Media is a cultural element that not only reflects the dominant attitudes of society but also shapes our approaches. Pakistani media mirrors the cultural influence on thoughts and ideas. This study intends to examine the current portrayal of women in crime reporting in Pakistani English print media. It also uncovers the change in media images, if there is any, over a period of seven years by comparing portrayal of women in 2007 with that in 2014. Data from widely read newspapers (Dawn and The News) for the period of March, 2007 and 2014 were collected and analyzed for linguistic choices using pragmatic approach. English media discourse is analyzed by following Mill’s approach of Feminist Stylistics. Data are quantified to find the frequency of lexical choices being made. Result shows asymmetry in reporting female victims who are still described in terms of their marital status whereas male victims/perpetrators are represented in terms of their profession. Statistics show a slight change in naming victims and reporting their age in news.
The press, being a powerful tool of socialization, plays a crucial role in the propagation of information. With this power of access, it can influence people’s perceptions, beliefs and attitudes. It (mis)represents reality and in spite of being a mirror reflecting truth, it acts like a prism bending and distorting the view of the world [
English print media in Pakistan has though less audience yet it has a greater influence on opinion makers [
In order to understand the representation of women in the media, first, researcher started by giving an overview of the previous research done in this area in the section below. It was easier to classify it and organize this information by grouping related topics around a focus given by the most relevant terms in this study. Second, the methodology used in this study was explained in detail. Third, the results shown by the data were presented. Finally, these results were analyzed and some preliminary conclusions will be drawn that will point the researcher in the direction of further research for this project.
Feminists view women as an oppressed group treated differently. Patriarchal society runs to benefit men and women are subject to not only personal but also institutional discrimination. Language as a tool in constructing and reflecting gender inequality is a claim of feminist linguists [
Origin of this phenomenon is not mere accident as reference [
Language does not only construct, but also it mirrors patriarchal society. Evidence comes from the resistance to accept the alternatives created [
Gender and language has long been subject of interest for researchers in the West. Reference [
Besides sexism in language, opponents of women’s rights employed claims of culture or tradition to rationalize women subordination [
The role of women in society and their representation in media has been the focus of researchers over the last 25 years [
In crime reporting, media may distort the reality either by representing extensively or by portraying negatively [
This effect of prism in media does not end here. Few studies [
The language media use is “critical in constructing readers” perception of crime ( [
Media discourse analysis is not a widely researched field in Pakistan. Most of the previous studies were quantitative in nature. These and others based on qualitative in-depth study on linguistic analysis ignored the way lexical and grammatical choices in a language play a role in constructing a particular image. Present study analyses current representation and compares the results with previous data of unpublished dissertation collected in 2007. For this purpose similar methods were employed to look for similarities and differences. The time of present study is quite significant as press has been enjoying freedom for more than a decade and masses are excited and hopeful from new political leadership to bring positive changes. In this scenario, it is important to see what can be done to bring this change in the lives of women also.
1. How women are represented linguistically in crime reports in Pakistani English newspapers?
2. How does present (2014) portrayal differ from that of 2007?
Following a Pragmatic paradigm, a mixed method approach following [
For the purpose of analysis, daily newspapers were selected as they are a major source of information about social and political activity in Pakistan and are likely to be more news-sensitive than magazines. The researcher chose newspapers published in English as the interest was in exploring the way the English language can affect the representation of women in print media in Pakistan.
First, sample was taken from English newspapers Daily Dawn and The News, published in March 2014. This sample was compared with a previous sample taken from same newspapers from March 2007. Probability sampling, a form of random sampling, was chosen to select newspapers of ten days to avoid any bias as this technique gives each newspaper equal chance to be selected and for the sake of simplicity [
For the purpose of analysis, Content analysis and Discourse analysis were adopted. Content Analysis was selected to see the frequency of visibility of men and women.
Analytical Approaches: Feminist Stylistics: For a qualitative analysis, first, news articles were analyzed using discourse analysis method. For this, all news articles were analysed. In this study the researcher used [
In order to do this, feminist stylistics is adopted. A list of the steps taken for this analysis is given below.
1. Internal analysis of the text:
a) Analysing text at word, sentence and discourse level to look for patterns and irregularities in the representation of females in terms of using sexist language.
b) Examine these observations and offer insights into the semantic relations between some lexical items and the text as a whole.
At this level, this data was coded quantitatively as well to find out the frequency of themes emerging.
2. Positioning the texts in relation to genres:
a) Understand discoursal objectives within the chosen newspapers.
b) Establish the relation of text and their orientation.
3. Identify some discourses operating within the representation of female (and male) subjects within these texts.
While analysing the data, gendered patterns are appeared in crime reporting. Asymmetry is revealed in reporting women as compared to men.
Naming practices are found different for men and women as shown in
The Dawn shows a significant increase in use of full name for males but this use fell to almost half for females. The News shows a large increase for the same feature for male and a slight increase for female. Use of last name in crime reports is comparatively low than use of full name or first name and shows a mixed mood in both newspapers: in Dawn it show decrease and in The News it gives an increased value for both sexes. A significant increase is found in use of first name of males in Dawn for whom The News shows about hundred percent increase. For female, use of first name in the Dawn is lesser than it was observed in previous results but this use is increased in The News.
Women victims are described in terms of their age while men are not reported in the same vein as described in
In Dawn, there is a significant increase in using age as reference while reporting male as compared to an increase in use for female whereas The News shows an almost equal increase in use for both.
Newspapers | Full Name | Last Name | First Name | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Male | Female | Male | Female | Male | Female | |||||||
2007 | 2013 | 2007 | 2013 | 2007 | 2013 | 2007 | 2013 | 2007 | 2013 | 2007 | 2013 | |
Dawn | 46 | 63 | 27 | 15 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 1 | 17 | 34 | 37 | 5 |
The News | 20 | 90 | 11 | 14 | 1 | 2 | - | 2 | 9 | 110 | 8 | 23 |
Women victims are referred to their relation with men. This is also unusual for male victim or perpetrator as shown in
There is a significant increase in reporting men in terms of relation over a period of 7 years. The News also reports men at few places in the same vein as it reports women but here number of women reports showing their relation to men and marital status doubled.
Male victim or offenders are reported with a reference to their profession. Reports about female victim find less opportunity to be termed by profession as shown in
A slight decrease is observed in description of male in terms of profession in Dawn but a substantial decrease is found in report about female in terms of profession. Representation of male supplemented with professional information is increased in The News whereas women are excluded completely.
Findings show that reporting about women used less sexist terms in Dawn over this period but it increased in The News as shown in
Newspaper | N/Male | N/Female | Illustration |
---|---|---|---|
Dawn (2007) | ---- | 4 | “22-year-old”―20/3 “Twenty-five year-old”―23/3 |
Dawn (2013) | 20 | 12 | “in her 30’s”―19/3 “Karamat (25); Ali Riaz (26)―25/3 “4-year-old boy”; “64-year-old grand-mother”―28/3 |
The News (2007) | ---- | 1 | “19-year-old”―7/4 |
The News (2013) | 15 | 14 | “A 22-year-old girl”―25/3 “An 18-year-old girl was kidnapped”―31/3 |
Newspaper | N/Male | N/Female | Illustration |
---|---|---|---|
Dawn (2007) | - | 5 | “Daughter of “―20/3 “Was his wife”―29/3 “Daughter of”―29/3 |
Dawn (2013) | 3 | 5 | “Father of three” 19/3 “Man kills 55-year-old wife”; “mother of four”―19/3 “Father of five”―25/3 “Mother”; “grand-mother”―28/3 “Mother of three”―6/4 |
The News (2007) | - | 9 | “Daughter of”―26/3 “Wife of”, “director’s wife”―29/3 “Daughter of”, “daughters of”―4/4 “Man accused of killing wife”―13/4 “Mother of registrar”―13/4 |
The News (2013) | 4 | 18 | “Man kills niece”―22/3 “Daughter of”―25/3 “A mother of a child died”―25/3 “A father of six”―25/3 “son of”―31/3 “A married woman committed suicide”―3/4 “Man chops wife’s nose, lips”―6/4 “A married women died”―6/4 “A married woman was shot…”―6/4 “Wife of”―6/4 “Daughter of”―6/4 |
Newspaper | N/Male | N/Female | Illustration |
---|---|---|---|
Dawn (2007) | 23 | 12 | “District monitoring officer”―17/3 “House matron”―20/3 “Sanitary worker”―20/3 “Daughter of journalist”―20/3 |
Dawn (2013) | 19 | 1 | “Principal of a college”/“Prof”―19/3 “A police officer was gunned down”, “a motorbike targeted Assistant Sub-Inspector”―19/3 “The victim was posted as Lance Naik” “spending his leave”―19/3 “Lawyer shot dead”―19/3 “Worked in a factory”―19/3 “Businessman”; “iron merchant”―25/3 “A truck driver was shot dead”―25/3 “Lumberdar” “Kidnapping of poultry feed trader”―28/3 “Principal shot dead”; “headmaster”―31/3 “Cop killed”; “sub-inspector”―31/3 “DSP, Inspector jailed”―31/3 “DSP, guard fall prey to targeted killing”―6/4 “Lineman killed”―15/4 |
The News (2007) | 3 | --- | “Daughter of Naik”―26/3 “Wife of director”―29/3 |
The News (2013) | 25 | 1 | “Cop murdered”―22/3” “injured security guard”―25/3 “Three labourers…”―25/3 “3 workers suffocate”―28/3 “Patwari suspended”―28/3 “Excise Inspector held”―28/3 “ASI among three killed”―31/3 “Killers of taxi driver arrested”―3/4 “Britain’s only woman prime minister”―6/4 “Shopkeeper injured….”―6/4 “A French photographer…”―6/4 “Three factory employees”―6/4 “Waiter shot dead”―6/4 “Employee of a local hotel”―6/4 “ANP leader killed”―15/4 “A local leader of”―15/4 “An electrician”―15/4 |
Dawn | The News | ||
---|---|---|---|
2007 | 2013 | 2007 | 2013 |
N = 6 | N = 4 | N = 1 | N = 4 |
“women teachers”, “headmistress”, “female teachers”―(17/3) “watchman”―20/3 “woman journalist”, “female suicide bomber”―23/3 | “Gunmen”―19/3 “Spokesman”―19/3 “Newsman”―19/3 “Lineman”―15/4 | “Lady teachers”―29/3 | “Female students”―28/3 “Spokesman”―6/4 “Spokesman”―6/4 “Spokeswoman―6/4 “Gunmen”―15/4 |
Women are referred to in a different way than the way men are. News-stories about women emphasize physical features and marital relation. They are defined by their relation with other males. They are referred in terms of their relation to other males. It seems they acquire a satellite status rather than having their own identity. Like the “real woman” of [
Supplementing a crime report with profession of victim gives an incremental effect to the loss. It is not a loss of a life anymore, it is rather a loss of an active and useful member of society as is obvious in examples “cop murdered”, lawyer shot dead” and “principal shot dead”. In absence of such worth in reports about women, female victims may be taken with a light air. Again finding with an emphasis on women’s traditional role of mother, wife and daughter and ignoring their powerful and high status position in professional lives is in line with [
Another striking finding of present data is blaming victim in reports of on domestic violence. Though reporter or authority spokesperson placed responsibility on male perpetrator but this is followed up by making excuses and highlighting “for honour”. It seems as male’s honour is also attached with female and she has double responsibility to take care of that perhaps male can’t do. Both reports highlighted the phrase “for honour” and gave reasons as perpetrators had “suspicion” that victim had illegitimate relation. Whether victims were guilty or not, the fact is that they were dead at the hands of their loved ones. This finding confirms the previous findings in other contexts [
Comparative analysis of crime reporting in Pakistan revealed that media has grown overall balanced and a trend towards non-sexist discourse emerged. An inclination is felt towards non-sexist discourse especially in the categories of naming convention and description of age. Whereas the categories of describing marital status and profession of victim are concerned, both newspapers lag behind an ideal state of equality. Dawn maintained previous practice of a comparatively balanced view while the news displayed a tendency towards asymmetrical representation of males and females as perpetrators and victims.
Pakistani media is enjoying freedom and it is expected to utilize this freedom in advocating and practicing justice and equality while reporting disadvantaged groups of society, women being one of them. Results of present study indicate a positive change at some places and hope for the same change at other places as well.
“Women in media” is a field with potential for future researchers. It needs to explore the relationship of representation of women in crime reporting and impact on cognitive patterns of reader’s mind. As present study focused on comparison of women representation in newspapers over a period of seven years in two national newspapers, it did not explore the influence that such reporting may exert on the minds of readers and victims. Thus, present study provides ground for further research in this field. A qualitative study using interviews is recommended to explore effects of reporting.
MusaratYasmin,AyeshaSohail,Riaz AhmedMangrio, (2015) Myths Broken or Sustained: Representation of Women Victims in Pakistani Media. Open Journal of Social Sciences,03,209-219. doi: 10.4236/jss.2015.37033