Page 230 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

A TYRANNY OF INTIMACY? 219

recent study carried out in the EC countries by Thoveron (1986)
observes some progress in that women are being shown more often in
more significant roles, but concludes that among the journalists
appearing on the screen there still is a severe under-representation of
women. The role of newsreader is most common for women journalists:
28 per cent of the newsreaders were found to be women.
Women’s exclusion from the news is often conceived as a result of
their marginal participation in the public sphere in general. In such
arguments the concept of the public sphere contains all non-private and
non-domestic activities people might engage in, and is not limited to
spaces and occasions in which people enact their political role as citizens.
Thoveron (1986:293), for instance, assumes that the people running TV
channels ‘cannot be held responsible for women’s low profile in the
political, industrial and economic world. Their programmes are a mere
reflection of the actual situation.’
Others, however, argue that the male dominance among reporters
results in news which reflects a male view of reality, leaving little room
for feminist and women’s achievements, or consigning topics and
approaches that traditionally belong to the realm of women to special
niches in the news, like human interest and lifestyle time slots.
No matter how one explains the exclusion of women from the news,
there seems to be consensus about the fact that their professional and
symbolic under-representation reconstructs the present division between
a public male world and a private female world.

The lack of coverage of women and the placement of what
coverage there is has a clear potential to affect the news audience.
Beyond the obvious effect that the audience will remain
uninformed about women and women’s issues, the implicit
symbolic messages contained in the coverage largely serve to
reinforce cultural stereotypes about the insignificance of women
and their ‘proper place’.
(Pingree and Hawkins 1978)

Therefore feminists have argued for an increased number of female
journalists as well as an increase in news items featuring women (cf.
Gallagher 1984). One of the rationales behind such recommendations is
the idea that ‘as more women in television news succeed in positions of
responsibility and high visibility, the way is paved for those who seek
acceptance in traditionally male domains’ (Gelfman 1976: preface).
Others add that an increase in the number of women journalists would