MEDİZ, which was established in 2003 by 23 women's organizations and has the sponsorship of the EU, has gathered its experiences, campaigns, conference papers and research in its book, titled "End to Sexism in Media," which is available in both in English and Turkish. The book points out that violence and discrimination toward women and the way these subjects are treated in the media are not only the issue of women but of society.
MEDİZ suggests that media institutions and those working in the field should treat the violation of women’s rights as a social issue and engage in responsible reporting in order to prevent such violations. “However, apart from behaving responsibly in order to prevent these kinds of violations, we bear witness to the media’s own violation of these rights,” the group notes in the book.
According to MEDİZ, the media are violating women’s rights in a variety of ways, such as using sexist language, invading women’s personal lives, revealing the identities of women who have been assaulted in sexual or violent crimes, making sexist judgments, questioning the morality and lifestyle of women assaulted in sex crimes, portraying women only as sex symbols and giving little time to stories on women.
MEDİZ states that the media do not take measures to prevent sexism. For example Turkish media firms lack internal monitoring and education mechanisms on protecting women’s rights in journalism and fail to covers stories on women’s issues and women’s organizations. They also harm the perception of women in society by putting out mostly images of women as sex symbols.
In the book, MEDİZ also published the results of research on the forms of representation of women in the media by examining 10 Turkish newspapers, five Web sites, five radio stations and five TV stations.
According to the findings the rate of women’s representation on the front page is 21 percent overall. The front pages that cover the most stories focused on women belong to Hürriyet, Posta and Sabah dailies, while such articles appear in only 10 percent of all coverage in the Zaman daily. Cumhuriyet is another newspaper in which there a low percentage of articles on women. MEDİZ states that these numbers indicate that one form of expression in “serious journalism” is considered to be ignoring women.
On the other hand, the highest representation of women as equal persons is found in Birgün, followed by Cumhuriyet and Zaman, while this form of representation is below 10 percent in Akşam and Posta. The representation of women as spouses, mothers and self-sacrificing women is highest in Zaman and lowest in Radikal.
The presentation of women as sexual objects in headlines and subheadings is relatively rare in newspapers, but this is made up for in magazines, ads and supplements. This form of representation is mainly used by the Akşam daily and is rarely observed in Zaman or Birgün.
The level of women’s presence in administrational staff of newspapers is quite low, with only one in every 10 being female. The rate of women among reporters is also low, coming in at only 18 percent. Cumhuriyet has the most female reporters at 40 percent, while Vakit and Zaman have mainly male reporters. The rate of women columnists is only 12 percent and most these columnists are assigned to writing about “life” issues; there are no radical differences among newspapers in this category.
When it comes to Web sites, the space given to women in headline news is higher than in newspapers at 32 percent. Women presented as sexual objects is higher on Web sites than in newspapers, coming in at 7 percent; coverage showing them as equal is 28 percent, as mothers 16 percent and as pawns of other forces 29 percent. The representation rate of women on Web site editorial boards is 36 percent but their representation as writers is low, at only 20 percent.
As for TV stations women’s participation in news and political debate programs is only 11 percent. The representation of women in TV primetime news editorial boards is only 16 percent, but women are represented at a higher rate (35 percent) as reporters.
MEDİZ argued in its book that the organization’s aim is to create media in which women are not subjected to gender discrimination, to prevent the presentation of women as victims, sexual objects or dependent on men and to encourage a balanced representation of women in media jobs. The organization notes that these are difficult aims to reach, but is determined to do so, with its slogan being: “Enough is enough! We will be watching you.”
National
