A Round Table Dialogue titled ‘Monitoring Gender Content in Media: Findings and Discussions’ was organized by South Asia Center for Media in Development (SACMID) at Press Institute Bangladesh (PIB) on 30 November, 2021, while PIB was the co-organizer of the Dialogue.
The main objective of the program was to present and discuss/reflect how various media of Bangladesh represented gender in their news content.
Total 20 guests were invited in that program. Among them 15 were from different media houses and civil society organizations. Director General of PIB (Press Institute Bangladesh) Zafar Wazed chaired the session.
The program started with a presentation from SACMID Team. SACMID Program Coordinator Afia Sultana presented the key findings of three-month monitoring of gender content in six selected media houses of the country.
Three speakers have been invited as special discussants to give their comment and opinion reflecting on the SACMID presentation of findings. The three special discussants included Dr. S.M Shameem Reza, Associate Professor of Mass Communication and Journalism department under University of Dhaka; Nishat Sultana Purabi, Deputy Director of Advocacy and justice department under World Vision and Arafat Siddiki from BBC Media Action.
In his comments Dr. Shameem Reza told — ‘we had been working on presenting women in the media for a long time, but the situation had not changed much in the last two decades.’ He believed that training on gender and media is very important but it is also equally necessary to bring innovation on research in this field.
Nishat Sultana Purabi told that power was exercised through language. We had grown up with a masculine outlook since our childhood. That’s why some insensitive words had been used by our subconscious mind; which should not be done.
After the reflection of the special discussants, the floor was open to discuss and respond among all the participants from national media outlets like Bangla Tribune,ProthomAlo,Ittefaq,Channel 71,Somoy TV and bdnews24.com. Reporter from Prothom Alo(the largest circulated daily of the country) asked the panel, ‘there are few women working in editorial level in some media outlets, which is positive, why discriminate presentation is still being practiced?’ Panel clarified that ‘Being women doesn’t ensure gender sensitive mindset, since we all have been grown up in a male dominated society, a man can be gender sensitive more than women; beside may be there are some other factors like misperception of audience mind’. The discussion was very interactive and useful for both the journalists group and SACMID team.
Some recommendations were come out as results of the open-floor discussion.
• Research sampling should be representative (wider)
• We must focus more clearly our point of view for which we are working.
• We must increase local news presentation
• We must take more TV and Community radio news as sample
• Training on gender and media research should be increased.
• Need to list gender sensitive words.
• Workshop needs to be organized with the media house staffs for the use of gender sensitive language.
• Must make a list of words which will be used for transgender people.
The roundtable was ended with a vote of thanks from Annelies Langlear, Program Manager, South and South East Asia of Free Press Unlimited. The Roundtable dialogue has been supported by Free Press Unlimited.
