Journalism, sexual violence and social responsibility
Authors: Thorsen, E. and Sreedharan, C.
Pages: 174-184
DOI: 10.4324/9781003200871-19
Abstract:Journalists reporting on sexual violence in India face significant challenges. There is a plethora of operational challenges (including difficulty accessing key sources, safety issues while newsgathering and distress from the requirements of the assignment), but underlying these is a macho culture that pervades most newsrooms and allows masculine values to masquerade as journalistic norms. Such an environment, understandably, influences journalists’ potential for engendering social change to address this problem – both in limiting news workers in their agency and in the way they perceive themselves as change-makers. This chapter focusses on two key aspects that help define the journalistic potential to effect change: editorial guidance that shapes news coverage of sexual violence and how journalists view their own agency and contribution in this regard. Drawing on data from a larger multi-lingual research project, Media Action Against Rape, that included semi-structured interviews with 257 journalists, this chapter presents a holistic consideration of the attitudes, beliefs and conventions that shape journalistic practices in relation to sexual violence in India. It offers a critique of the constraints and challenges that influence Indian newsrooms and journalistic practice, especially for those who see their reportage as a tool for social intervention. We deploy the notion of journalistic doxa and argue that India draws liberally from patriarchal attitudes and structures within and without newsrooms. The chapter concludes by analysing the change that journalists want to engender and the gulf that needs to be bridged to effect that change.
Source: Scopus
Journalism, sexual violence and social responsibility
Authors: Thorsen, E. and Sreedharan, C.
Editors: Boyle, K. and Berridge, S.
Publisher: Routledge
Abstract:Journalists reporting on sexual violence in India face significant challenges. There is a plethora of operational challenges (including difficulty accessing key sources, safety issues while newsgathering, and distress from the requirements of the assignment), but underlying these is a macho culture that pervades most newsrooms, and allows masculine values to masquerade as journalistic norms. Such an environment, understandably, influences journalists’ potential for engendering social change to address this problem–both in limiting news-workers in their agency and in the way they perceive themselves as change-makers. This chapter focusses on two key aspects that help define the journalistic potential to effect change: editorial guidance that shapes news coverage on sexual violence, and how journalists view their own agency and contribution in this regard. Drawing on data from a larger multi-lingual research project, Media Action Against Rape, that included semi-structured interviews with 257 journalists (Sreedharan and Thorsen, 2021), this chapter presents a holistic consideration of the attitudes, beliefs and conventions that shape journalistic practices in relation to sexual violence in India. It offers a critique of the constraints and challenges that influence Indian newsrooms and journalistic practice, especially for those who see their reportage as a tool for social intervention. We deploy the notion of journalistic doxa (Bourdieu, 2005, 1998 [1996]; Schultz, 2007) and argue that India draws liberally from patriarchal attitudes and structures within and without newsrooms. The chapter concludes by analysing the change that journalists want to engender and the gulf that needs to be bridged to effect that change.
Source: Manual