Western media's doublethink on crimes against women

Reproduced below (in italics) is a message I received today from a former media colleague, who is now working abroad, in the context of the controversy generated by the BBC documentary ‘India’s Daughter’:

Look at it from the perspective of global media. Why wouldn't the BBC do a similar interview with a British rapist? One of these men could be fitting subject: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11443868/300-victims-groomed-and-assaulted-by-Oxfordshire-gangs-report-finds.html
Or they wouldn't have to go far for this: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/30/bbc-staff-child-sex-abuse-allegations

They could go the US and do an interview with a college rapist. The most dangerous place for a woman is not the streets of Delhi, but US college campuses. One in five women students are raped during their college career. http://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/campus-sexual-assault-stats

When US media -- and activists -- denounce India as a society of violence towards women, what they are trying to do is divert attention away from the US situation to India (and make themselves feel better by venting against Indians). After all, the college rapists are not hoodlums from the ghettos, but the brothers, sons, nephews and cousins of the media and social elite and their friends and house guests. Would they, in any case, want to taint with a broad brush the student population made up of people like their own.

Street harassment of women is quite widespread in the US, too. http://www.npr.org/2014/11/01/360494480/woman-in-street-harassment-video-i-do-not-feel-safe-right-now
But does the western media treat it the way they do harassment in India?

And US politicians? Todd Aiken, a US Congressman said there are legitimate rapes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/08/19/todd-akin-gop-senate-candidate-legitimate-rape-rarely-causes-pregnancy/

Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate, said that rape and rape-induced pregnancies are part of God's (I presume he means the Abrahamic God) plan.

(No, they didn't belong to an Indian Khap Panchayat but were members of a mainstream US party -- not even on the fringe, but with wide party base.)

Indian media and civil society have done an excellent job of covering and violence against women in their society. Can that be said of the US media and civil society -- if you compare them to their attitudes towards similar problems in the US and in India, and how they and Indian media cover and condemn the issues in their respective countries.

When was the last time an Indian newspaper wrote a caustic editorial on rapes on US campuses or British rapes of children?

I am not denying the problems and in no way suggesting that they be hushed up -- the very active Indian media and civil society do an excellent job. I can't but notice, though, that western media is just trying to avoid criticizing their own by turning attention away from them. They don't need to raise conscience on this, when Indian society is doing a better job.

I am fully in agreement with my friend’s assessment that the Indian media has a better record of addressing the issue of crimes against women than its western counterparts. That, however, should not blind us to the fact Indian society is far more impervious to the idea of gender equality than western societies.

I have no hesitation to admit that, in my judgment, there is a good side to western media intrusions like ‘India’s Daughter’, whatever their motive. It is that they often handle the issue more professionally than our media.

As for the western media’s tendency to ignore similar developments in their own countries, the answer is to develop non-western international media institutions which will, hopefully, redress the imbalance. 

The chart below shows that the national outrage of December 2012 did not lead to a fall in the incidence of sex crimes in Delhi. On the contrary it shot up. 

Obviously we needed to be reminded of that horrendous crime, and the unchanged mindset of the criminals and their political and legal defenders. The BBC documentary has done that.  

Towards media accountability

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Leveson report on the culture, practices and ethics of the press in the United Kingdom provoked a discussion in India but with media professionals divided and the government indecisive there has been no progress towards ensuring media accountability.

The Indian media presents a complex picture. The print media has a regulatory mechanism that is ineffectual. The electronic media has a self-regulatory mechanism which is even more ineffectual. The provisions of the Information Technology Act put the new media at the mercy of the police.

The constitution is silent on freedom of the press but the state acknowledges it inheres in the freedom of speech and expression, which is guaranteed. In the early years of freedom, newspapers exercised excessive restraint under editors who had experience of war-time censorship and were alive to the grave internal situation caused by post-partition violence. 

The Press Council, set up in compliance with the recommendations of a commission in the 1950s, is headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and includes representatives of newspaper owners as well as journalists, Members of Parliament and eminent persons drawn from different fields. It has no power to punish the wrongdoer. All it can do is to ask the erring newspaper to publish its adverse finding.

During the emergency, when censorship was in force, the government scrapped the council but the next government revived it. The experience of that period brought home to the journalists and the public the importance of press freedom. Their combined opposition forced Rajiv Gandhi to abandon a move to bring in a law to regulate the press.

The Press Council can claim credit for drawing up a code of ethics but over the years it lost such moral authority as it possessed. It remained a mute witness when the Times of India group entered into “private treaty” relationships with corporate entities. It investigated the “paid news” phenomenon but could take no action against the erring newspapers.

Television channels did not exist when the Press Council came into existence and are outside its purview. Five years ago, as the public reacted angrily to a channel’s fake sting operation against a school, the government considered legislation to bring the electronic media within its ambit or set up a separate regulatory mechanism for it. Channel owners immediately announced a code of ethics and set up their own regulatory mechanism styled as News Broadcasting Standards Authority, headed by a retired chief justice of India. The NBSA has eight members, four drawn from within the electronic media and four from outside. 

There are a few hundred news channels in the country but only 40 run by companies owned by the association which set up NBSA come under its jurisdiction. In one of the few cases of successful intervention, NBSA imposed a fine of Rs100,000 on a channel holding it guilty of intruding into the privacy of individuals in a report on homosexuality in Hyderabad.

In a complaint to the police, Navin Jindal, a Congress MP and industrialist, recently alleged that the Zee TV network attempted to extort Rs1 billion from his companies over a five-year period by way of advertisement charges. The network counter-charged that Jindal had offered it advertisement contracts to stop airing adverse reports.The police arrested two senior editors of the network. At the time of writing, several weeks later, they are still in jail without bail. The police summoned the owner of the channel and his son for interrogation.

A secretly taped video released by Jindal clearly shows that the channel editors compromised their journalistic position by entering into negotiations for a long-term advertisement contract. At the same time the editors’ prolonged detention strengthens the network’s charge of political motivation.

The basic issue is one of the media’s accountability to the society it seeks to serve. While the law can step in to deal with criminal conduct, there is a vast area beyond the reach of the law where accepted professional values must be the determining factor. It is here that the regulatory mechanism must play its part.

The concept of press freedom demands the government’s exclusion from the process of regulation. Justice Markandeya Katju, the Chairman of the Press Council, advocates the creation of a statutorily backed professional body for mediapersons similar to those already in existence for doctors and advocates. It is a pity the media fights shy of this eminently practical solution. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, Devember 12, 2012..