Prejudice and sex
Published by Yazad Jal September 10th, 2004 in Media, Culture and SocietyWatching journalists unravel their biases is an engrossing though time consuming activity. (and often others do it better). Here are two examples that caught my eye today.
Aniruddha Dutta exposes the anti-gay prejudices in the press coverage of the recent double murder in Delhi.
Davids Medienkritik has a nice satire on how the German media condones crimes against women by the Iranian government.
Apart from prejudice, the other connecting theme in both pieces is sex. More specifically, sex as “forbidden fruit,” giving me a peek into how cultures look at out-of-the-ordinary sexual practices.
In re the “anti-gay” prejudices article, what kind of coverage would have satisfied him?
I think the answer is in the article Ravi.
Just wondering how different the coverage would be if it was a hetrosexual-lover-murder case. Would we have loads of stuff on how people date and link love marriages to murder or depravity?
Let’s say that a (female) model known to be leading a flamboyant lifestyle and rumoured to be having multiple lovers is found murdered in mysterious circumstances. Do you think the coverage would just have been confined to the facts of the case, with no speculation whatsoever about whether the lifestyle led to the murder? Do you think that they would *not* have indulged in voyeurism and would *not* have features about the “seamy underside of the modeling profession”, much handwringing about casting couches et al?
Except the one case of the Hindu article talking of “the police are not able to curb such activity in spite of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), ” I don’t see any any clear anti-gay prejudice, just sensationalism about a case that was crying out to be sensationalised.
I mean, if a nondescript, monogamous gay couple was found murdered, and there was no evidence that the murders were linked to the homosexuality of the couple and the media had given the same treatment, then I would have understood. This looks like the guy decided what he was going to write and then looked for evidence.
Good job.