Representation of Gender-Based Violence in the Media: A Case
Study of Two Cape Town Newspapers
This essay reports the findings of
a study I conducted on representations of gender-based violence (GBV) in
Cape Town’s two English-language daily newspapers, the Cape Times
and Cape Argus. I will offer a definition of GBV, briefly discuss
the extent of the phenomenon in South Africa and the position of women working
in the media, both globally and locally. Then, drawing on different media
resources, I will offer a brief categorisation of the different types of
reporting on GBV prevalent in local media today. These categories will be
used to analyse reporting from the Cape Times and Cape Argus for the period
2 June 2003 to 6 June 2003. While media such as television, radio and advertisements
offer important examples of the different types of coverage of GBV, these
will be excluded from this analysis, as the scope of this essay is fairly
confined. I focus on the Cape Times and Cape Argus’ coverage
of GBV, as they are the only English-language dailies in Cape Town, and
are thus the only sources of print news for those who speak and read mainly
English. Both newspapers are owned by international media conglomerate,
the Independent Group. The Cape Times, a morning broadsheet, has
a readership of 304 000 per day, while Cape Argus boasts 410 000 daily readers,
and appears every afternoon.
Gender-based violence: Definition
and Prevalence
For the purpose of this study I will
use the definition of GBV proffered by the United Nations Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
[1]
. CEDAW defines gender-based violence as:
any act... that results in, or is likely
to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women,
including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty,
whether occurring in private or public life.... Violence against women shall
be understood to encompass, but not be limited to, physical, sexual and
psychological violence occurring in the family, the community, including
battery, sexual abuse of female children, dowry-related violence, marital
rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful
to women, non-spousal violence, violence related to exploitation, sexual
harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere,
trafficking in women, forced prostitution, and violence against women perpetrated
and condoned by the state.
This definition is useful, as it provides
a comprehensive overview of the types of GBV, the situations and locations
where GBV can and does occur (everywhere) and possible perpetrators of GBV.
Significantly, GBV is not only defined in terms of actual physical bodily
harm, but also in terms of psychological harm and threats of potential harm.
It is also understood to mean the deprivation of freedom, an invisibilised
form of abuse often not recognised as abuse or violence. Importantly, this
definition also points out sites where GBV occurs: the family, community,
the workplace, educational institutions and “elsewhere”, making it clear
that women in general are not really free from the threat of GBV anywhere.
Often the “private” domain, the sphere of family life, which should be a
protected one for women, is the domain where abuse takes place.
It is difficult to catalogue the
extent to which GBV takes place in any society. Forms of GBV such as rape
or sexual harassment are notoriously underreported. According to Rape Crisis
(2003), 49 280 rapes
and 4 851 sexual assaults were reported in South Africa in 1998. However,
these figures hold for a rather narrow definition of rape: penetration of
a vagina by a penis, and excludes the phenomena of rape of men and children,
oral rape and rape with objects. Rape Crisis estimates that if the latter
categories of rape were included in the legal definition of rape, the figure
for reported rapes would be much higher. It also stresses that only 50%
of the clients it counsels actually report rapes. From this information
it would be safe to deduce that the number of rapes occurring annually are
much higher than reported rapes.
Marital rape is a crime that is almost
completely invisibilised. According to Rape Crisis (2003):
Marital rape
is a seriously under-reported element of the rape statistics in South Africa.
According to Vogelman and Eagle (1991), (in Social Justice, vol. 18, nos.
1 - 2, 199: Overcoming Endemic Violence Against Women), violence is present
in 50% to 60% of marital relationships. This is likely to frequently involve
rape as one of the components of violence within marriage. Further, within
violent intimate relationship, rape is likely to recur.
Thus
it is extremely difficult to put an exact figure to occurrences of GBV,
or comment on the prevalence in South Africa.
It can be argued that forms of GBV such
as rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, marital rape and domestic violence
are endemic to South Africa.
Women, the Media and Representations of
GBV
The media, contrary to its protestations
of neutrality and objectivity, is not a neutral entity. It has incredibly
power, and concomitant responsibility, in shaping its public’s views of
the world. Purported neutrality notwithstanding; media practitioners are
human beings who bring values, mores and codes for behaviour into the workplace
and into their coverage of world events. Thus journalists, through their
own perceptions, have the power to dramatically impact the perceptions and
worldviews of their target audiences. The mass media therefore can be a
tool for upholding the status quo (which includes racial and gender inequity)
or a tool for transformation and a just, more equitable social order. The
media, collectively, plays an important role in the shaping of perceptions
around women, their role in society and what is considered “acceptable”
with regards to gender roles. It has the potential to play a major role
in transforming negative stereotypes around women, and perceptions around
GBV. GenderLinks (2001: A6) argues that:
The media is one of the
most important socializing influences in people’s lives. Negative and stereotypical
images of women in the media, and the ways in which the media reports on
gender-based violence (as a lesser crime or violation) contributes to the
acceptance of gender-based violence. The dominant myth is that the media
is neutral and objective. This is not so…The media is not a passive conveyor
belt that simply transfers information to society without making value judgements.
Instead the media informs our understanding of issues, and therefore has
a critical role to play in processes of transformation.
More often than not, however, the media
upholds flawed perceptions of women and gender-based violence, upholds the
status quo, and even goes as far as to create an enabling climate for GBV
by normalising and legitimising GBV in its reporting or in its omission
of reporting on GBV.
In a study examining the coverage of rape in four South African newspapers,
Omarjee (2001) found that newspapers, through their reporting on rape, often
reinforce myths about rape, for example, the myth that women make up rape
charges to get back at men, or that the “victim”
[2]
is somehow responsible for her rape. Omarjee further
found that rape was not seen as a “serious” crime by newspapers, and was
thus relegated to inferior status as a subject for news; that newspaper
reporting does not sufficiently question the motives for rape and contexts
which allow rape to be prevalent; and that reporting on rape is often sensationalised.
Omarjee makes a number of recommendations for more sensitive and contextualised
reporting on rape, which avoids sensationalism or perpetuating damaging
myths about rape.
Media myths and distortions around rape are not surprising, given
the under-representation of women at every level of the media. A 1995 study
by the Global Media Monitoring Project found that women make up only 17%
of news subjects. A follow-up survey in 2000 found that this figure had
only risen by 1% to 18% in the intermittent years. The survey also revealed
that women are most likely to be portrayed as sex objects by the media,
with representations of women as victims of violence and homemakers the
second most common category for portrayal. The situation is equally dismal
for women who are media practitioners. A 1999 study by the Federation of
African Media Workers, which covered 37 media organisations in the SADC
region, found that only, 25.6% of media practitioners are women. Furthermore,
this study revealed that women are concentrated in the lower, entry-level
jobs that offer them little or no decision-making power about how to cover
the news, which stories to cover, how news is defined or over hiring practices.
Very few women progress to managerial positions with true clout in their
newsrooms, and when they do, this is no guarantee that women’s issues will
move higher on the reporting agenda. Often GBV is covered insensitively
and with little insight by both female and male reporters, as shown by this
extract from a narrative by senior journalist and gender activist Zubeida
Jaffer, commenting on post-apartheid media practices in South African newsrooms
(2002: 9):
Democracy has also forced new challenges.
While state violence has been defeated, sexual violence has come out of
the closet. In newsrooms across the country there is considerable insensitivity
about this issue. Women in the newsrooms, together with men committed to
change, must not only change the public understanding of sexual violence,
but also bring about a different understanding of the issue within the workplace.
There needs to be an awareness that rape is about power, not sex. While
black women are the main victims, press outrage is often expressed when
the victim is white or foreign. This grave imbalance needs to be urgently
addressed. Partly, this can be done by placing more women in positions of
authority in our newsrooms and ensuring that women are engaged in the process
of challenging the present ownership patterns of the South African media.
However it should be noted that increasing the numbers of women in
editorial and senior decision-making positions are no guarantee for sensitive
portrayals of GBV. Putting more women into positions of power in media institutions
will not fully transform the way the media reports on GBV; what is needed
is commitment from media houses to transform themselves and to begin the
process of institutional change, both in the way they treat women journalists,
and in their treatment of women as news subjects.
Methodology
Drawing on a number of randomly-selected articles dealing with GBV,
in both the print media and on news websites, (“Stop This Horror”, Sunday
Times, November, 17, 2002; “She was Damaged Goods”, Mail and Guardian,
March 20, 2003; “Cop, Wife Killed by Grenade”, News24 Website, April
24, 2003; “Sex Assaults: Young on Younger”, News24 Website, April
28, 2003; “Mbeki Told: Get Rapists Jailed”, News24 Website, December
9, 2002; “Blood Bath”, Cape Argus, May 19, 2003), and drawing on
Omarjee’s study, I have devised the following categories into which reporting
on GBV can be placed:
·
GBV reporting as trivialised
·
GBV reporting sensationalised
·
GBV reporting which reinforces negative stereotypes
and myths
·
Purportedly “neutral” reporting on GBV
·
Sensitive, well-covered reports on GBV
I analysed the content of the Cape Argus and Cape Times
every day for the period 2 June to 6 June 2003 (a total of ten newspapers),
noting content, or lack thereof, on GBV. I collected, and categorised these
articles in accordance with the schema provided above, and analysed patterns
in GBV coverage. My conclusion is based on my analysis of the ten newspapers
included in the content analysis. The results of this survey are not meant
to represent exhaustive findings about GBV reporting for the two newspapers
surveyed, nor should they be used to generalise on reporting trends for
the entire South African media, a vast and diverse entity.
Findings
This study surveyed coverage of gender-based violence by Cape Town’s
only English-language newspapers over a period of five days, from Monday,
June 2, 2003 to Friday, June 6, 2003: a total of ten newspapers. A review
the five issues each of the Cape Times and the Cape Argus
were published during this period, yielded a surprisingly high number of
reports detailing incidents of gender-based violence. I counted a total
of 28 reports
[3]
dealing with the topic, either as “hard”,
[4]
breaking news items on specific incidents, or as follow-up
stories, where gender-based violence was reported on from the perspective
of court proceedings, which usually took place some time after the actual
incident of gender-based violence occurred.
Two stories falling within the category of gender-based violence
coverage dominated the two newspapers during the week of this survey: court
proceedings of the former Western Cape Gender Equity MEC (Member of Provincial
Cabinet) Freda Adams’ sexual harassment and defamation lawsuit against former
Premier of the Western Cape, Peter Marais. Adams had instituted a R1.2 million
civil claim against Marais for sexual harassment, as well as two claims
totaling R1.12 million for defamation. She was also concurrently suing former
Cape Town Mayor Gerald Morkel for defamation, to the tune of R500 000, in
the Cape High Court. Adams was also being counter-sued by Marais, who had
lodged a R2.5 million defamation claim against her.
The second most prominent
gender-based violence story of the week was the murder of a 30-year-old
security guard, Dineho Thuledi, who was gunned down at Khayelitsha Day Hospital
on the morning of Sunday, 1 June, when she refused to allow the friend of
an injured patient entry to the hospital. From rather sketchy newspaper
reports, it appears that Thuledi refused four men entry to the day hospital
after they had brought an injured friend to be treated. She had argued with
one of the four, upholding the hospital’s policy that only one friend could
accompany the injured man. The aggrieved man then allegedly left the hospital
and returned with a gun. Firing shots at Thuledi through a glass door, he
fatally wounded her in the head. The sample yielded a total of eight articles
detailing Adams’ sexual harassment court proceedings, and seven dedicated
to the murder of the security guard and resultant fall-out at the hospital,
where nurses eventually embarked on a strike after the killing.
It is my contention that reports around both these “prominently”
featured incidents trivialise gender-based violence. The two newspapers
do this firstly through the placement and positioning of the stories in
the newspaper, and secondly, through the treatment of the subject matter.
Though I use the word “prominent” to describe the frequency with which stories
on these two events appeared, it is used relatively to other gender-based
violence coverage; my use of the word “prominent” does not necessarily denote
prominence within the newspaper or the hierarchy of importance in comparison
to other general news stories.
Coverage on the security guard’s murder
It is broadsheet newspaper convention to place the most prominent
stories of the day on the front page. The main story on the front page is
called the lead story, and is deemed the most important, newsworthy story
of the day. It is placed on the top half of the newspaper, which is the
only portion of the newspaper, above the fold, which is visible to buyers
on newsstands. Front-page stories
of lesser importance are placed next to or below the lead story, on the
bottom half of the front page, which is not visible when the paper is folded.
Only twice during the period surveyed did two of the fifteen stories dealing
with the sexual harassment case and the security guard’s shooting make it
to a front page of either newspaper. On the first occasion, a story entitled
“Hospital Guard Shot Dead”
[5]
(Cape Argus, Monday, June 2) was used on the Cape
Argus’ front page, though it was not the lead story, and was positioned
below the fold, denoting diminished import. The Cape Argus’ lead
story for this day was the police’s announcement of a month-long amnesty
period during which members of the public could hand in illegally-owned
firearms. While it is difficult
to speculate why the chief sub-editor would have chosen one particular story
over another as the front-page lead, the report on the security guard’s
killing would have seemed to be the obvious lead story, with the firearm
amnesty story making an interesting and relevant side bar. However, the
fact that a woman’s life was lost is treated as secondary news to the announcement
of the firearm amnesty.
The second occasion on which the coverage of the event is used on
the front page is by the Cape Times (Friday, June 5), in a story headlined
“Khayelitsha clinic doors close after staff walk out”
[6]
. However, the angle of the story is not the guard’s death,
but rather the closure of the hospital due to a walkout by medical staff,
and the effects of the closure on the community. The murder is all but forgotten
in this report and is mentioned only briefly in the second paragraph – “after
the murder of a security guard manning the hospital” – as
background information to the current crisis: the closure of the hospital.
However flawed, the Cape Argus’ coverage of the killing is
still an improvement of the Cape Times’ treatment of the subject.
The report in the Cape Argus at least names the woman, and gives
some background information about events preceding the killing. It also
mentions her place of residence, giving Thuledi a human face. The Cape Times
covers the subject in three different reports,
[7]
(Monday, June 2; Tuesday, June 3; and Friday, June, 6)
but not once does it even name Thuledi. In the first report her name is
withheld because her next-of-kin have not yet been informed of her death:
however, by the third report, on Friday, she is still unnamed. She becomes
the faceless and nameless victim of another “random” act of township violence,
not worthy of being named because her black life is dispensable. There is
no mention of next-of-kin such as children, parents or a spouse, nor is
there any attempt to convey the impact of her death on her family and the
community. Neither newspaper portrays the death as gender-based violence,
nor explicitly names the killing as such, thus further trivialising the
particular incident, and the occurrence of gender-based violence in general.
Coverage of Freda Adams’ sexual harassment claim
Coverage of Adams’ sexual harassment and defamation claims falls
into the category of GBV as being trivialised, as well as reporting on GBV
which reinforces negative stereotypes and myths about women and more generally,
GBV. Again, the quality of reporting from the Cape Argus far exceeds the
Cape Times’ interpretation of the court case. This may be due to the fact
that the Cape Argus dedicated a reporter, David Yutar, to covering the proceedings,
while the Cape Times drew mostly on reports bought from the South African
Press Association (SAPA), a wire service producing generic news copy for
a variety of news outlets. It can therefore be deduced that the Cape Times
did not have a coherent policy or strategy for covering the sexual harassment
and defamation proceedings. Consequently, its coverage is disjointed, whereas
the Cape Argus reporter clearly understands the issues, and provides
some depth to his coverage of the parties’ daily court appearances. This
story did not make the front pages at all, perhaps because of long, drawn
out court proceedings. However, it should be noted that when Peter Marais
was embroiled in a political scam to change the names of Wale and Adderley
Streets in Cape Town in 2001, coverage of the Heath Investigation to determine
whether he had committed any wrongdoing, reached fever-pitch, with both
the Cape Times and the Cape Argus regularly leading with the
stories generated during the scandal and subsequent investigation. Former
Mayor Gerald Morkel is also a figure dogged by controversy: last year he
allegedly received illicit funds from German fraudster Jurgen Harksen. The
investigation which flowed from these allegations of corruption against
Morkel also generated a fair amount of front page leads in both newspapers.
However, similar front-page prominence has not been afforded the
sexual harassment suit against Marais, nor the defamation claims against
both. The lack of coverage of the sexual harassment case can only be attributed
to trivialization of the issue at stake. Allegations of corruption and fraud
against these politicians are thus deemed more important and newsworthy
than allegations of sexual harassment. Coverage of the court proceedings
hovered around page 5 in most cases, with only one report, by David Yutar,
making it onto page 2 of the Cape Argus on Wednesday, June 4. Prominently
headlined: “Adams ‘dropped after Marais complaints’”
[8]
, the report is the only one out of the eight dealing
with this topic for the week, that explicitly repeats Adams’ claims that
she was sexually harassed by Marais. It also sensitively demonstrates, through
quoting appropriate court testimony, how Adams lost her cabinet position
after complaining to Morkel about the sexual harassment. Thus it successfully
describes the context in which the alleged sexual harassment occurred, while
also demonstrating the impact and trauma of sexual harassment, without reinscribing
the “victimhood” of the complainant and further victimizing her or perpetuating
negative stereotypes about Adams or about sexual harassment. The Cape Times’
coverage of the proceedings, however, is constructed in a way that casts
doubt on Adams’ reputation, credibility and emotional stability. A report
in the Cape Times of Tuesday, June 3
[9]
, highlights court proceedings pertaining to the “reputation”
of Adams. The article reports that letters from Adams’ colleagues “reflected
positively on her reputation and status”- as if these are in question. Admittedly,
these are part of the court proceedings, but the decision to include or
omit such information ultimately rests with the reporter (This particular
report is attributed to SAPA). The Cape Times follows up this story with
another report on Wednesday, June 4, headlined “Morkel ‘amenable’ to settling
out of court with Adams”
[10]
. The report, also attributed to SAPA, describes Adams
as “clearly nervous and at times emotional”, and portrays her testifying
“with tears welling in her eyes and reaching unsteadily for a glass of water”.
In deploying this portrayal, the report invokes stereotypes of women as
“emotional”, and by inference, unreliable as witnesses in court and “unsteady”,
meaning devoid of credibility. The
image is not a very flattering one, and in sharp contrast to portrayals
of Adams by weekly newspaper Sunday Times, which describes Adams
as standing “straight
as a rod in the witness box, speaking in a clear, unwavering voice and meeting
the judge's gaze” (see “Playing Them at Their Own Game”, Sunday
Times, 29 June 2003).
In a subsequent report, published by the Cape Times on Thursday,
June 5
[11]
, reporter Ashley Smith opens his report with the following
paragraphs:
A bakery that ended up as pie in the sky,
rumours of back-stabbing and personal vendettas and a plea from the then
premier Gerald Morkel to Freda Adams to leave Peter Marais “the wounded
animal” alone.
These were just some of the ingredients
to rise to the surface yesterday in the Cape High Court between Adams, the
province’s former gender equity MEC and Marais and Morkel …
The article carries on in this vein, making the hearings sound like
soap opera fodder, without once mentioning why the parties are in
court. Instead it offers very superficial analysis, and refers to the alleged
sexual harassment as “relations” that had “soured”. Clearly this type of
reporting trivialises the very serious nature of sexual harassment by not
even naming it as the issue, preferring to call the incident “soured relations”.
Reporting rapes
On reporting rapes the newspapers all but ignored this issue. The
Cape Argus of Tuesday, June 3
[12]
, devoted 3 paragraphs on page 7 to the arrest of a serial
rapist facing 21 charges of abducting raping and indecently assaulting eight
women and girls. The issue was obviously not one the newspaper’s editorial
team deemed important. On 4 June, the Cape Times devoted one paragraph,
on page 2, to coverage of the rape of a 14-year-old girl, raped “in broad
daylight” in the “sleepy northern town of Heide”.
[13]
The item probably only made the newspaper because the
rape happened in a sleepy town, and would not have been deemed news, had
the girl been South African. On June 5, the Cape Times once again devoted
one paragraph on page 5 to the rape of a one-year-old baby by her father
in the rural village Bizana in the Eastern Cape
[14]
. Clearly, reporting of rape is not high on the agenda
of these newspapers. A rape is deemed to have no news value, a trend which
reflects the extent to which rape has become normalized in our society.
By contributing to the normalization of rape by ignoring it as an issue
which is newsworthy and deserving of outrage, it is my contention that newspapers
create an enabling climate for the commitment of such crimes.
I found only one example of coverage which falls into the sensitive,
well-covered reporting category: a Cape Argus report entitled “Giving comfort
to child victims of sexual abuse” by health writer Di Caelers, published
on Tuesday, June 3
[15]
. Caelers sensitively describes the trauma young survivors
of sexual abuse endure, and also demonstrates, to an extent, the long-term
impact of sexual abuse through her article detailing the distribution of
“comfort boxes” for child sex abuse survivors at hospitals. The writer is
afforded space to write a longer, feature type article, and succeeds in
conveying the horror of rape, while not sensationalizing or trivialising
the experience. It is worrying however, that only 1 out of 28 articles surveyed,
falls into the category of sensitive, well covered reports on GBV.
This study demonstrates how gender-based violence reporting on the
newspapers the Cape Times and the Cape Argus largely continue to either
trivialise the issue of gender-based violence by downplaying or ignoring
it in reporting, or perpetuates negative stereotypes of women and gender-based
violence through their reporting. Out of 28 reports on gender-based violence
gathered within a five-day period, only one was sensitively written, without
trivialising the issue or perpetuating negative myths about women and gender-based
violence. The compassion and sensitivity shown by this single reporter is
sadly lacking in most other reports.
Bibliography
[2] I use the term “victim” advisedly here, as I prefer to use the term “rape survivor” to describe a person who has survived a rape. “Victim” is a term used by Omarjee throughout her study.
[3] For story clippings, see Appendix A, attached.
[4] Hard news can be defined as current, breaking news, which is usually published as soon as possible after the newsworthy event occurs, in the interest of the public. Soft news is defined as less urgent articles or stories, often feature articles or human-interest stories, which have a long shelf life and do not always warrant immediate publication.
[5] See Appendix A, p ii.
[8] See Appendix A, p ix.
[12] see Appendix A, p iv
[15] See Appendix A, p v.
