Female Discrimination - Prejudicial Treatment in Media Contents

As a female, it is intolerant for me to accept any discriminating attempts, behaviours, and actions toward female in this 21^st century. As a highly educated intellectual, it should be known that many negative consequence will be arise in society as the discrimination issue is incited by someone or some media.

The New York newspaper - Di Tzeitung digitally removed Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason from a photograph of Barack Obama and his staffs monitoring the raid by navy Seals that killed Osama bin Laden.

Original Version from White House

(Source: White House)

Edited Version by Di Tzetung

(Source: Di Tzetung)

Apparently, the editorial policy under Di Tzetung has pushing down women as secondary and passive roles as compared with men, which is tend to create an unbalanced gender portrayal for female in public sphere. As supported by Lobo and Cabecinhas (2010, p. 340), the gender asymmetries in media content are mainly caused by the under-representation of women in media professions. This is because women are always either given invisible roles or described based on their stereotyped characteristics in the media, which lead women to ‘symbolic annihilation’ – less representative in the society (Lobo and Cabecinhas 2010, p. 339).

According to Van Zoonen (1994, p. 33), gender issues is not a fixed property of individuals, but as part of an ongoing process by which subjects are constituted, thus gender is to be seen as a discursive construction. In this article, Di Tzeitung clarified that its readers would believe women will be appreciated as they have excellent capabilities and talents, but not based on their appearance, thus female image is omitted in this publication. However, it is a one-sided assumption by Di Tzetung.

In my opinions, such assumption will damage to women’s lives as these messages reveal the presence of prejudice treatment to gender in the social structure and in individual worldviews. It won’t be surprising if it occurs, because media has crucial task of rendering the unfamiliar into the common (Wilson et al. 2011, p. 23).

Therefore, rather than to mixed with gender matters within the discussion, it is more important for a journalist to take into account the manipulation of the facts, as journalists cannot alter the truth through falsification of data provided (Lynch 2011, p. 1780) .

References

Coleman, RRM & Yochim, EC 2008, ‘Symbolic Annihilation’, The International Encyclopedia of Communication, viewed 6 November 2011, <http://sitemaker.umich.edu/rrmc/files/icae_v11_01.pdf>.

Lobo, P & Cabecinhas, R 2010, ‘The Negotiation of Meanings in the Evening News: Towards an Understanding of Gender Disadvantages in the Access to the Public Debate’, International Communication Gazette, vol. 72, no. 4-5, pp. 339-358, viewed 5 November 2011, <http://gaz.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/72/4-5/339.full.pdf+html>.

Lynch, A 2011, ‘Publication of Research: The Ethical Dimension’, Journal of Dental Research, vol. 73, no. 11, pp. 1778 -1782, viewed 6 November 2011, <http://jdr.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/73/11/1778.full.pdf+html>.

The Guardian 2011, ‘Orthodox Jewish Paper Apologises for Hillary Clinton Deletion’, Associated Press, 10 May, viewed 5 November 2011, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/10/jewish-paper-apologises-hillary-clinton>.

Van Zoonen, L 1994, Feminist Media Studies, Sage Publication Ltd, London, viewed 5 November 2011, <http://books.google.com.my/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lllyn2gnaAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR6&dq=feminist+media+studies+van+zoonen+page+33&ots=gzA1q6ez1_&sig=kn-4aLFWBX_PE22hppBhTjuHrs4#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Wilson, et al. 2011, ‘What is Your Social Media Strategy?’, Harvard Business Review, viewed 5 November 2011, <http://web.ebscohost.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&hid=21&sid=544c2625-3888-4e19-8bdb-ca8e72660845%40sessionmgr13>.