gender issues in botswana newspapers

2006-10-13T14:24:00.000+02:00

THE FINAL SAY.

ALTHOUGH IT IS OUTSIDE THE REQUIREMENT OF THE ACADEMIC QUESTION, IN THE CAPACITY IN WHICH I HAVE BECOME SENTIMENTALLY ATTACHED TO THIS EXERCISE, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A RESUME OF WHAT I HAVE LEARNED.

FROM THE VOICE, I REALISED THAT THIS PAPER WHICH IS A TABLOID, THERE IS A TENDENCY IN TABLOIDS TO BREAK SOME TRADITIONALISM THAT NORMALLY LEAKS INTO THE JOURNALISTIC PROFESSION. I HAVE FOUND THAT THESE PAPERS WHICH MANAGE TO "BREAK THE RULES" ACTUALLY CARVE OUT STEREOTYPES SUCH AS THOSE OF GENDER. I FIND IT EASIER TO BREAK STEREOTYPES WITH TABLOIDS THAN WITH STANDARD AND CONVENTIONAL NEWSPAPERS SUCH AS THE BOTSWANA GAZETTE.

I CANNOT TALK MUCH ABOUT THE BOTSWANA GAZETTE. AS A COVENTIONAL PAPER (THAT STARTED IN 1984) IT HAS BEEN 'INFECTED' BY SOME SOCIAL STEREOTYPES THAT ELEVATE THE MALE GENDER. AS A MATTER OF FACT DURING THIS TIME GENDER AWARENESS WAS NOT THAT POPULAR--BUT THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE! THEY HAVE TO ADJUST MORE ESPECIALLY THAT THEY HAVE NEW BLOOD IN THEIR WRITING STAFF, SOME WHOM ARE UNIVERSITY OF BOTSWANA GRADUATES.

IN CONCLUSION, THE VOICE IS DOING WELL IN THIS RESPECT BUT THERE IS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT. THE BOTSWANA GAZETTE HAS A POOR PERFORMANCE IN GENDER ISSUES BUT IT IS NEVER TOO LATE, THEY CAN PATCH UP THEIR BATTERED KIND OF WRITING (excuse the strong language: i am saying my opinion).

2006-10-12T22:18:00.000+02:00

(this is for week eigth as there was a confusion between certain newspaper issues. prevously it was published on a different entry blog)

BOTSWANA GAZETTE(27-09-2006)

-a story depicts failure of an organization. a female worker for the organization used. what are they saying? are females the ones subtle to fail--that was the botswana gazette. what is disturbing is the implication that the picture has. like i mentioned there seems to be an implication that women are linked with failure. what is more disturbing is the fact that more than half of the story consitutes of a different issue from that of drugs but of the cables that were stolen. moreover, a woman is used in the picture and none is interviewed. it is also saddening to note that out of the 32-paged paper, only 3 stories actually featured women. one was a feature on former first lady Olebile Masire (page 18), the other a wire story from Associated Press, featuring "actress" Ali Landry (page T4). the other on page B1 showed how it is getting hard to do business in Botswana. i sum, it can be safely concluded that this paper has falied in this edition to give a fair gender representation in terms of pictures and content.

THE VOICE (29-09-2006):

on page 5, in a story entitled "School of Hard Knocks" there is a disturbing word in the headline. the word "headmistress" is a gender bias word that has long been away with to the extent that students also do not use it anymore. it sounded deliberate since the the proper 'school head' was used afterwards (in the body of the story). however it is commendable that the voice does not use gender bias titles such as mrs., mr., or ms.

on page 5 (independence supplement) there is a story entitled 'the birth of a nation'. there is no woman featured there. one might argue that during independence there were no females who were actually instrumental in the process leading to independence. however, my argument would be that if one talks of brith, as the story depicts by covering events beyond 1970, doesn't it denote a process happening over a longer period of time. that being the case why were no women included. for example, there is a Dr. gaositwe Chiepe who even appears in one of the pictures there. this woman was active in the "birth" of this nation as found or recorded in http://people.africadatabase.org/en/person/13339.html . for this point to be understood, reference can be made to story on page 10 of the independence supplement.

the other disturbing story is that of the history of music in relation to independence. it only featured male artists. what about 'Anafiki' from Mashoro who was 'Ratsie Setlhako's contemporary, what about Maxy who undoubtedly matches with 'Vee'.

it is however commendavle that a woman gave an independence poem this time.once again there is no coverage on women when it comes to sport.

2006-09-25T15:42:00.000+02:00

BOTSWANA GAZETTE: this week on this paper we shall solely look at the 'Time Out' section that focuses on issues of entertainment, culture and business. in the cover of the section there is a very nice picture of two young people--one of them Nicole Dima [my neighbour in Francistown). as a matter of fact it is commendable that both of the pictures are positive representation of gender. in fact the ladies are praised as the captions denote. the only problem i have is that a female will be praised in the captions and images but will not be fairly represented in relation to the story. on page T2 there is a story entitled "Annie premiers". apart from the fact that the story is about a play based on the life of a female, the story [newspaper story] is featuring females, especially those who play the characters in the Annie drama. this is good as it increased the number of stories that include females. this brings the number of stories including women to two out of eight. this is a poor performance.

THE VOICE (22-09-2006):

it is a little bit disappointing that this time only three stories primarily involving women were featured in the hard-news section. the first was the cover story in which the woman was a suicide victiman one featuring minister Motsumi. another is barclays centre-spread which predominantly shows men. actually ther is no woman featured but it is a Barclays Bank event not "a men's event". the last one on page 6 praising a woman "for cheating death". it is a rare incident of its kind. this time i want to also analyze the 'court diary'. it is balanced inthe sense that there is an even representation of both gender even though men were the victims--but that was a matter of reality but not taking an angle, so i cannot comment. i have noted that "the voice" rarely features female on the sport section.

really this week i cannot say much about the comparison because both papers performed poorly. however the botswana gazette might come up first since i assayed just one entinty of the paper, but the whole paper had more stories than those i included in my evaluation.

2006-09-15T10:47:00.000+02:00

this week the BOTSWANA GAZETTE made a turn in history by publishing more stories on females in this issue than in the previous one . i am in no certain terms saying they did that good but it is commendable. there was at least a story involving females on the front page. however it becomes a shame admist glory that the story did not praise women in any way. it rather gave a bad picture of women relations. on the other story that had more columns a 67-year old was denied bail with her sons. i could argue the fact that it is almost the negatives that are attached to women--but news are news, whether good or bad.

concerning content, i have found gender biased language used in the story entitled "Old Fashioned Procedures Delaying Justice--Nganunu". in column one there is a statement that reads "...a Rules Comittee chaired by a Judge and manned by legal practitioners". the word manned is not a fit one in this sense. it would be correct to say ' and made up of legal practioner'.

although negligeable, there was a story on Karate on the back page: it is commendable that although Karate is a sport of physique, they decided to use a picture of women sparring. even the story inside contains a number of males' names but they used the picture of ladies. this improves the gender representation through graphic images.

THE VOICE did well in this edition. they covered more stories on women and almost giving a balanced gender representation. for the first time i assayed a centre-spread [entitled Bocongo celebrate 40 yrs of Independence]. the very pictures spoke for themselves. there was an even distribution for both gender. there was also a supplement story entitled "the highs & lows of the 1st ever Botswana consumer fair". the story was based on the interview with a certain Frieda Bamu who is an exchnage manager. in another story entitled "UB hosts science and technology conference" minister Pelonomi venson-moitoi featured as the 'main character'. her picture of her featured just like with the previous story. from the Strange World section there was a balanced subjection to the kind mocking (if not fun-making) so that the other may not feel that it is being mocked or humiliated. there was another story entitled "Local Cheese Factory Grows Steadily" which has a collage with pictures that showed more pictures of women. this is a commendable improvement.

2006-09-12T23:31:00.000+02:00

this time we shall randomly make sporadic comments on stories across the newspapers which are under scrutiny.

"the botswana gazette" wed 6 sep; ran a story entitled " 'BDP decline' rubbished". there is a hidden 'deliberate' mistakeon the first paragraph. the reporter made a list of presenters of the draft paper in question, the reporter list the males who are all titled, and then ends with a lady and given the title "miss". this is a gender if not sexist word which should be done away with. in the current writing styles such titles are left out and then the following 'pronouns' will indicate the gender in an inevitable way. i find the story in the voice fri 8 sep; titled "battle of the wills" to be a perfect example of this. the titles of Tiro Mothusi and Lekgabile Mmemo are not revealed but we can tell of their gender.

on the other hand, it is 100 precent unbelievable that the presentation, which was the issue in question, was an all-males event; because the reporter's approach of the story suggests that females who were 'worth intervieewing' attended. there are many women lecturers, some of them being 'Dr.'s, were very much available for interviews. MOST AMAZINGLY, THE DEPUTY PRESIDENT OF THE BOTSWANA NATIONAL FRONT (B.N.F.) DR. KATHLEEN LETSHABO WORKS HERE AT UB!!!!!!!!!!! she could have been intervieweed!! surely she would not have been an misfit. as matter of fact she is the missing link in the story.

"the voice" almost did well with gender representation in the business section with one story and flinched with another. the story that earns them praise is entitled "Stanbic Bank Promotes Financial Literacy". it starts with the picture having a male and a female. the story having focused on the man who is the pivot of the story, gave a substantial amount to the comment of the woman unlike in the past where women (even female ministers) were not given enough space. however, another story (entitled "Energy Sector Launche Gender Mainstream Association") which was specifically on gender was under qualified!!!! let me get this straight: ...a story on gender?...and no gender balance is reflected in the story? for example: the reporter should have interviewed at least two people from each gender on how they feel on the issue. on the other hand, if the angle would have been changed to report it from the perspective of women celebrating the organizational rennovation--just as much as the scent of celebrato is apparent but suppressed.

2006-09-02T14:04:00.000+02:00

i would like to first of all make it clear that readers will not always find criticism but where fitting there shall be praises too.

today [02/09/06] i shall be looking at a few stories of interest from the newspapers "The Voice" and "The Botswana Gazette".

maybe first of all we should look at the general coverage. if one looks at the home page of the voice http://www.thevoicebw.com/index.php , females seem to feature in more pages than males: although the questions becomes how are they portrayed. for 'the botswana gazette' the headlines http://www.gazette.bw/tbg_head.htm prove that the stories in the paper are male-dominated. am i saying non-newsworthy stories should be published?...not even an atom of it. i am saying more coverage by other papers shows that the paper in question could increase its scope of coverage.
then i shall pick two stories of interest from each paper to look at them in detail.

from "The Voice" i shall be looking at a story entitled "Mogae to Launch Brand Botswana Campaign" ; which is a business story http://www.thevoicebw.com/businnes.php . this story is a editorial and design conundrum. the impress that one gets from the headline is that the story shall be about President Mogae. in fact when the reading begins it focuses on the 'eminence' of Mogae and give him 'the glory'. what i find to be the problem is that Mrs. Masire-Mwambwa is given the secondary position although about 90% of the story is on her. the journalistic protocol shows that the title and lead make the essence of the story. the billion dollar question here is "WHY WAS MOGAE GIVEN THAT EMINENCE IN THE STORY?" although one may feel that this is a matter of class, i say this is a matter of gender because Mrs. Mwamba is a much known and reputable person. i am of the view that Mogae should have been made part of the story not the main subject like this. nevertheless the placement of Mrs. Mwamba's picture is commendable as others would have put Mogae's picture.

'The Gazette' published a story titled "some MPs are drunks, says Moatlhodi" http://www.gazette.bw/index.htm . this story is almost fair in this subject of gender. the reporter interviewed two male MPs and a female while it is claimed the other was out of reach. this is commendable. however the other woman [Kokorwe] is ridiculed in the story. i am of the view that picturing is gender bias. there are women in the story but we only find two men there. there should have been a woman (Kokorwe) in place of Hon. Molefhabangwe because she constituted more of the story than him.

for this analysis i conclude that gender bias and misrepresentation is reflected in the way stories are written and how are pictures are placed or included and omitted.

Ciao!!!

2006-08-30T15:36:00.000+02:00

Hi!

this blogg is an academic piece that seeks to analyze gender representation in the media. it does this within a comparative scope of "the voice" and "botswana gazette".

the first comparison was on the aforementioned newspapers dating Friday 11 August 2006 and Werdnesday 09-15 August 2006 respectively.

as mentioned in the briefing slug above, the information shalll look at a number of aspects ranging from pictures to content of the story and the writing styles of those papers. if you look at both papers you will find that 'the botswana gazette' and 'the voice' both have pictures of men on the cover stories. this cannot be labeled as a coincidence since it is customary of local newspapers to do that. "the gazette" can be thoroughly blamed for that. they uphold the stereotype that men always must have the eminence--suffice the tswana saying "ga di nke di etelelwa ke manamagadi pele" (men are never led by women). obviously a paper with a decent looking man would sell easier than that of a decent woman compared to that of a nude or sexy girl in a cover page. however "the voice" cannot be blamed for the same misdeed. they have had so many issues in the past that have featured women on cover pages and with a general gender balance per story: but this one has become a misfit. the story in question involved so many females but not even a single picture of them was put up.they rather chose a picture of 'an irate man'...to do symbolize what? nobody knows.

concerning the correlation of the number of stories and gender respresentation, "the botswana gazette" decided to cover its 28 paged issue with 14 news stories; only one of which 'featured' a woman. this story (page 28 & 27) co-starred Dorcas Makgato-Malesu with several males. the first ailment of the story is that although the story revolved around Malesu, it was first given a gender-bias title "Will Buthali Rise to Occasion" when the man here had a secondary constitution of the story. moreover although this story concerned her it was not qualified by quoting her but she was just 'referred to'. she only consituted about 20 percent of the story and then the paltform was given to men!!! still on story representation, there are other stories in which women could have been included. for example the story on page 4 entitled "Teachers' organizations sign MoU". this is a female dominated profession, and why was not even a single woman interviewed or talked about. the drift is clear: although they are female, as long as they are represented by men we can just talk to the men who call the shots!!! this is some social stereotype that the media should be quick to notice and correct if not combat. another embarassing account is one about the communication forum held by BTA. the same story was covered by the voice. "gazette" gave minister Pelonomi Venson less than 10 lines but the voice gave the minister's contribution 22 lines in the story.

"the voice" has always had a fair record of gender balance in aspects of images, content and language. in covering the BTA story the voice gave minister Venson much platform and also went on to balance the pictures with that of Katlego Nkwe--a very beautiful lady! however, it is a shame that she was not featured in the story but used to enhance the appearance.

an epitome in gender balance was in a story entitled "The Great 'Voice Babe' Debate". the statement that qualifies the credibility of the story is the statement that states that the reporter "took the streets". s/he did a good job in balancing gender of his interviewees. s/he intervieweed two women and two men on the issue. what they said is their affair because the story constituted more quotes and less of the writer's opinion.

in conclusion, the two papers have done poorly--especially "the botswana gazette". "the voice" went beyond its code-line by not providing pictures of the allegedly abused girls. they have always mastered this subject! for gazette, they need to really improve on gender balanced by the chararcters/subjects and content of their stories.