Female Journalism in the Present Scenario

Caroline Sinz was molested in Cairo, Lara Logan in Pakistan and Marie Colvin in Syria – a few reporters who suffered the humiliation of being a female reporter and working in high conflict zones. “For women, there is always a danger of rape or sexual assault when covering unpredictable and dangerous stories,” says Leila Fadel, the Cairo bureau chief for The Washington Post.

There are problems and risks involved with women working in war conflict zones. They are vulnerable to rape, molestation and other humiliations. Sometimes even the ego of the crowd becomes a sign of danger for them. What happened to Lara Logan was a very unfortunate and a very disturbing incident and my heart goes out to her. But is this a reason good enough to pull out all the female journalists from conflict zones. Susan Milligan, a political reporter who has covered war in Iraq and the Balkans and is now a contributing editor at US News & World Report says,”it is insulting specifically to Lara Logan, who is a terrific reporter. If you're pulling all of the women out, you're essentially saying that what happened to her is her fault." Also pulling out female reporters from the war zone would undermine the diversity of the coverage and minimize the coverage.

The risk associated with being a war correspondent isn't limited to women, says Badkhen a very well known reporter, who has covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and Kashmir. She further talks about how she has been sexually assaulted in war zones and how her male colleagues have been subjected to torture that involved their sexual organs.

Female and male correspondents have been killed, maimed, wounded in conflict zones.

Are male and female journalists equally vulnerable in conflict zones?

A female journalist Milligan, who was based in Budapest for years, agrees. "I was in the Balkans and in Iraq and in Haiti and other places. It's a risk for everyone. I was at greater risk for being raped, probably. But (compared to her male colleagues) I was at lower risk of being killed."  There have been a lot of cases around the world where male journalists have been tortured and killed. Sebba a former war journalist says, “Women have been touched, felt up, expected to perform sexual favors to get a story" and suffer all kinds of sexual harassment and don't report it because they "don't want to lose their jobs." Also they are scared about the fact that if they report then they would be stopped from going to other conflict zones, which may affect their growth in career.

A male photographer that I know was stopped at an Iraqi checkpoint and told that "love" was the fee to pass through, what would one say to that?

In 2013 According to CPJ (Community to Protect Journalists) 14 male journalists have been killed all over the world compared to 103 journalists killed in 2012 out of which only 5 were women.

Kim Barker in her article about Lara Logan in The Hindu talks about how women get affected by war. She addresses issues like women setting themselves on fire and becoming victims of rape and molestation cases. These are very important parts of war that the world has to be told about. In such cases a Female Journalist tells these stories in the most compelling way because abused women are more comfortable talking to them. Specially in Islamic countries it is easier for female journalists to get information from the local women.

Col Vikram Joshi of the Indian Army talks about how without a female correspondent in a war zone, the whole idea of showing what’s happening to the world is incomplete. “The information that female correspondent get through local women in Kashmir makes it much easier for the Army to react.” He also talks about how they captured five terrorists just by the help of a female correspondent, as she could go and get first hand information from the local ladies as they were comfortable with talking to her.

Journalism in a conflict or war zone is such a job that needs both male and female journalists. Though some precautions can be taken for the safety of the both of them like in Kashmir, Army provides support and security to the journalists in situations where they have to cover issues like strikes and protests.

Anne Barnard, a New York Times reporter says, "Nobody made me go to the Balkans. Nobody made Lara Logan go to Egypt. Nobody made Anderson Cooper go.” "Yeah, reporting in a war zone is risky. Being a member of the military is risky. Being a police officer is risky. But it's a risk that we choose to take because it's an important part of democracy, telling people what's going on."

As a part of a democracy I fell it is important to let journalism have no such restrictions for female correspondents.

by Karman Nanda