Ethiopia: Media Accused of 'Anti-Women Bias', Sensationalism Journalists Urged to Use Check List

April 19, 2007 – (The Daily Monitor) Gender insensitive and anti-women reporting on the part of the Ethiopian media has been found to be an insult to injury which is hurting the families and friends of victims of gender-based violence, the Ethiopian Media Women's Association complained on Tuesday.

The statement condemning the "male-dominated" Ethiopian media came in a media workshop the association hosted to better journalists' understanding on gender sensitive reporting.

The acid-burnt, much publicized, story of Kamilia, who is now receiving treatment in Europe, was one the subject of contention and a source of embarrassment to the Women's association.

In fact, the association invited the grieving families of the victim to the workshop to challenge the media face to face.

"The recently acid burnt Kamilat's case has caused traumas on her families due to unnecessary details of information the media has been publishing consecutively," relatives of the victim accused the media.

This was an attempt to reverse the reality by making the situation look like Kamilat was partly responsible for what happened to her and therefore shares the blame." "We owe a lot to the Ethiopian people as a whole and the media in particular for the support Kamilat obtained," Zubeda Muhdin Kamilat's sister said.

But the situation is now loosing ground from reality through successive and unethical reporting in some newspapers for the sake of winning the market with sensational stories," according to sister of the victim.

She said some newspapers failed to take in to account the trauma they may be causing to the victim's family as a result of their twisted reporting on the much anticipated crime story.

She added it all started with putting the victim's beleaguered picture on the pages of various newspapers and other sorts of media outlets, with out her's or family's due consent.

Putting pictures showing the victim with her now- a- suspect friend as some newspapers did "to show intimacy of the couple" was not ethical either, she lamented.

The case became the subject of much of the talk and hot debate to the workshop.

Tormod Nuland, a Radio journalist from Norway who was a guest speaker at the workshop said there was a contrasting issue of stigma and sympathy in using names, pictures and other detail elements while reporting crime stories.

"You don't have to push them; ask for their willingness. Also never abuse emotions of people," he said.

He stressed the need for becoming sensitive to compassion of human beings especially on reporting crimes related to gender issues where he said there was some danger in being objective, Considering the Kamilat's case, he said, "Exposing that picture as it was would be sacrificial but was important".

He further said that by exposing the victim, you might write exciting stories but sometimes you might not help the victim.

Yemiwodish Bekele, editor in chief of Polis ena Ermijaw a long established newspaper in the country known for crime reporting, said on her part that victims usually expose themselves when the plaintiff hide him/her self.

She said victims might sometimes suffer from unethical publication at the end of the day when all passes.

According to Yemiwodiosh, you don't publish every thing a victim says for she might be emotional at the time; you don't even take pictures depicting the victim which she might regret it later on.

You should tell her twice or more so as to conform that she is sure about the publication and the consequences.

The workshop finally ended up with a decision to prepare a checklist for journalists in order to avoid such problems while reporting sensitive issues in general and gender crimes in particular.

From:http://allafrica.com/stories/200704190451.html