Belgium (Flanders) Global Media Monitoring Project 2015
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Belgium (Flanders) Global Media Monitoring Project 2015 National Report Acknowledgements GMMP 2015 is licensed under creative commons using an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. GMMP 2015 is co-ordinated by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), an international NGO which promotes communication for social change, in collaboration with data analyst, Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), South Africa. The data for GMMP 2015 was collected through the collective voluntary effort of hundreds of organizations including gender and media activists, grassroots communication groups, academics and students of communication, media professionals, journalists associations, alternative media networks and church groups. Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. For any use or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. With support from Preface This report is written by Sara De Vuyst, Susan Vertoont and Sofie Van Bauwel from the department of communication sciences at the Ghent University (Belgium). The data for this report where collected by Yannick Dujardin and analysed by Sara De Vuyst, Yannick Dujardin, Susan Vertoont and Sofie Van Bauwel. In Belgium the option was taken to provide two regional reports, this report will only elaborate on the results of the North of Belgium (Flanders). Global Context As newsroom staff around the world went about their day on 25 March 2015, hundreds of volunteers located in over 100 countries gathered to monitor their news media as part of the Fifth Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) is the world’s longest-running and most extensive research on gender in the news media. It began in 1995 when volunteers in 71 countries around the world monitored women’s presence in their national radio, television and print news. The research revealed that only 17% of news subjects – the people who are interviewed or whom the news is about – were women. It found that gender parity was ‘a distant prospect in any region of the world. News [was] more often being presented by women but it [was] still rarely about women.1 Seventy countries participated in the Second GMMP in 2000. This and all subsequent GMMPs were coordinated by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). The research found a relatively static picture: only 18% of news subjects were women, a statistically insignificant change over the 5-year period.2 The first statistically significant change in women’s overall presence in the news was registered in 2005 in the third iteration of the research.3 Women comprised 21% of news subjects, a three percentage point increase over the period 2000 to 2005. Their near invisibility continued however, with only 10% of stories focussing centrally on women, underrepresentation in the major news topics and as voices in the news. The third GMMP made an important discovery: the sex of the journalist mattered for the gender dimensions of a story. For instance, the likelihood of female news subjects appearing in stories was higher in the case of stories by women journalists (25%) than in those by male journalists (20%). A second statistically significant change was noted in the results of the Fourth GMMP in 2010. In data collected from 108 countries, some progress in women’s presence in the news was evident.4 Women made up 24% of the people in the news, up three percentage points from the 2005 finding. However women’s underrepresentation and near lack of voice remained. Only 13% of all stories focussed specifically on women. Women were rarely central in stories that comprised the bulk of the news agenda such as politics, government and the economy. Women were outnumbered by men as newsmakers in every major news topic. Encouragingly, 44% of people providing popular opinion in the news were women – a ten percentage point increase from 2005. As newsmakers, women were under-represented in professional categories. Similar to the Third GMMP, the Fourth in the series confirmed the finding on differences between female and male journalists in the gender dimensions of stories they reported. The likelihood of selection of female news subjects was higher for female journalists (28%) than for male journalists (22%). Stories by female reporters were more likely to challenge gender stereotypes (7%) than those by male reporters (4%). In pilot research on news online, 76 news websites in 16 countries and 8 international news websites were monitored. The results showed that women comprised only 23% of online news subjects – indicating that women’s underrepresentation in traditional media had crossed over into the digital news world. The First GMMP and, as will be seen, the Fifth GMMP reveal that the world reported in the news is mostly male. Twenty years since the first GMMP, the challenges of news media sexism, gender 1 Global Media Monitoring Project, Women’s participation in the news. National Watch on Images of Women in the Media (MediaWatch) Inc. 1995 2 Spears, George and Kasia Seydegart, Erin Research. With additional analysis by Margaret Gallagher. Who makes the news? Global Media Monitoring Project, 2000. 3 Gallagher, Margaret. Who makes the news? Global Media Monitoring Project, 2005. World Association for Christian Communication. 4 Macharia, Sarah, Dermot O’Connor and Lilian Ndangam, World Association for Christian Communication. Who makes the news? Global Media Monitoring Project, 2010. stereotyping and gender bias are proving to be intractable across time, space and content delivery platforms. At the same time, there exist a few examples of successes towards gender-just, gender-fair media. The number of gender-just media portrayals in Belgium (Flanders) remains very scarce. Only one rather weak ‘good practice’ was identified in the Flemish monitor of the 25th of March. It concerns a newspaper article of ‘Het Nieuwsblad’ that covered the reactions on the German plane crash in the French Alps. The article extensively focused on the emotional reactions to this event from the male school principle and the male mayor of the German town Haltern am See. In contrast, the reaction of the female Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is described rationally and brief. This subtly challenges the stereotype of the ‘rational man’ and the ‘emotional woman’. National context News media remain the major and most influential source of information, ideas and opinion for most people around the world. It is a key element of the public and private space in which people, nations and societies live. A nation or society that does not fully know itself cannot respond to its citizens’ aspirations. Who and what appears in the news and how people and events are portrayed matters. Who is left out and what is not covered are equally important. Across the world, the cultural underpinnings of gender inequality and discrimination against women are reinforced through the media. As a department of communication sciences of the Ghent University we already participated from 1995 onwards until the latest monitor. As a department were the research on gender and media is one of the research lines we can build on expertise in research on gender and media and also on gender and news. We want to stress the importance of research of gender and media based on a monitor where all news and the representations of women and men is researched. The previous report is available in the GMMP http://whomakesthenews.org/gmmp/gmmp-reports/gmmp-2010-reports. Executive Summary The results and conclusions from the Belgian (Flemish) GMMP analysis of 2015 are based on a total of 167 news items, monitored on the 25th of March. That day was an atypical news day in Belgium (Flanders) because the news was mostly dominated by a German plane crash in the French Alps. The monitor composed of data from print media, radio, television and online news. Gender trends in internet and Twitter news are discussed separately from gender trends in classic media (print, radio and television). The monitor examined the presence of men and women in the news, as ‘news subjects’ and as ‘reporters or presenters’. The analysis revealed that women are still overtly underrepresented in news media, both as ‘news subjects’ and as ‘reporters or presenters’, in both new and traditional media. Traditional news media As ‘news subjects’ women have an overall presence of 27% in traditional print, radio and television news media. In print media 34% of the news sources is female, in radio news 27% is female and in television news 20%. Regarding the scope of the news, most female news subjects appear in local news (38%). The presence of women in foreign (29%) or national (21%) news is lower. When female subjects do function in the news it is mostly because of their personal experience (45%). Not often (only 18%) are they included as spokesperson, politician or minister. As ‘news reporters or presenters’ there remains a big gap between men and women. The gap is the biggest in print media, where only 1/4 news reporters is a woman (27% versus 73%). For radio and television, approximately 1/3 is a woman (38% versus 62%). Most female reporters cover ‘social and legal news’ (63%) and issues on ‘politics and government’ (19%) and ‘science and health’ (19%). The majority of the male reporters also cover ‘social and legal news’ (55%), but they are also responsible for issues on ‘crime and violence’ (17%), ‘politics and government’ (12%) and ‘celebrities, arts, media and sports’ (12%). Female reporters tend to include more female sources in the news, although the difference with male reporters is not big (25% versus 22%). Since there were only two news items identified that clearly highlighted issues of gender(in)equality, no statements can be made concerning the hypothesis that female reporters pay more attention to issues of gender equality.