindustan
Samachar: (sanghamitrapradhan@gmail.com
)
Pune
i) Sandhya Taksale, Asst Editor, Saptahik
Sakal: sandhyataksale@yahoo.co.in
ii) Manaswini Prabhune, Freelance: manaswini_prabhune@yahoo.com
Additional Co-ordinator:
Ammu Joseph, Independent Journalist, Bangalore:
ammujo2003@yahoo.co.in
Additonal Co-ordinator: Laxmi Murthy,
Associate Editor, Himal Southasian: l_murthy@yahoo.com
The
NWMI is open to centres being formed in
other cities across the country.
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