prijava
SARAJEVO, March 12 (FENA) - Female journalists more often than their male colleagues are exposed to online attacks and insults because of the articles they publish, insufficient protection from the competent institutions and colleagues in editorial offices, and it is more difficult for them to advance professionally to editorial positions.
Female journalists and reporters must be more diligent in reporting attacks whose forms also include sexist messages on the Internet and gender-based attacks or those based on someone’s physical appearance. Female journalists often receive death threats, and even their children are not excluded from this after they publish and release their articles or research pieces.
The strongest protection would be in greater solidarity in the industry, continued insisting on the profession itself on the grounds and on its own dignity, and the legal treatment of these attacks as an attack on official persons.
These are some of the conclusions made today at the conference "Women in Journalism and Journalists’ Solidarity", held under the project of the same name, sponsored by the Center for the Promotion of Civil Society (CPCD) and USAID.
“Women in journalism are often exposed to verbal attacks in which they are often offended and humiliated, and are told to be not a good enough in public discourse. In comments on various internet portals, I have often encountered insulting names used for women journalists; it is often emphasized that their place is in the house and not in public arena, and thus their work is being downplayed. It is necessary to offer some type of solution in the form of a 'Network for Journalists' that would serve as a platform for support of colleagues to one another,” said the moderator at the conference, lawyer and activist at the ‘Cure’ Foundation Vildana Džekman.
Vildana Selimbegović and Arijana Saračević Helać, also participants of the conference, cited cases of intimidation and threats, sent by telephone or some other way to members of their families, because in their articles they investigated hard topics, among which were war crimes and the perpetrators themselves.
“Verbal attacks on female journalists are the most common, but they can also be followed by physical attacks,” it is the opinion of the project manager Ornela Čolić who points out that the goal of the project "Women in Journalism and Journalists’ Solidarity" is to achieve greater media attention and to move towards sensitivity in relation to cases attacks that women suffer in their workplaces.
Of the 90 attacks reported in the past few years against journalists in general, 50 of them were against female journalists,” Čolic said, adding that only a few cases were reported to the police or the judiciary.
Some of the ways of protection are the strengthening of the profession by insisting on fundamental postulates and by raising journalist solidarity; it was said today at the conference.
(FENA) S. R.
