Walk the Talk : An Excerpt

Ms. Kalpana Sharma addressing the audience at the seminar in 2013 

Interview with Ms. Kalpana Sharma 

Ms. Kalpana Sharma, former Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau of The Hindu (Mumbai) was here at The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda to talk on ‘Women in Media: A Reality Check’ at a UGC sponsored regional seminar on ‘Gender and Media’ organized jointly by The Faculty of Journalism & Communication and Women’s Studies Research Centre. Ms. Sharma has over three decades of experience as a full-time journalist, and has held senior positions in Himmat Weekly, Indian Express and The Times of India. Her special areas of interest are environmental and developmental issues. She writes a fortnightly column in The Hindu's Sunday Magazine section, The Other Half – that comments on contemporary issues from a gender perspective. She is the author of Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's Largest Slum (Penguin 2000) and has co-edited with Ammu Joseph - Whose News? The Media and Women's Issues (Sage 1994, 2006) and Terror Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out (2003). She spoke to Nidhi Shendurnikar Tere & Nalanda Tambe about her views on gender related issues and reportage in the Indian media. Excerpts from the interview are presented below:

What is your opinion about gendered media?

K.S: The way I would interpret gendered media is media that is conscious of gender. You are conscious that there is something like gender which has to be addressed in the way media conducts itself in every form. For instance, stories, headlines, content and placement of the stories and even advertisements. That is what I would call a gendered media. I do not know whether there is an academic definition but as a practitioner if someone says that we need a gendered media then I would take it positively. Of course it can also be a negative connotation, meaning the media is gendered in that your access and ability to move ahead and the stuff that you can write is determined by gender and not by your capability.

How would you relate gender with media literacy and media socialization?

K.S: Either you can say the whole thing of how gendered the media is in terms of access, both in terms of reading and accessing it. For those within the media it also means their access and ability to get ahead within the profession. That is one aspect. The other aspect what you are talking about is more in terms of content of media and whether it is sensitive to gender. In fact if you do a survey you will see that they are not. It comes out not in the most blatant forms always but with a kind of invisibility. Even something as simple as getting an expert opinion, it’s as if there are no women who are experts. It’s only men. In the electronic media if you want to get opinions of people on any controversial issue, you will see all men. Maybe one token woman! Over all these years haven’t women gained expertise to be able to express their knowledge? Due to this fact that it has always been men, you have to take that conscious effort to correct that balance by ensuring that the opinions of women are incorporated. Similarly in reporting, now at least there is some consciousness in the use of noun and pronoun; like ‘he’ and ‘she’. There are many editors now who consciously say “she and her”. The editors specifically write “she” because we have always said “he”. It’s a small token thing which is important. Moreover, gender neutral terms like “journalists” and “reporters” are also being used but that is not enough.

What is still continuously missing in the media is that there are many issues which have an impact on women, but there is no effort made to assess that impact in routine reporting. For every event there is a gendered impact which the media fails to understand.

So can media literacy change it?

K.S: Media literacy is again a two way thing. It is how we read the media. What I am telling you is media literacy because I have read the media to understand that they are not gendered. However, making our media persons literate is actually what we are talking about. Ongoing education for journalists and people of the media on important issues can make a difference because at the moment you get into the media and that is the end of your training. When I joined, we used to have mentoring from the seniors. So you would work on the stories, they would look at it and tell you what is wrong and if they edited it then they would explain you why they did so. If you went on an assignment, your senior would brief you before you went. When you came back you would have a debriefing session where you explained what you saw and discussed how to do the best story and what angles to take. None of these takes place now. So there is no ongoing education and definitely there is a need for it. I don’t think at the moment anyone is even thinking about that. We have tried through our women and media network to intervene especially with topics like sexual assault with some media houses and one or two were open to it. This is not insignificant, but very little.  

As a media consumer, is it going to make a difference, if I am media literate and aware about what goes on in the newsroom? Is that going to help alter how media consumers look at the way media reports on gender issues?

K.S: Even if they question, what difference will it make to media reporting? Of course there is a need for media literacy and I think it should be introduced in schools. They should be taught how media should be looked at skeptically, the particular way in which news is manufactured and presented.

What is your opinion about the media’s role as an agent of socialization in purview of increasing gender related crimes in society?  

K.S: It is an agent of socialization when it comes to reinforcing gender stereotyping. Media keeps on gender stereotyping especially in advertisements. Eg: Media after a sexual assault dwells on what the girl wore and was she drunk or not. So this socializes people to believe that women who wear certain types of clothes are the one who get raped. To me the most dangerous thing is the extremely insensitive manner in which media reports sexual violence. Details about the crime committed are not necessary, they may be necessary for the case but not for the public. It is just to get one more story. So the end results are that you are not sensitive to the person who has suffered. It also creates an atmosphere of fear which is of no help to women. People tend to believe that everything outside is more unsafe and dangerous and this is what the media successfully projects.  

What is your opinion about the media’s role (especially the press) in the Delhi gang rape incident?

K.S: The gang rape took place in Delhi and it is a media capital. So before that a Dalit woman would have been raped outside Delhi and nobody would have bothered. This was a girl who was coming from a cinema, right in the middle of Delhi, who rides on the bus and who got raped. So it had all the elements of something that the media would jump on. So they did. Now that the convictions have come, media has definitely played a role in that. One worrying aspect was we are not allowed to give the identity of the woman and so media creates fictitious names and this is completely wrong. You are denying this woman a double agency. I mean she feels that she has lost an agency by the manner she was assaulted and then you go with the name where she doesn’t have any choice. You didn’t ask her that should we call you Damini or Nirbhaya. Just because you are too lazy to figure out how you will report without giving the name, you just decide to give her a name? So that was a very wrong thing on the part of media. Of course after a certain point media started horrifying and it just became a circus. The good thing was the Justice Verma Committee was appointed and laws were amended. The negative part is that such cases will go on happening as we have one live example of the Mumbai gang rape recently. This is the media story now. People staying abroad now say that people in India have become very dangerous for women because of the kind of hype in India media.

Was the media very intrusive during the Delhi gang rape and did it go overboard? Where is the media when rapes are happening all over the country?

K.S: Obviously, the selection of this particular one, apart from the horror of it was because of the fact that it was a Delhi based rape. Even Bombay gang rape didn’t get so much hype. The Mumbai girl has survived and she is a brave girl as she went and filed an FIR immediately. Many such cases are not given space in the media.

So does that signify the need for media attention for justice to be delivered? Are we proceeding towards a state of affairs where media hype is required to procure justice? Is this a positive or negative trend?

K.S: It’s a negative thing. As ultimately the criminal justice system must work for everybody and the exception cannot be the rule. What is happening now is that we are just concentrating on these exceptions. Ultimately people who are more educated and better off are able to draw attention and get the justice that the poor do not get. So that is what is to be addressed. A woman of any caste, if she is assaulted then she should be confident to go the police. There is no system wherein if a victim of sexual violence reports to a hospital, there are no facilities where immediately forensic reports are taken and counseling is done. Even if she files a case, it’s a long process after that. There are many issues and concerns to be accounted for.

There is no effort by the local media on such issues. What they would usually do is to sensationalize the story and use it to create hype after which it fizzles down. There is no follow up and hence basic issues remain unaddressed. It is certainly good to have mechanisms in place but what about the effort on part of the media to investigate whether these are functional or not?

The responsibility cannot be only on the media. Whatever the systems that are put in place are dependent on the higher authorities and they also have to take efforts to ensure implementation. However media scrutiny always helps. For instance take the entire justice system. The media there can only address specific issues. What can be done instead is newspapers can ask their reporters to take follow ups of certain cases every year which need not be the high profile ones. 

What is your opinion about imparting gender sensitive training to the media professionals?

K.S: It is very much needed. One way is through journalism courses. Gender sensitive reporting should be a compulsory component in all the media training courses. Also I think you can bring in the journalists who are conscious of the media aspect and will do something about it. Secondly, I think all the media schools can contact their local media and offer them gender trainings. So it’s possible that you get a response because if it is some university then they might think that there isn’t some other agenda, so they might respond. On the other hand if the editor finds a need to impart such training to the journalists then it is quite possible because the journalists themselves won’t sense any need to take the training. Certainly there has to be an intervention. Our network of women and media in Mumbai approached two newspapers on the issue of gender sensitive training and we conducted a half-day workshop on this for the entire staff. We really had a good discussion about reporting of sexual assaults. After this workshop both the organizations reported such issues very sensitively by not disclosing the names of victims of sexual assaults. So something good happened after our efforts.  

Do corporatization, commercialization and sensationalism in the media impact the coverage of gender based issues?

K.S: I don’t think gender based issues generally but I think it is gender based violence. This is because it links between the selling of the product and the kind of product which will sell it. So the conclusion is crimes of passion, of murders, suicides in prominent individuals; all these people like to read about and so they will give full coverage. All the newspapers now have space for the crime reports. They give half a page to the crime stories. Graphic and minute details are given and in suicide literally how the suicide is committed is also covered. You see newspapers anywhere else in the world and you will never see this. In India though, commercialization in media has completely gone off-board. There is no sense of balancing issues and whatever sells is given priority.