MEDIA
Too many trees
SONYA DUTTA CHOUDHURY
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While issues are tackled comprehensively, the book is dissatisfying if you're looking for the big picture.
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Making News: Women in Journalism, Ammu Joseph, Penguin India, p.416, Rs. 325.
WHEN Ammu Joseph returned to India in 1977, she joined Eve's Weekly. Here, fresh from a journalism course at Syracuse University, she fought for many changes. Influenced by feminist magazines like Ms, Joseph helped axe a derogatory column called "Madam I'm Adam". The magazine also began tackling women's issues like dowry and female infanticide and added columns on sports and politics.
No fluff stuff please
The next two decades found her dividing her time between freelancing, child rearing and writing papers and books on the gender question. And always an articulate opponent of what is often described as the "fluff" school of journalism, which features news so frothy it must, willy nilly, rise to the top!
Making News: Women in Journalism was born out of more than 200 interviews with women journalists all over the country. Originally published in 2000, it received attention for its comprehensive look at the problems faced by women in the print media. From unequal pay, bad work conditions, sexual harassment to the inevitable glass ceiling.
This new paperback edition stays the same except for an updated introduction and an additional annexure. Which makes it more media history than cutting edge commentary. History that's well structured, chronological and comprehensive.
The book is alive with the voices of the varied journalists Joseph spoke to. In various stages of protest, of agreement and disagreement. Beginning with the very phrase "woman journalist". "I wear it as a label", says Pamela Philipose of the Indian Express, on being a woman journalist. Guwahati-based journalist Mitra Phukan disagrees, "I object to the term because it is patronising and implies that women need a crutch to lean on."
Differing views in the next chapter on the Gender (Dis)Advantage as well. "There are no advantages to being a woman in this profession... Nobody cares a damn." says Seema Mustafa , then Political Editor of The Asian Age. Yet Tavleen Singh admits, "Women are less likely to get thrown out. Their minds are better for interviews and seeing the human side of stories."
And then the horror stories. And sadly there are plenty. Meena Menon from the UNI in the 1980s: "Some of my male colleagues protested when I volunteered for night duty. The news editor commented, `So you don't mind being raped!' And laughed till he was breathless." A young sub-editor in Thrissur, Kerala, walking back from the night shift, "found to her annoyance, that it was generally assumed that a woman out on the street so late in the night could not be anything but a prostitute. She was harassed on the streets and targeted for gossip". Even worse are stories of sexual harassment from colleagues and bosses. From "unsolicited personal remarks about female colleagues and their looks, attire, and so on" to instances like the one experienced by a woman in a Mumbai-based news agency. The chief of the bureau persisted in commissioning a story on pavement pornographic literature to her, passing on his collection of pornographic limericks as "research material".
For me, by far the most fascinating part of the book was "Hard Choices". "How many flower shows must a woman write about before she is accepted as a journalist ?", asks the Bob Dylan-ish question that begins the chapter. Joseph investigates the importance of "beats", chronicling the efforts of women to fight their way into traditionally male preserves like politics and business. "The day came when we did not only find `flower show' or `interview deaf Moroccan singer' or `find out what Mrs. Gandhi is wearing' against our name on the assignment sheets", says Razia Ismail , chief, UNICEF, Delhi, of their struggle to break out of the "lady" frame.
An interesting corollary to this has been the radical questioning of the over riding importance of the so-called "hard" news. Leading to a vindication that "softer" areas like health, consumer welfare and development are not peripheral.
Commendable effort
All of which make this book a quiet and commendable effort. But, at 416 pages, it also ends up being very long winded. While each issue it focuses on is tackled comprehensively, it is dissatisfying if you're looking for the big picture. Joseph stays strictly within the purview of print journalism up to the year 2000. Completely eschewing the transformation of media by television and the phenomenon of the female anchor.
Still, it's a worthy volume. And if you aren't discouraged by the monotony of the meticulous that seems to accompany many such sincere efforts, if you are above the best selling spice of a Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary?, and are a media watcher, then this is definitely the book for you.
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