„Mission Possible‟: A Gender and Media Advocacy Toolkit Table of Contents Page Introduction Section One Putting Gender on the Media‟s Agenda Chapter One Why Focus on the Media Chapter Two Why is Gender an Issue for the Media? Chapter Three What is Gender and Media Advocacy? Chapter Four Who Makes the news? Issues for Gender and Media Advocacy Chapter Five Who are the Target Audiences for Gender and Media Advocacy? Section One Appendix Glossary Key Points to Remember Gender, Media International Obligations Section Two Building Gender and Media Campaigns Chapter One Where to Begin? Chapter Two Do your Homework! Chapter Three Creating the Right Message for the Right Audience Chapter Four Transforming the Media through Policy Chapter Five Getting the Issue on the Media‟s Agenda 2 Chapter Six Keeping Track of Advocacy Work Section Two Appendix Glossary Key Points to Remember Advocacy Planning Tool Gender and Media Checklists Qualitative Monitoring Questions International Dates for Advocacy List of Resources 3 Introduction - A New Agenda for Who Makes the News? “We were in uncharted territory. And taking on the Jamaican media was close to being a “Mission: Impossible”. But what needed to be done was clear every time Jamaican women switched on their television sets, read newspapers or listened to the radio.” 1 Women‟s Media Watch Jamaica began in 1987 with only six volunteers. Its mission: to improve the representation of women in the media as one way of reducing violence against women.2 Improving how women are seen, heard and listened to in the media continues to shape the organization‟s work more than 15 years later. Its arsenal of activities include public education workshops, media monitoring and lobbying campaigns, research, as well as the production of audio-visual materials and teaching aids. Taking on the media has become a mission not only for Women‟s Media Watch Jamaica. Women (and men are joining in) engaged in various forms of political, social, cultural, economic and gender activism worldwide soon came to see the media as a key institution in the fight to achieve women‟s equality and human rights. It is often said that the media holds a mirror up to society. How often women are seen in the mirror and what they look like when they do appear or speak has been the focus of a growing movement focused on changing the stereotypical representations and portrayals of women and men in the news. The United Nations first International Decade for Women (1975-1985) was a catalyst for women‟s activism and research on the media which, since the 1970s, has revolved around: A critique of the ways in which media content projects women as objects, rather than as active subjects or participants in many diverse roles An analysis of the institutional and social structures of power through which women are systematically marginalized within media organizations3 Women working at the country and regional levels in the 1970s and 1980s developed their own tools to gauge the media‟s discrimination against women in content and in the workplace. Their ongoing work received a significant boost in 1995 with the first Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), which has become a global tool of analysis of gender representation in the media. GMMP was one of the key resolutions of a 1994 conference on Women Empowering Communication, held in Bangkok, organized by the Women‟s Program of the World 1 Revisioning the Jamaican Media: The Experience of Women‟s Media Watch 1987-1996 by Melody Walker and Hilary Nicholson in Women‟s Experiences in Media, edited by Rina Jimenez- David, Isis International-Manila and WACC, 1996 2 Revisioning the Jamaican Media: The Experience of Women‟s Media Watch 1987-1996 by Melody Walker and Hilary Nicholson in Women‟s Experiences in Media, edited by Rina Jimenez- David, Isis International-Manila and WACC, 1996 3 Gender Setting, New Agendas for Media Monitoring and Advocacy, Margaret Gallagher, ZED Books and WACC London, publishers, 2001 4 Association for Christian Communication (WACC) in cooperation with Isis International and the International Women‟s Tribune Center (IWTC). GMMP 1995 (which took place in 71 countries on January 18, 1995) and GMMP 2000 (which took place in 70 countries on February 1, 2000) have become important tools for gender media activists. The findings of both have been used to show the media the problems with the representations and portrayals of women and men in the news and to stimulate discussions on how these might be addressed. Why this toolkit? Working to bring about change in the media does not have to be a “mission impossible” as Women‟s Media Watch in Jamaica, as well as other groups, have learned. Approaching media owners, publishers, editors, advertisers, journalists, among others, with findings which reflect the mirror back onto the media itself, can open the door to change. GMMP is an effective tool for gender activists to use in their work to change the media. For example, lobbying with the GMMP 2000 findings led to the Jamaican Broadcasting Commission developing its own guidelines for gender sensitive reporting. And in Malta, the Gender Advisory Committee of the Broadcasting Authority uses the GMMP2000 in its training program for media professionals. The third Global Media Monitoring Project took place on 16th February 2005. Seventy-six countries took part. GMMP 2005 provides a unique opportunity to bring together the experiences of gender activism targeted at the media into a toolkit that seeks to build on these successes, among others. This toolkit seeks to de-mystify the media and gender and media advocacy by illustrating through concrete steps, case studies, pointers, tips and information, that we can all take action to change gender representation and portrayal in and through the media. From writing a letter to the editor to planning and implementing a year-long campaign focused on changing how the media portrays gender violence for example, there are many ways to engage the media in the ultimate journey of achieving gender equality. Who is it for? This toolkit is targeted primarily at: Organizations and individuals who participated in GMMP 2005 Gender focused groups and media organizations (such as media councils, editors‟ forums, journalists‟ unions, media women‟s associations, among others) working with (or who wishing to begin working) with the media on gender and media issues WACC‟s constituencies and partner organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean and North America, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and in Asia and the Pacific engaged in some form of media activism 5 How to use the toolkit? This toolkit can be used in the following ways: To train activists on how to build gender and media campaigns using the findings of GMMP 2005 To illustrate and train activists on the various approaches that can be taken to do gender and media advocacy As an information tool on the media, and gender and media advocacy To learn how to work with and through the media to put gender on the news agenda. While the primary audience for this toolkit are organizations outside of the media that target the media for their gender activism, the toolkit can also be of value to professionals within the media as a means of self-reflection and analysis on how the gender biases of those who work within and own the media can and do find their way into media content and workplace conditions and practices. Structure of the toolkit This toolkit is divided into two key sections. Section One – defines the conceptual issues on gender and media advocacy; looks at why the media should be a focus of gender and feminist activism; highlights the key issues for gender and media advocacy using the findings of the GMMP 2005; and discusses the various target audiences key to achieve change. Section Two – provides the tactical information on the steps, tools and strategies that are useful in gender and media advocacy; provides tips and pointers on how to engage with the media and how to put gender on the news agenda. Information boxes, case studies and discussion points are provided in the various chapters. At the end of each Section, the user will find a glossary of key terms used in the chapters, and a summary of the key pointers and issues that have emerged from the chapters. 6 Section One: Putting Gender on the Media’s Agenda This Section defines the conceptual issues on gender and media advocacy; it looks at why the media should be a focus of gender and feminist activism; it highlights the key issues for gender and media advocacy using the findings of the GMMP2005; and discusses the various audiences key to achieve change. Objectives To examine the role of the media and key gender and media issues. To build an understanding of what gender and media advocacy is and what the key issues are. To highlight the target groups for gender and media advocacy. 7 Chapter One: Why focus on the media? “The media do not merely represent; they also recreate themselves and their vision of the world as desirable, salable. What they reproduce is chosen, not random, not neutral, not without consequence.”4 Media are in the business of providing information. Women and men read watch and listen to this information daily which is in the shape of what we know as news. The media‟s focus on the current issues and events of the day and the collection and editing of this information for presentation through the news media – newspapers, television and radio – is the practice of journalism. Journalism, however, is not a flawless exercise. In his 1978 speech to collect a Pulitzer Prize, David Broder of the Washington Post, said: “I would like to see us say over and over until the point has been made…that the newspaper that drops on your doorstep is a partial, hasty, incomplete, inevitably somewhat flawed and inaccurate rendering of some of the things we heard about in the past 24 hours…distorted despite our best efforts to eliminate gross bias by the very process of compression that makes it possible for you…to read it in about an hour. If we labeled the paper accurately then we would immediately add: But it‟s the best we could do under the circumstances, and we will be back tomorrow with a corrected updated version…”5 Likewise, the events and issues that become news each and every day, also go through a process of selection which is not without its own imperfections. News is a choice, an extraction process, saying that one event is more meaningful than another event. The very act of saying that means making judgments that are based on values and based on frames (mental structures that shape the way we see the world).6 In simple terms, the media, when asked, define their role as: To inform To educate To entertain The radio, TV and newspapers give us information through news, current affairs programs, and talk shows. They also entertain through TV soaps, films, game shows, music and sitcoms. It is through advertisements on radio, TV and in the newspapers, that we know about goods and services for sale.7 4 Patricia J. Williams, The Rooster‟s Egg, On the Persistence of Prejudice, Harvard University Press, 1995 5 Alan Rusbridger, The Truth About the Truth, in Newsweek International, 2005 6 David Murray, Joel Schwartz, S. Robert Lichter, It Ain‟t Necessarily SO, How the Media Remake Our Picture of Reality, Penguin Books, 2002 7 Whose Perspective? A Guide to Gender-Sensitive Analysis of the Media, Women‟s Media Watch Jamaica, 1998 8 The media do this by providing information that is collected and edited based on the media guiding principles of accuracy, fairness and balanced representation. The media also see their key role in any society as a „watchdog‟ of the government and all entities to ensure accountability in a society in the public‟s interest. The media‟s ability to carry out this role depends greatly on whether the media operate within political and legal environments which enable free speech, reasonably unfettered access to information, free media, and economic and political environments which encourage and promote the development of a diversity of media. Because the process of collecting, editing and choosing what is news is not purely objective, media and communications researchers and analysts have identified several other key roles the media play in any society: Shape public opinion and attitudes Determine the public discourse and thereby shape our political, cultural and economic priorities Influence public policy through the news agenda Reinforce or challenge gender, racial and other stereotypes and norms Serve as the channel through which the public communicates to policy makers and through which policy makers communicate to the public Media can act as catalysts for social change through coverage of injustices and the marginalization of populations in society which often have little access to expression in the public sphere. In other words, the media can give a voice to those who often find their voices marginalized Box One: Types of media The form of media that reaches large audiences daily is what is known as mainstream or mass media. Newspapers, magazines and the broadcast mediums of television and radio fall into this category. Mass media is often general in its content in order to cater for a diverse audience. There also are trade and specialist magazines – fashion and beauty, home design and interior, sports, computer, science, foreign affairs and policy analysis, among others – that are produced for mass consumption, but which may be more targeted at specific audiences within the larger population. Mass media view audiences as both consumers of information and of goods and services. Advertising is essential to the sustainability of the mass media. Mass media can be owned and operated by the state (often in developing countries worldwide), public or private interests. Community media, on the other hand, are limited to certain geographical areas and targeted at smaller groups of people. This media caters for people in towns, rural areas, close-knit communities which seek to keep themselves informed on issues of interest. Unlike in the mainstream media where the control of information and messages is vested in the hands of the media practitioners, there is more room for people within a local community to participate in the governance and editorial operations of this form of media. 9 New media is the term used to refer to the New Information and Communications Technologies (NICTs) which include web sites, web portals, e-mail, e-mail news alerts, listservs, and blogs. The new technology is used by those involved in mainstream media in that many of these media have web-based editions of their information and news products. But the information technology revolution also has opened the space for civil society, special interest groups, as well as individuals to create their own sites for disseminating information and viewpoints. Outside of the mainstream media sites, one of the major concerns surrounding the use of new media is the accuracy and credibility of the information provided. Box Two: In the Public’s Interest The dominant form of broadcasting worldwide is public broadcasting (same as public service broadcasting). This form of broadcasting is defined as „public‟ when radio, television and other electronic media outlets receive funding from the public – either through individual donations, fees, or indirectly as state subsidies that originated in taxes or other national funding sources. Some public broadcasters supplement this with contributions from corporations which may be granted a limited amount of advertising time in return. There is no standard definition of what public broadcasting is, but there are defining characteristics: Public service broadcasters generally transmit programming that aims to improve society by informing viewers The stations‟ broadcasts are available nationwide and generally aim to cater for all interests and tastes including minorities They have a concern for national identity and community which leads to the commissioning of programs from within the country, rather than from abroad They tend to be more detached from vested interests and government-impartial programming that does not cater to the desires of advertisers or government Quality of programming rather than number ratings is the basis for competition Guided by guidelines that do not restrict program makers - these guidelines can be backed by hefty penalties Source: Wikipedia Encyclopedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting Understanding the media’s various roles, its power and sphere of influence and the role it can play in bringing about change are essential for any type of advocacy that aims to change the media. 10