Particular interest groups influential in media (owners, publishers, advertisers, politicians) have their specific interests in news. Control over the decision which kind of information will be covered by media is in hands of these interest groups and is of crucial importance for society.

Since the media, as well as other social institutions, are male dominated, it is hard to expect that these specific interests will in a broader sense include information related specifically to the whole range of social, economic, cultural etc. aspects of the status of women in society. Also, it is not likely to expect that media will easily change their focuses to include and integrate perspectives of women. Thus, women in media attempting to break through this system of control are extremely important, not only in the times and places of conflict but in general.

During the time of conflict (first, the war, then the protracted political conflicts) after the break-up of Yugoslavia, there was not much difference between "male and female" journalism. What divided different approaches in media was not the gender perspective but the political, i. e. nationalism vs. non-nationalism, anti-war vs. pro-war and the similar. The only case  where gender played some role, known as the "Witches from Rio", was about five Croatian female journalists and writers who were attacked heavily for their anti-war, anti-nationalist, anti-militarist writing. It is certainly a paradox that, although their writings were not at all from some specific women's perspective nor they wrote about particular woman's problems, but simply about horrendous effects of war and from clear anti-militarist positions, they were attacked as women (their marital and parental statuses, the nationality of theirs and their husbands' or partners', whose father was in the Yugoslav military service, and the similar).

Control of the media by interest groups ignores systematically everyday life in which women as a category, together with other ordinary people, can be more visible. This is the way for creating artificial border between news related to the events people are directly confronted with, and the "big" events. These are out of the reach of common people (unless they are temporarily promoted into stars of reality-shows, competitions etc.), but they are object of the media interests and therefore reported. To bridge the gap and thereby to cover the ignorance and neglect of the everyday life, there is always the form of journalism extremely widespread, having in focus "human stories", which means gossips, heroic stories and similar. It appears like a niche for women's stories, but at the end of the day, it confines them, making their stories banal. They can sell media better, but what is more important is that they can exclude other, disturbing news.