Discussion on gender and development policy starts, Public Eye

Date: January 1, 1970

The government begins discussions on Lesotho?s National Gender Policy which is in line with the 12 critical areas of concern in the 1995 global Beijing Platform for Action.
The government begins discussions on Lesotho?s National Gender Policy which is in line with the 12 critical areas of concern in the 1995 global Beijing Platform for Action.

This article may be used to:

Illustrate how perspective can be changed when telling a story.
Examine how single source stories result in unprofessional journalism.

Trainer’s notes

Editors and journalists often argue that gender is a dull and uninteresting area of coverage, because of the media’s tendency to limit gender coverage to reports on international, regional or national ‘gender’ seminars. Editors and journalists often fail to see the gender angle in the events and issues that come onto the news agenda each day. The reliance on ‘events-oriented’ coverage to bring gender onto the news pages leads to stories which :

Rely only on the officials speaking at an event or documents presented;
Use unexplained gender jargon;
Do not situate the issues into a context;
Lack depth and analysis;
Display a journalist’s lack of research and poor newsgathering skills

The Lesotho case study is just one example of the unprofessional journalism that can result from basing a story solely on an event or document. The only source in the article is the national gender policy document. The reliance on the document, which also may be reported out of context, illustrates two problems which limit good gender reporting:

Journalists’ lack of understanding of gender, gender power relations and the link between gender and development; and
The acceptance in newsrooms of ‘desktop’ journalism, i.e. stories written from press releases and documents without the use of newsgathering skills.

This story is based on a document, the journalist has not developed a clear angle or focus. The article merely re-tells sections of the document without any analysis through other voices and perspectives of the issues it raises, and the significance of the issues to the lives of women, men girls and boys in Lesotho.

An interesting angle could be an analysis of whether Lesotho, in terms of government structures, active civil society, etc is ready to put in place a national gender policy. The adoption of gender policies by governments – because the move to adopt policies may be seen as ‘politically correct’ or imposed ‘externally’- without the mechanisms to implement and monitor them, may only lead to the classic case of ‘good on paper, but no action’.

The story requires research, a range of interviews and an angle which will inform and educate the readers.

Training exercises

Exercise one: Perspectives and sources

1. From whose perspective is the story told?

2. What source does it heavily rely on? Why do you think the journalist took this approach?

Exercise two: Changing perspectives

Develop an outline of how you would re-work this story using the following questions as a guide:

1. Is the story worth following up? Why or why not?

2. What angle would you choose to tell the story?

3. Whose voices are most likely to tell the story in an interesting and different way?

4. What voices and perspectives are required to present the story in a balanced way?

5. What background information is needed to situate the issue in a context?

6. What data is needed for the article?

7. How would you illustrate the story?

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