OneWorld.net (U.S.)

The media is in our face everywhere – newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and the internet. If we are not reading, we are listening, watching and taking it all in. The pressure on the media is therefore enormous, to constantly bring out reports and articles in bite sizes that can be easily enjoyed and digested by an ever-hungry and ever-impatient public.

Look at it this way. As a media person, one can print, publish, broadcast and telecast any kind of trash in the name of journalism. There are so many channels, newspapers and magazines scrabbling to stay afloat in this shark-eat-shark world, that selling becomes paramount. Sex sells (as it always did since the Kamasutra), women sell and titillation sells. The way it is packaged shows the consumer of that media (either reader, watcher or listener) just how serious that particular medium is. Disguise sex in a survey and you are an intellectual magazine; disguise sex as a research study and you are clearly a high-brow and sober medium.

Monday September 26, 2005 saw this strategy of reaching out to unlimited numbers touch a hitherto unplumbed depth – the Hindustan Times published an ‘investigation’ on the mind of a rapist. The report discusses the ‘mind of the molester’ and classifies him into neat boxes. One category is actually called the ‘gentleman rapist’. ‘Gentleman rapist’?? One might consider what, after reading this article, woman readers are supposed to do?

Faced with an attacker, a woman should now try and get into his mind, see what category he fits into, and then act accordingly! Make sure that she is not too submissive (presumably she should fight back and scream) so that the ‘exploitative rapist’ (is there any other kind?) lets her go before committing his crime? Or not shout and yell, because who knows, he may just be that ‘sadistic rapist’ and may not like the woman’s response?

Just as objectionable are the pictures along side this particular part of the article. The men sketched there mainly have a stubble (the ‘unkempt’ kind) or a scar (the ‘evil-looking’ kind). Once we see a man of this description anywhere, women should presumably be prepared for any eventuality. Any other men who do not fit into these categories may be considered safe and trustworthy, certainly not the rapist variety.

It is ironic that there is a small piece right next to this ‘study” that talks about a father who has raped his 5 year-old daughter on several occasions (it also added ‘The police have not registered an FIR in the case’). What exact category of rapist would the researchers fit this father into? And what could the young child have done to stop the rapes?

Here is yet another attempt to get into the mind of the perpetrator. Armed with this ‘new’ knowledge, the patriarchal structures (law, the medical system, the media, to name just a few) that loom over all the violence committed against women can now find more loopholes to help the perpetrators get out of the punishment they deserve for the lives they have wrecked? For now there is a psychological justification to this heinous act.

This report published in the Hindustan Times is a slap in the face of any woman reader (and indeed, any sensitive male reader) that the newspaper may have left. The tone of the report shows a prurient interest in the act itself, rather than any intent to help women get redress in this city getting increasingly unsafe for women and girls.

It would be very interesting to be a media person in the current political climate. Look at the possibilities of the media as:

• the new upholders of morality (Gudiya having to choose between her two husbands in front of TV cameras, Sania Mirza -- India’s latest sports icon -- having to answer completely inane and irrelevant questions related to her dress sense at every press conference)
• the new upholders of women’s rights (Imrana having to face media of every hue -- print and electronic both – to answer extremely intimate questions related to her life, all in the name of the media trying to help her get justice)
• the not-so-new purveyors of porn (the front-page article in the HT; the ‘sex surveys’, whether of single women or of women buying sex, alternately published by the Outlook and India Today, with appropriately matching visuals).

Each example given above is a case in point, as offensive a piece of reporting as can be conceived. Imagine making a woman from a village in the hinterland of India make a life-changing decision in front of a battery of cameras, the slurs to her community and gender there for everyone to see. Or better yet, imagine trivialising a young woman’s talent to such an extent that all that matters is to know what she will be wearing the next time she goes on the field. Or trying to sell sex, in one of myriad ways.

All this in the name of ‘investigative’ journalism, to be swallowed whole with our morning tea and biscuits.

Nandini Rao is Program Manager, Violence Intervention Cell, at Jagori - A Women’s Resource Centre based in New Delhi, India.