KATHMANDU UNIVERSITY A TERM PAPER ON: PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN AS NEWS SOURCE IN NEPALI NEWSPAPERS SUBMITTED TO

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KATHMANDU UNIVERSITYDHULIKHEL, NEPAL

A TERM PAPER ON:

PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN AS NEWS SOURCE IN NEPALI NEWSPAPERS

SUBMITTED TO

Asst.Prof. KASHIRAJ PANDEY

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND MASS COMMUNICATION

SUBMITTED BY

TARA NATH CHAULAGAIN

MEDIA STUDIES 3rd Year

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND MASS COMMUNICATION

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INTRODUCTION

Women are popularly biased by the newspaper while collecting

the source. Reporters rarely ask the women in about the issues

how, when and why the event happened. This research portrays

female as news source in Newspapers. The Nepali newspapers

chiefly describe men as a powerful source of getting

information’s. They rarely believe on women as a news source.

Somewhere, different incidents are happening regarding gender

like issues and women being tortured by the family members,

the society and the people and these incidents are covered by

different media. And it is true that media reflects the

happening of the society but how the media itself portrayed

the gender is the main motive of this research paper. So, it’s

trying to figure out how the Nepali print media especially the

newspapers quoted the sources from the gender perspective. The

source may be of authority, eye-witness or victim. For this, I

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have taken three Nepali broadsheet newspapers namely;

Kantipur, Annapurna Post and Nagarik.

RESEARCH METHODY AND LIMITATIONS

To know the sources from the gender view point, I have done

content analysis of those three newspaper’s front page dated

3rd to 16th November 2011 in which quantitative study is

applied.

Here the women issues for their general kind is not taken

under consideration of study and the overall situation of

women in Nepalese society and women’s presence in news media

is also excluded from the study.

This research paper focuses on the content analysis of three

papers first page only and the paper cannot be understood as

overall scenarios of the Nepali women as a news source in

Nepali media in one way or the other.

LITERATURE REVIEW

“Anyone may on occasion become a news source. He or she need

only (1) participate in a news worthy information, (2) observe

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it, (3) know some person who did, (4) have access to special

information.” (Neal & Brown)

“Since journalists first began to gather and report

information from sources centuries ago, they have encountered

a variety of obstacles. For example, inaccurate and incomplete

information, unreliable sources, deceptive and misleading

information providers, and other similar difficulties have

caused both major and minor problems in news reporting.”

(Mencher, 1997; Izard, Culbertson & Lambert, 1994; Rich,

1997).

In journalism, a source is a person, publication, or other

record or document that gives timely information. Outside

journalism, sources are sometimes known as "news sources".

Examples of sources include official records, publications or

broadcasts, officials in government or business, organizations

or corporations, witnesses of crime, accidents or other

events, and people involved with or affected by a news event

or issue.

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The value of sources to news reporters is also well

documented. “The source is the reporter’s

Life blood. Without access to information through the source,

the reporter cannot

function,” wrote Columbia University newsgathering expert

Melvin Mencher (1997).

Gender as a source is an issue to be analyzed. Every media

portrays gender as the society perceives. Male are shown

powerful and trustworthy and female are shown as house workers

or weak ones. As we observe different advertisements from

different media then we can see how the media depict the

gender as a source.

Even the reporters rarely quote females as a news source. This

paper has focused it obviously. They hardly ever ask women

even in women issues.

While different researches agree that women made many advances

in the society. It crucial to realize that not all these

things about women. In most cases women faced discrimination

from just about everyone around them. Women in the workplace

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were often placed in positions of inferiority or treated as

being less physically able to do the and by talking about the

issues the reporters of different newspapers hardly ever take

women as a source. Many women were often not trained because

they were viewed as temporary employees. Women were very

rarely given equal pay as men, even though some of them did

the same work.

DATA COLLECTION ANALYSIS

For the procedure of the data collection, first I selected the

Nepali three broadsheet newspapers namely; Nagarik, Kantipur

and Annapurna Post and studied its front page and quoted

whether it’s male or female. Then, I entered those sources and

concluded it.

The collected data are processed and analyzed within the

objective framework to arrive at logical conclusion. The

research is descriptive in nature. For the research design of

a descriptive study, the first focus is to specify the

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objective with sufficient precision to ensure that the data

collected are relevant and then the technique for collecting

the information is devised. As there is the use of descriptive

statistical as the statistical test I summed up the result by

using percentile. The result can be shown in figure as well.

As we were observing the main story of the Kantipur about the

iron tablets being destroyed by the yeasts by not using it,

and there was a great corruption in destroying it made us to

start our issue to research the other three newspapers and

make a quantitative analysis.

IMPORTANCE

The significance of this research paper is to know how the

newspaper cites male and female as a source. The paper tries

to show the representation of the women in media. Media claims

that it covers every aspect of the society and this paper

tries to show whether or not media takes women as a

representative voice.

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FINDINGS

Following pie- charts depicts the condition of the female as a

source use by those three newspapers:

NEWS SOURCE IN TOTALITY

This is the combine figure of three newspaper and it shows the

total male and female sources qouted by those newspaper in

which male source has highest percentage as 93% and female

source cover only 7% which is very lowest percentage.

PIE-CHARTS

NAGARIK NEWS SOURCE

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ANNAPURNA POST NEWS SOURCE

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KANTIPUR NEWS SOURCE

To do the quantitative study of source from gender point of

view, it can also be explained as following illustrations:

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FEMALE NEWS PERCENTAGE

Out of the female total population 52.38% is victim, 28.57% is

authority and 19.05% is eye-witness.

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MALE NEWS SOURCE

Out of male total population 91.93% is authority, 4.52% is

eye-witness and 3.55% is victim.

DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

Above three figures illustrate the depiction of three

different newspapers. Those pie-chart also conclude that

female are taken very less as a news sourceWe can conclude

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that Annapurna Post has the highest female source which is

only 9% and Kantipur has only 4.58% which is the lowest

percentage among them. Whereas Nagarik has only 6.03%, above

pie chart shows the fact. As Swami Vivekanand has said "that

country and that nation that do not respect women have never

become great, nor ever be in future". Women are considered as

weaker sex not only from physical point of view but also from

sociological aspect also. When we refer to Manusmriti , we

notice that women has always been dependent on man." During

childhood on her father, after marriage on her husband, and

during her old age on her son." Mahatma Gandhi observed that

"Where women are respected there god reside". These quotes

equally applies to the women projection as news source in the

media.

Dhirendra Premarshi observes the condition of Women in Nepal

like this, in his Maithili song-

“aLt–aLtk/ n5dg–/]vf 8]u–8]uk/ cfl/

s]xg ljwgf lnvn ljwftf ;lbvg ufl/P–dfl/

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cSvh e˜ hLa}P gfl/, ckgfs]F ckglx k/tfl/” (quoted from Jha, Rupa. 2011)

The Lyrics of the song portrays the message that- Women have

to face difficulties in each step of her life and god provided

the fate in which women have to suffer from different 'abuse'

& 'violence'. As the song portrays the women, women as weak

and worthless, similarly the journalists may not think the

women as non authentic source even in the women issues.

As it is the matter of equality and social identity of women,

the way in which they have been presenting is biased and in

uncivilized way. It shows that though there is huge change in

physical structure of world, the thinking mentality of the

people is still traditional. For the motives of having

feasibility in quoting the news source such practice is widely

seen. It is the wrong practice which do not sustain in long

run. We say that the female occupies half of the world’s space

but in behavior we treat them as minority. Then how is it

possible to treat both male and female equally. In this modern

era, there is a challenge of gender inclusiveness.

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According to Freud’s theory of femininity, struggling with an

internal difficulty matter. The theory of femininity does not

agree with this male dominated society. They believe on their

own existence and supremacy. So, analyzing from the feminine's

perspective, In Nepali media, the role of female is not

confined strongly, I mean the way they are presented is not in

equal position. Still there is dominance of male in them.

Some researcher opines that it is the matter of social

identity and feministic independent.

As Chaulagain (2011) argues that- “The female voice is

presented in dominance form in Nepali media. They are taken as

the matter of entertainment. There is high praising of female

body and excessively their images are presented in

stereotypical way. No gender sensitiveness is practiced.”

News media influences people, so what one write or say must be

carefully planned, because what we disseminate through media

sets the idea of the people. Likewise, when in these ways,

news are disseminated, the people or readers would set idea

about the media. They make the concept through the media. They

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think, this is reality and make concept about it. The

decorative news will be the real reality for the people as

they are portrayed exact in the news. The normal behavior of

male towards the news making process & viewing news will be a

problem for women as the society take it to be normal, the

sentiments of women get hurt. The emotional feeling of women

will not be taken in to consideration as the society has

accepted the male as a superior, and women as if worthless as

a news source even in the female issues.

"Humans are much more likely to recall and be influenced by

negative experiences of the past." (Smith, Larsen, Chartrand,

Cacioppo, Katatiasz & Moran, 2006). But the priority of

negativity is not justifiable as this shows an inclination

towards being cheap and lack of responsibility. "Negative

experiences or fear of bad events has a greater impact on

people than do neutral experience or even positive

experience." (Smith, Larsen, Chartrand, Cacioppo, Katatiasz &

Moran: 2006). With reading more suppressive and male dominant

news and less gender sensitive news every day, people of

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community are more likely to take in to consideration- violent

in decision making. The people (especially men) may become

more violent towards women.

Such journalistic practice would encourage discrimination and

can discourage people from pursuing their dreams. If engineers

are always spoken of as male, a girl who aspires to be an

engineer may feel that she has no hope, since "all" engineers

are men. Similarly, if journalistic practice will remain like

this, the women may feel that they are not for them, since the

news portrays- women as a worthless character for male

journalists and, the conflict and issues of discrimination may

arise in the society.

CONCLUSION

It is easy to discuss on the contents of Nepali media, both

for and against it. Based on perennial criticism that Nepali

news' contents are mostly biased and that news' focus has been

more destructive than constructive (building Positive) role,

the researcher began this study with an assumption that news

are highly biased.

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Analyzing the data, it can be found that even the newspaper

has less quoted the female as the source. It only covers 6.35%

out of 100%, among it, female source covers 28.57% in

authority, 19.05% in eyewitness and 52.38% in victim, which

shows that the newspaper has used more female source as a

victim.

Right could be considered wrong and wrong could be considered

right on the absence of researches. The research was carried

out to discuss the general feature of Nepali news, mainly to

avoid speculations estimations. The rapid growing of these

kinds of baseless news writing can create a cheap image of

every woman. The male will not think women to be as capable

and equally smart as them rather they will just be portrayed

as toys or packet of entertainment. On the contradictory view,

female will also start some kind of revolution; definitely the

revolution will not be for change rather it will be for

conflict. Female will start hating men and the news made by

them. They will rebel with the view that women are not only an

object for sex. Women are equally capable and do have self-

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respect and high esteem within themselves. These cheap

journalism practice, male dominant news practice will not

degrade their image within their eyes rather will think male

as a cheap and a human being with stone heart, who has no

respect for his own female members in the society. One thing

should be noted that every Nepali news are not cheap, which

have male dominance. There are news articles which portrays

reflection of real women concerns. But, we are sorry to say

this; most of the news nowadays is offensive and biased.

Finally, we can say that women are also equally important

creature as men, male and female are two wheels of a motor

bike. A bike cannot run if a wheel is paralyzed, similarly,

journalistic practices can’t be bias free and responsible

without giving equal importance to the women. While observing

it from Human Rights perspective, female have also got same

privilege and rights; these kinds of male centered

journalistic practices shows serious human rights violation,

women’s human right’s violation. Further researches can help

in more precise understanding of the situation. In this way,

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we can conclude saying that, the female are still considered

as a backward infrastructure in our society

References:

Chaulagain, TN (2011). Idealization of Femininity in Nepali Folk

Duets. (A Thesis). Sancharika Samuh, Kathmandu,Nepal.

Jha, R (2011). Mithilame Mahilaka Abastha. Karyapatra.[Condition

of Women in Mithila: A Workshop].

Mencher, Melvin (1997). News Reporting and Writing. 7th ed., Brown &

Benchmark, Madison, Wis.

Neal, J. & Brown, S. (2000). News Reporting and Writing. Iowa: The

Iowa State university Press.

.Smith NK, Larsen JT, Chartrand TL, Cacioppo JT, Katatiasz HA,

Moran KE (2006). Being bad isn't always good: affective context

moderates the attention bias toward negative information.

Journal of personality and social psychology. 90. 210-220. American

Psychological Association.