Women in Bristol monitoring the media

bristol | media and culture | opinion/analysis Saturday October 11, 2008 16:20 by Iqbal Tamimi iqbasl at yahoo dot com Bristol NUJ Branch 07947650061

Women in the media...represented, underpresented, misrepresented

October / November 2008 Bristol city is celebrating women in the media, and what a better way than focussing the lenses on the presentation, under presentation or misrepresentation of women in the media.
Between Oct 15th and Nov 15th Bristol Fawcett Group with Bristol Feminist Network invited those who are interested in the media and empowering women to collate and document experiences of the representation of women in all the media.
I feel really passionate about such issues, not on local scale only, but also on international level. I have been working on a parallel program in the Middle East. Of course how women are represented or misrepresented in the media is different from society to another, but still we are underrepresented and misrepresented all over the world in different degrees and in different ways. Funny enough this is the only thing different countries all over the world share and agree on.

Women journalists bullied

Bullying women Journalists

By Iqbal Tamimi – Bristol

October / November 2008 Bristol city is celebrating women in the media, and what a better way than focussing the lenses on the presentation, under presentation or misrepresentation of women in the media.
Between Oct 15th and Nov 15th Bristol Fawcett Group with Bristol Feminist Network invited those who are interested in the media and empowering women to collate and document experiences of the representation of women in all the media.
I feel really passionate about such issues, not on local scale only, but also on international level. I have been working on a parallel program in the Middle East. Of course how women are represented or misrepresented in the media is different from society to another, but still we are underrepresented and misrepresented all over the world in different degrees and in different ways. Funny enough this is the only thing different countries all over the world share and agree on.

I have received many letters from our fellow women colleague’s journalists in Palestine who are suffering career oppressions. Those colleagues are less fortunate for they received no help by their Unions or the syndicate or the local media for that matter.

Last month the supervisor of a women empowering organization in Gaza dismissed a young woman journalist arbitrarily. She was also been reported to have use words that offended the young journalist personally, such comments had nothing to do with the perfection of her profession as a journalist, but it was described by some local journalists as a kind of media hooliganism happening before an audience. The argument has nothing to do with her journalistic skills, but of her personal life mentioning that she is divorced. For those who do not know much about the Middle Eastern societies and the Palestinian society in particular, and its sensitivity towards divorced women, I guess they ought to read a little bit more. For being a divorcee is more like being accused of a crime.

It was not bad enough that the Zionist oppression is getting at our colleagues; it was not enough that there is lack of justice of the society towards women journalists. We have received several messages in this regard from a number of colleagues, and when I asked why no one cared to correct the situation. The reply was that the lady in charge has strong authorities, and members of the board feared her anger especially that she is a ‘lawyer’. Here I feel how privileged we are in UK and how lucky that we have a constitution, compared to other countries we celebrate many rights we take for granted, and we should maybe make use of more like complaining to the authorities of interests like unions and NUJ for example.

The lawyer mentioned above is the Director of the Centre for Women and legal guidance assumed to be in charge of resolving issues facing battered women. Expelling the young female journalist arbitrarily is just one of many examples I receive every day. And this example shows clearly that women can be victims of other women too. The lawyer mentioned above is running a centre that receives financial aid to support women in Gaza and not to oppress them.
One wonders why no one from the syndicate or the Union ever dared to confront or question such personality, or do some justice by filing an investigation.
This case was not a hidden or isolated incident, I have read an article written by a Palestinian colleague journalist by the name of Ahmad Arar who tried to raise such issues on line, but no one cared or dared to follow the matter any further especially through the media.
Now... does the syndicate have anything to say about bullying Palestinian women journalists?
Even though Palestinian women are known to celebrate relatively better liberties and status in their society compared with other Arab societies, we know perfectly well that the female Palestinian journalist is fighting a fierce battle to prove her presence as a professional. Besides the fact that some female Palestinian journalists suffer sexual harassment, discrimination in employment opportunities, and the rejection of their own society, added to all that the suppression and the oppression by the Israeli forces.
In addition to all that Palestinian female journalists face the usual difficulties faced by other colleagues like censorship from political, religious, social sources. And being a target of being killed should they are caught in the fires between the fighting factions, and the fires of the Israeli soldiers, besides the restrictions on their movement, and suffering low wages, ...and many other challenges.
All above issues are underrepresented in the media, including honour killings. When International organizations and watchdogs witness such phenomenon, they must know immediately that these are the symptoms of corruption. The president of the Palestinian journalist syndicate was never elected, nor does any one recognize any prior work for him as a journalist. He was appointed. Knowing such facts might direct us to a very important issue. The journalists are the best candidates to help their own colleagues for they know the obstacles facing women working in this field.
I hope democracies like UK can set a good example by monitoring when women are underrepresented or misrepresented, for we all know that the British media model is almost trusted and copied in other parts of the world, even though such actions might take a while to happen, but eventually it arrives riding the globalization wagon.
Please support the above event by monitoring the media and how women are represented or misrepresented in articles, pictures, statistics, and ideas.

visit: www.bristolfawcett.org.uk (for egs from earlier media project)
e-mail: women_inthemedia@yahoo.co.uk
join Facebook group: “Representations of Women in the Media campaign”