Page 228 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

Chapter 10
A tyranny of intimacy? Women,
femininity and television news

Liesbet van Zoonen

In this chapter I shall explore feminist perspectives on journalism and
the public sphere. A basic feminist requirement of news is that it should
enable women (and men) to make sense of their own social and political
circumstances in such a way that they feel empowered to criticize and
change them. One might argue that news never enabled anyone, woman
or man, to understand their own circumstances:

How often does it occur that information provided to you on
morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes
you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you
would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some
problem you are required to solve?
(Postman 1984:68)

However, the customary feminist critique postulates that news has
always been more alien to the socio-political concerns of most women
than to those of most men. That critique is rapidly overtaken by changes
in the subjects and styles of TV news, current affairs programmes and
other forms of journalism, including among other things a growing
attention to human interest subjects, an intimate and personal mode of
address and the treatment of political behaviour and issues as though
they are matters of personality. The label ‘intimization’ provides a
convenient reference to these trends.
I hope to incite a reconsideration of feminist perspectives on
journalism by analysing a seemingly marginal phenomenon: the
predominance of women newsreaders in Dutch television news.
Although their exact number may change with regularly occurring
changes in personnel, women invariably occupy at least half of the
anchor positions. This phenomenon fits in the context of a wider
movement of women into various areas of journalism. For instance,