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ANYONE HERE BEEN RAPED AND SPEAK ENGLISH: PART 2
Posted by Charlotte on March 13, 2010
Tags: AmnestyUK, Anyone Here Been Raped and Speak English, feminism, Gender Stereotypes, International News, Samira Ahmed, Women and the Media
In part two: I followed up the topic of International news reporting and the representation of women with Samira Ahmed from Channel 4 news over email.
I am always conscious of the danger of what I call ‘disaster porn’ reporting. It’s the foreign correspondent equivalent of what Duncan Campbell in his analysis of British crime/court reporting calls “marmalade droppers” – stories that shock the reader or viewer over the breakfast table. Then it’s over and you’ve had your fix of prurient guilt.
There is a challenge there in how to cover a story. I found myself challenged when I did the South Africa story last year on ‘corrective rape’ – with gangs targeting lesbian women. Was it patronising? Was it racist, as some men I met suggested, to go on about African men and rape? But the fact was, the story was not being covered in South Africa and the women’s group campaigners were so pleased to have someone keen to cover the issue.
The piece was focused on what the women themselves were doing. I met a network TV reporter outside the Johannesburg high court on my first day’s filming about a protest over delays to rape trials, who told me editors weren’t interested in the rape of some lesbian township women because there’s so much violent crime in South Africa already. I’m fascinated by how the poorest always get neglected and I was able to make that part of the story. The day after it ran the South African High Commission in London rang up to ask for a transcript. Some South African bloggers also picked up on the embarrassment for the authorities (whose complacency was implicated in the report) as I’d deliberately linked the story to the tourist drive for the upcoming football World Cup finals.
Crucially you need time – not two minutes – to give all that context. I had nearly seven minutes. And I do feel while there are some terrific foreign correspondents, (the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and C4’s Jonathan Miller spring to mind) there are still far too many ignorant ones who go in with an arrogant attitude and little empathy. Some of the accounts I’ve heard from producers over the years about the insensitive questions or attitudes to traumatised people are really shocking.
I actually think, gender balance is not a problem with our foreign coverage. It’s not just that Lindsey Hilsum and I report (incidentally, most of our foreign producers are female). At most broadcasters there are a few chaps who are clearly obsessed with military hardware, but compared to the 1990 Gulf War, I think we’ve all come a long way. Coverage of the troops in Afghanistan nowadays is fascinating for how it combines the military with the civilian, and the diplomatic and political points of view.
As I said at the panel discussion, there’s a real reluctance by editors and some presenters (almost exclusively male) to run domestic stories about women as victims of crime. A refusal to join the dots on the failures of the criminal justice system. I strongly advocate not linking stories to International Women’s Day, because they’re then regarded as droppable ‘diary’ items. A story is a story in its own right, and that’s the way to improve coverage, not to seek out a once-a-year tag that people can then ignore.
In foreign news I would say we at Channel 4 News seek out strong stories. More broadly I would say women’s magazines probably do more to focus on women abroad as victims than the traditional news media. We do a discussion maybe once a year about women/workplace issues. The rest of the year it’s clearly not on the editorial agenda! And interestingly they once ran what I certainly felt was an inappropriately lighthearted interview about prostitution with a male escort. A lot of viewers complained, but the (all male) editors clearly hadn’t thought it would be offensive.
Health and education – two other issues that are gender neutral, but actually interest and often have a special female focus – are strikingly absent from our regular coverage. Our health correspondent is currently on maternity leave, which is part of the picture. I think it’s a problem more broadly in British journalism, but it’s odd, because these are issues that really interest the public and are big political battlegrounds which more Westminister-obsessed editors should appreciate.
This is also a question about ‘guestbooking’ interviewees and who we speak to. There is a problem when senior producers at major broadcasters turn too often and too quickly to the familiar old faces – especially politicians and political commentators. I make a huge effort, and I know our mostly female full-time guestbooking producers do too, to try and expand our contacts book and get more diverse guests – not just female. But it’s a grind and it’s frustrating when good suggestions are ignored for the quick familiar ‘get’. Having said that, once a good new face is used, they’re quickly picked up and used a lot by several broadcasters. Yasmin Alibai-Brown’s broadcast career began that way. I remember interviewing her at Newsnight back in 1993!
But the other question is about what stories we cover. Never mind specifically female union reps, British broadcasting does relatively little on a whole load of stories and therefore jobs: union issues (except the black and white of say the British Airways strike) , manufacturing and indepth science reporting in particular. If we did more on these issues, we’d inevitably get more women in more jobs on air.
Tags for this post:AmnestyUK, Anyone Here Been Raped and Speak English, feminism, Gender Stereotypes, International News, Samira Ahmed, Women and the Media