“Shameless militant woman disguised under the name of a journalist …they invite you to a TV channel and you insult at a society of 99 percent Muslims.” – retorts Turkey’s Prime Minister and Presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan during an election rally in the eastern city of Malatya. This vitriolic outburst aimed at Amberin Zaman, who writes for the Economist and the Turkish daily TARAF, serves as the latest piece of evidence in misogyny, human rights violation, media censorship, autocracy and abuse of power in International circle of media galore.
Recently Zaman had questioned the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a televised debate whether any Muslim society was able to challenge its authorities and this enquiry of reasoning, was more than enough to put the Muslim hardliners on alert. She has since then complained of pro-Govt. smear campaign initiated against her, on social media account which drew a lot of flak for her question, as that was equated to be at par with ‘insulting Muslims’
Not backing down, Zaman too responded to Erdogen through her article in daily, TARAF , “You are lynching a Muslim woman who described what you are doing. Because women are sitting targets, aren’t they?” Further, Zaman was backed by THE ECONOMIST by releasing a statement that Zaman has worked for 15 years and has been respected by one and all.
This is not a solitary case of a woman being insulted and questioned over her knowledge, credibility and allegiance but just goes on to strengthen the well grounded prejudice which the women journalists face world over. To be a Muslim Women Journalist problematizes the issue three folds. For starters, to fight back the hegemonies internalized in religion, gender and society calls for some heavy duty cleaning of stereotypes associated. Be it the hardliners of a particular faith creating ruckus over women liberation or nudging the gendered ‘boxed’ roles of male and female or the societal do’s and don’ts of ‘professions considered suitable enough’ for a woman, magnify the extent of biases fought by women across ethnicities in this profession.
Back home when women journalists like Barkha Dutt and Sagarika Ghose are continued to be labeled as ‘pseudo leftists’ with their allegiance tilted towards a certain party or being an anti-party crusader, they are more than often viewed under the umbrella of a certain network which they work with. Seen as mouthpieces with certain propagandas at hand, rather as an entity capable of dispensing and airing individual views, never are they seen minus their tags and labels.
For a society, which still reels under the marvel of portrayals of journalists in Bollywood, by the likes of Preity Zinta(lakshya) or Rani Mukherjee(No one killed Jessica), there’s more to than what meets the eye. For going to the Front to cover war, or hurling abuses and slapping is not the hallmark of this profession. But the feat could be achieved by a simple reasoned enquiry directed to the person/s accountable. Sounds simple indeed but it comes at the cost of political backlash in times of yellow journalism.
The recent case of an alleged suicide bid by a TV journalist of a certain network could not be merely discounted as an instance of an occupational hazard exclusively but could also be read in the light of ‘workplace harassment’.
There are growing number of cases of women journalists, across the globe reporting of cyber bullying, stalking, and hate posts on their social media networks (read facebook, twitter, quora etc). What’s interesting to note is that even the feedback (replies/disagreement) to authors of articles published by women is gender –centric, i.e. it does not much pinpoint to the standards of research as a journalist but dismissed as ‘a piece written by woman’.
With a world which still wants women journalists to cover ‘soft’ topics like fashion or page3, some are fighting a hard battle to wash off such ‘gloss’.
Will we ever have the psychological bandwidth to acknowledge and accept women as journalists (or should we better say to accept women as humans) maintaining the sanctity of the profession intact?
