ALLAN THE GENDERED REALITIES OF JOURNALISM

145-170 H7
Gendered inequalities are still with us. Female journalists are invading the
sanctity of the newsroom: today is still a predominantly male domain of work, the
values are largely shaped by patriarchal norms, values and traditions.
Woman are denied an equal place at the reporters table. They get to present the
Society or soft news, as men get to present hard news. It would not be until
1960 that BBC would regularly feature a female newsreader. The situation of
woman being not thought of the conveyor of truth and authority, would improve
very slowly as the norms of televisual news were being consolidated
institutionally, but today news is predominately presented by men.
Feminist critiques of objectivity
Why is it usually the case that these journalists instinctive judgements about the
credibility or expertise of news sources lead to such a small portion of the
accessed voices of women? To what extent do male journalists regard their
female colleagues as deviating from these norms in their approaches to
validating objective truth claims?
Impartial reporter = being socialized into obeying certain rituals of naming,
describing and framing realities, even if objectivity is self-reflexively posited as an
ideal never to be entirely realized in practice?
Models of inquiry: points that show relationship between discourses of objectivity
and gender relations being politically charged (feminism):
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Neutrality position: Good reporting is gender-neutral reporting. There

should be systematized methods of gathering and processing concrete
facts dispassionately so as to ensure that news accounts are strictly
impartial.
Balance position: personal experience stands as the arbiter of truth. Use a
language of balance. (employ as many female as male journalists for
example)
Counter position: dichotomy between knower and known which is
untenable: facts cannot be separated out from their ideological and
gendered conditions of production. Woman as being outside the realm
what are proclaimed to be universally valid standards of reason, logic and
rationality. What counts as truth in a given instance is determined by who
has the power to define reality.

Male hegemony is contingent upon the displacement of counterhegemonic, namely feminist, discourses as being complicit in the
distortion or misrepresentation of objectivity. Feminine knowledge is to be
understood as being inferior to masculine truth. But the rules of
impartiality are constructed by masculinist assumptions about the social
world. Masculine discourses about reality are cursively privileged over
feminine ones. Then the appeal to objectivity becomes a defensive
strategy. Consequently, the journalists invocation of objectivity may be

analysed as an androcentric instance of definitional power to the extent

that it ex-nominates those truth claims which do not adhere to masculinist
assumptions about the social world.
Macho culture of newswork
The newsroom is a site of power when it comes to news discourse as an
engendered construction. There are still institutionalized inequalities, and
there are structural barriers to advancement. Masculinity is proposed as
ideas about what constitutes good journalism. Women are paid less for
the same work, daily journalism is dominated by men, the more
prestigious, the less women, women are presenting more the soft news.
Women reporters are often compelled to demonstrate they can be good
journalists, while still being real, truly feminine women. They are mostly
heard in the news as passive voices or as victims. Their gut feelings are
dismissed by male editors as subjective and biased.
Women also see the news differently: they are more people oriented than
issue orientated. Women place greater importance on seeing news in
context than in isolation and like to explain the consequences. Women,
some feminist argue, are more inclined than men to endorse informal,
non-hierarchical management structures and to support collectively based
decision-making processes.
Supermarket tabloids in the US representations of women almost
always reaffirm patriarchal definitions of femininity ( a threat to decent
folk). Women are at least present in tabloid news to a far greater extent
than they are in so called mainstream news discourse. The ways in which
Birds female respondents actively insert tabloid narratives into their lives
are directly linked to this affirmation of familial ideology. These tabloids
help female readers to feel better about themselves, to cope more
effectively with daily experiences of inequality.
Gender politics of representation
Stereotypes: Standardized mental pictures which provide sexist
judgements about women such that their subordinate status within a
male-dominated society is symbolically reinforced. A journalists
deployment of these stereotypes, are contributing to ideological
reproduction of patriarchal social relations. An example is the Suns Page
Three, which shapes a patriarchal definition of femininity.
While women undergo constant changes in alignment with the diverse
pressures brought to bear upon them, they will remain hierarchically
grounded in conditions of dominance so long as patriarchal truth-claims
are deemed to correspond with the real world. This is seen in codified
practices, in which women are regularly depicted as passive and
sexualized agents to be defined in relation to an active male news actor.

News/the macho culture is now undergoing feminization. More now called

soft news becomes on the hard news agenda.
(En)gendering violence in the news
Rape: Vamp vs Virgin version.
The vamp : The woman drove the man to such extremes of lust that he
was compelled to commit the crime (blames the victim)
The virgin: the man, a depraved and perverted monster sullied the
innocent victim. (the idea that woman only can be one of two extremes)
Four sets of issues which the authors consider to be salient:
Soorhill & Walbe : four sets of issues which are salient in reporting sex
crimes:
1. Seeking the sensational: interest in a case only if there is scope
for the construction of a sex fiend who continues to wreak havoc
on a community.
2. Cascade effect: deliberate use of distortion an exaggeration in
order to maintain the momentum for public attention.
3. Embracing a narrow definition of sex crime: only a small number
of cases receive sustained coverage. The only real rape or
sexual assault is committed by a stranger and only the most
notorious criminals receive coverage.
4. Information and explanation: Efforts to look beyond specific
events to address the larger social context within sex crimes take
place are minimal.
These crimes are described as ordinary, through which sexual violence
seems natural in modern society. Which it is not.