Gender and the Media: peace communication

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It is addressed to all colleagues interested in quality, honest, responsible and ethical journalism. In journalism that is looking for truth, justice, equality, and that in covering wars and conflicts is looking not for sensation, but for human destiny and possible ways of peace keeping and peace communication. Women reporters work a lot on this peace communication, in all countries of the globe. And we decided to start our discussion sharing reports and analyses of women journalists' experiences. And we hope that this experience of peace communication can help us to overcome hate speech which is so well spread in the media, and create a new language in the media that we need, a language of the future.

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Women Journalists: Building Bridges Across Conflicts

Latest News
Famous photographer Umida Akhmedova threatened with imprisonment Heidi Hoogerbeets: Memories on Natasha Estemirova RUJ Statement on the death of Natalya Estemirova Babita Basnet: Women In Nepalese Media Djurdjica Knezevic

Famous photographer Umida Akhmedova threatened with imprisonment

The Russian Union of Journalists and the international Zhurnalistika club are deeply concerned about the charges brought by the Uzbek Ministry of Internal Affairs against Umida Akhmedova. A famous journalist and photographer, Akhmedova is the first woman cameraman in Uzbekistan.

She graduated from GITIS (The State Institute of Theatrical Arts) in Moscow, won the 2006 Grand Prix of the Inter-press "Photo of Russia" competition, and is well known to the public through her exhibitions in Petersburg, Moscow and Copenhagen. Akhmedova’s documentaries have acquainted wide audiences with life in contemporary Uzbekistan, and with the country’s culture and customs. Her 2007 photo collection “Women and Men, From Dawn to Sunset” was highly praised by the critics. It is all the more surprising and disturbing, therefore, that this superb collection, which is permeated by sincere respect for ordinary men and women, should have prompted the Uzbek Agency for the Press and Information to approach the Ministry of Internal Affairs in mid-December and begin a criminal investigation of its author.

The claim is that the work insults national pride and constitutes defamation of the Uzbek nation. Such a charge could lead to imprisonment from between 6 months and 2 years. As the Ferghana.ru news agency reports, similar accusations have been levelled at other authors working within the framework of the gender programme of the Swiss Embassy in Uzbekistan.

Umida Akhmedova has long been a good friend of the Zhurnalistika club, and participated in international programmes organised by the RUJ and the International Federation of Journalists, among them the 27th IFJ congress in Moscow, and the “Women journalists in conflict zones as promoters of peace” conference which was jointly sponsored by Unesco and the IFJ.

We appeal to the gender council of the IFJ to support and defend Umida Akhmedova and her work from these unjust and fabricated accusations.

Heidi Hoogerbeets: Memories on Natasha Estemirova

First Meeting

I visited Nazran and Grozny to conduct academic research as a graduate student at Columbia University. Natasha was my primary source of help while I was there. From the very first day I met her, she had immediately left a powerful impression on me. When I walked into Memorial’s Grozny office, she immediately offered me tea and candies and told me to eat quickly so that I had strength to get as much work done as possible. Her energy was overwhelming and intimidating. Before I could even get out my notebook and digital recorder, she began spewing out name after name of the people she thought I should meet while I was there. I could hardly keep up with her. She asked me who I wanted to meet from my hastily scribbled list but, before I could answer, she had already picked up a phone and was calling all the people on the list to arrange my interviews. This was Natasha—a woman of few words and plenty of action. She always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else.

RUJ Statement on the death of Natalya Estemirova

On Wednesday 15 July our colleague, the well-known human rights activist and journalist Natalya Estemirova was murdered, after being abducted near her home in Grozny. Natalya worked for the Memorial human rights society, wrote for Novaya gazeta, was awarded the first Women in War award (inaugurated in memory of Anna Politkovskaya) and participated in many discussions and programmes organised by the Russian Union of Journalists.

She was a consistent critic of human rights abuses in Chechnya and the North Caucasus as a whole, and was convinced that the determination and courage of those who were not prepared to put up with this lawlessness would win in the end. That was the subject of her articles and her talks: her last publication appeared after her death. That was the belief and cause for which Natalya gave her life.

This murder took place just a month after a report by the International Federation of Journalists was launched in Moscow, concerning violence against those working in the media in Russia. The RUJ forwarded the text of that report and official letters to the Russian President, those in charge of the key ministries and government departments, expressing the hope that together we could overcome this disgraceful stain on our present existence.

The murder of Natalya Estemirova leaves us feeling angry and helpless. Yet we remain convinced that if President Medvedev gives instructions for those responsible to be punished, his orders will be obeyed. We are heartened by the fact that, for the first time in many years, the leader of the country has immediately reacted to such a tragedy with a firm and principled response. We feel sure our colleagues will display solidarity and not let this crime be forgotten. Together journalists and NGOs in Russia must demand that the authorities carry out the orders of the president and let society know how the investigation is proceeding.

We are sure those responsible for the murder will be punished and that the killing with impunity of journalists will come to an end in Russia. The Russian Union of Journalists is beginning a campaign to expose and combat violence against the media in Russia. It calls on all who are concerned about the future of journalism to join us.

Russian Union of Journalists
4 Zubovsky Boulevard
Moscow

Gloria Steinem

First, I'm so grateful for the kindness, energy, and hard work that have brought this room together. It's very rare in the Internet era that we come together physically. And it is so important. We have reflector cells in our brains that allow us to communicate with all five senses. And we're deprived of them in many of the forms that we use. So I have faith in this coming together and its ability to produce leaps of the imagination and understanding that can be continued in a technological era.

And also I saw in the program that I'm here for an hour but I would like to imitate the Chinese women who in times when they were not allowed to go to school invented their own entire language and they always wrote in a column down the center of a page so the reader could add to whatever they said. So I will not take up my whole hour because I think you're all part of this speech and we'll all create what would have been one speech.

We come, I know, from very different situations. Some of us have 70 percent of the journalistic workforce that is female. Others have much smaller percentage. But I believe that all of us share the problem of not having what we say in English - the clout positions. In the United States only three percent of the clout positions that are those that can decide whether a story is telecast or put on the web or put on the radio – only three percent are women. Nonetheless I think we have come to a critical mass in power – when we can truly begin to change the way that conflict and post-conflict are covered – and I'm very grateful to the studies they've done before because they have shown that that is true – that in general women stay longer on the scene of conflict and more likely to report the human cost of the conflict and to see different things.