Writing the rest

A few years ago, this reviewer was discussing women's representation in the media at a course on gender. The session focused on the invisibility of women's issues in mainstream media and the inadequate space in the media for meaningful news or analytical reports on the status of women. However, a few lecturers argued that women were in fact well represented in the print and television media – women achievers, they pointed out, especially in sports and business, are featured in the news, while women protagonists dominate the television entertainment sector, albeit in stereotypical soap operas. In addition, women columnists and news anchors have drilled neat holes in the glass ceiling. In a post-liberalised media world, this might be considered reason enough for the gathered lecturers to celebrate. But I was left with a sense of disquiet.

Despite the seeming visibility of women in the media, their representation in the news amount to little more than tabloid reportage, of which there are abundant examples. Recent ones include the disclosure of a police report filed by a student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences who alleged that she had been gang-raped; the unethical identification of rape victims in Chhattisgarh; the media's complicity in maligning the murdered schoolgirl Aarushi Talwar; or the media circus made of the personnel dilemma of Gudiya (now deceased), who was forced by a panchayat and religious leaders to return to her first husband, a soldier named Arif, even though she had remarried during his five-year incarceration in a jail in Pakistan following the Kargil conflict.