Recommendations for promoting women’s image in media coverage

As part of ‘Everyone is a Winner: Economic and Social Empowerment of Women in Lebanon’ initiative, a set of recommendations were announced so as to highlight the significant role the media could play in promoting the image of women and supporting their rights. The previously named initiative, it will be recalled, is implemented jointly by Search for Common Ground- Lebanon and ALEF- Act for Human Rights associations, and in consultation with journalists and civil society activists. In this respect, Al Hayat daily pointed out in its issue of yesterday that the proposed recommendations are based on the work carried out by Maharat Foundation which closely worked with a team of Lebanese journalists, in an effort to produce an ethical charter for the press in Lebanon. The content of the proposed charter, also according to Al Hayat, will be based on key ethical principles that are in full harmony with similar global models and case studies, as well as on local data. The newspaper noted that the media sector in Lebanon lacks systematic mechanisms to monitor its performance, while noting that the role of the National Audiovisual Media Council is limited to consultation matters. The newspaper went on to say that the sector does not have a self-regulatory authority; neither do the professional syndicates have any real representation power. In view of the above, Al Hayat concluded that there were no written media policies that set a gender-sensitive reference for coverage, nor clear instructions for the mandatory terminology to be used. Over and above, the newspaper also noted that present university curricula lack clear gender-sensitive parameters. The recommendations finally called for raising the awareness of media and academic training institutions so as to enable them to adopt new measures that will promote a positive image of women in the media. (Al Hayat, May 26, 2016)