(Jamaica Observer) Two recent surveys have found that crime and violence are the main subject areas that get coverage from the media in the Caribbean, including Jamaica. The surveys, conducted by the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) and the Women’s Media Watch (WMW) of Jamaica, also pointed to the gender disparities in the persons covered in the news as well as those covering the news.
Taitu Heron, a board member of WMW, speaking at a function at the Courtleigh Hotel in Kingston Thursday where findings of the surveys were revealed, said that of the 840 stories sampled in 11 regional territories for the GMMP, reports on crime and violence accounted for 27 per cent. This was followed by the coverage on politics, government, legal issues and the economy.
“The Caribbean has a higher proportion of stories on crime and violence compared to the global average of 20 per cent,” Heron said.
However, on the other hand, the Caribbean has a lower proportion on stories on the economy than globally.
Meanwhile, Hilary Nicholson, also of WMW, said the Jamaican survey — which was conducted by that organisation using a methodology similar to that of the GMMP — showed that crime and violence accounted for 30 per cent of the stories covered in the media.
“Unfortunately crime and violence took up 30 per cent of the space which is even higher than the Caribbean average of 27 per cent and twice that of politics government or anything else,” Nicholson said.
She said that the survey took samples of 323 stories published and broadcast from seven Jamaican media houses.
On the matter of gender, Nicholson pointed to the local findings which showed that men are three times more often to be used as spokesperson or experts on subject areas.
Additionally, 30 per cent of all females appearing in stories, according to the study, were not identified by their occupation.
She said, too, that stories covered by male reporters accounted for 59.8 per cent over their female counterparts.
She did not say what was the reason for this, but the fact that most Jamaica media companies use male reporters to crime stories — which dominated the surveys — could be the main contributing factor.
The GMMP report also showed that male reporters wrote 66 per cent of crime stories covered by the media in the Caribbean territories polled in the survey. It addition, it said, Caribbean men appeared three times more often in the media than women.
Judith Wedderburn, a board member of Women’s Media Watch of Jamaica, said women are still under-represented in their portrayal in the news media worldwide, with 76 per cent of male being heard or read about in the news, compared to 24 per cent for females.
The GMMP is the largest research initiative exploring issues of gender in news media where 108 countries were monitored.
President of the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ), Jenni Campbell said the media is encouraged by the project and welcome the research.
“Any kind of investigation and exposure of information that will benefit our people and provide them with options to shape their decision-making process, we believe, ought to be welcomed,” Campbell said.
The PAJ head applauded the role women now play in the media as she made special reference to the Tivoli Gardens incursion where female reporters worked equally alongside their male counterparts.
“Coming from the past we saw newsrooms which were male-dominated in every way; it was only in the latter years we saw many more women joining the workforce in the newsroom,” she said.
In the meantime, Claude Robinson, associate teaching fellow at the Mona School of Business, said the issue was not about the amount of coverage but how stories were covered.
Noting that media houses are often challenged by resources, he said the economics of the media business was also impacting coverage.
“Every newsroom has 20 per cent fewer reporters than before and they are covering more than we did,” he said.
