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Mass
media are a constant and powerful presence in
our everyday lives. From radio to newspapers and
from television to the Internet, we spend more
of our leisure time worldwide watching, listening
to, reading and using mass media than any other
activity.
The
news media are particularly powerful because they
are our principal source of information about
what is happening in the world, yet they do not
simply offer a “window on the world.”
They routinely decide what information we should
receive, what news we should watch, hear and read.
In doing so, the news media influence our beliefs,
attitudes and standards, so that our idea of who
we and others are, as female and male, is influenced
by media messages.
First
conducted in 1995 and then again in 2000 and 2005,
the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) maps
the representation of women and men in news media
worldwide. GMMP is the most extensive global research
into gender in news media ever undertaken.
On 16th February 2005 hundreds of women and men
in 76 countries around the world participated
in the third ever GMMP. They monitored almost
13,000 news items on television, radio and in
newspapers. GMMP 2005 is co-ordinated by WACC,
an international non-governmental organization
which promotes communication for social change,
in collaboration with Margaret Gallagher, consultant
for the project, and the data analyst, Media Monitoring
Project (MMP), South Africa.
The
data for GMMP 2005 were collected through the
amazing voluntary effort
of hundreds of individuals and organisations —
including gender and media
activists, grassroots communication groups, academics
and students of
communication, media professionals, journalists’
associations, alternative media networks and church
groups.
The data in “Who Makes the News” —
the report of the GMMP 05, released in London
on 15 February 2006 — was collected on 16
February 2005. It represents a one-day snapshot
of the representation of women and men in news
media worldwide. This data is supported by the
results of GMMP 1995 and 2000 and numerous other
regional and national studies conducted over the
last 30 years.
The
following summary outlines the key findings of
the full report which can be found at http://www.whomakesthenews.org/...
Reporters
and presenters
News
is still mainly reported and presented by men.
The only exception is among television presenters.
57 per cent of television news stories are presented
by women. Elsewhere women are a minority. This
imbalance is most evident in newspapers where
only 29 per cent of newspaper items are written
by female reporters.
Female
reporters are more likely to cover ‘soft’
news.
Men tend to cover the ‘hard’ topics
— news that is perceived as ‘serious’.
Only 32 per cent of stories on politics and government
are reported on by female
journalists as compared with 40 per cent of stories
on social issues such as
education or family relations.
More
female news subjects are found in stories reported
on by female journalists. In stories
reported by women, 25 per cent of news subjects
are women as compared with 20 per cent of news
subjects in stories reported by men.
News
subjects
Women’s views and voices are marginalised
in the world’s news media. Women
constitute 52 per cent of the world’s population
yet make
up only 21 percent of people featured in the news.
Women are most underrepresented in radio where
they are only 17 per cent of news subjects as
compared with 22 per cent in television and 21
per cent in newspapers.
Men’s voices dominate in hard news.
Men are the majority of news subjects in all story
topics. Even when women do feature in the news,
they are more likely to be found in ‘soft’
stories such as celebrity and arts
where they make up 28 per cent of news subjects
and least likely
to be found in ‘hard’ news stories
about politics and government (14 per cent) and
the economy (20 per cent).
Men dominate as spokespersons and experts.
86 per cent of all people featured in new stories
as spokespeople are men. Men also make up 83 per
cent of all experts. Women are much less likely
to be considered experts in media coverage. Instead
they are more often present as voices expressing
personal experience (31 per cent) or popular opinion
(34 per cent).
Women are more than twice as likely to be portrayed
as victims than men. Female and male
victims are common currency in news programmes.
However, women are disproportionately represented
in this way with 19 per cent of women portrayed
as victims compared with 8 per cent of men.
News content
Women are very unlikely to be the central
focus of a story. Only 10 per cent of
news stories worldwide have women as a central
focus. The
proportion of these stories varies widely across
different topics. Women
are central to the news story in 17 per cent of
‘soft’ topics such as celebrity news,
sports or social issues. Only 3 per cent of stories
on economics and 8 per cent of stories on politics
and government have women as a central focus.
News
stories are more likely to reinforce than challenge
gender stereotypes. Only 3 per cent of
stories challenge stereotypes compared with 6
per cent of stories that reinforce gender stereotypes.
More generally though, news content reinforces
gender stereotypes by depicting a world in
which women are relatively invisible.
Gender (in)equality is not considered
newsworthy. 96 per cent of news stories
worldwide do not highlight issues of gender equality
or inequality. The stories that do highlight gender
equality or inequality make up only 4 per cent
of news stories.
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