Egypt

Journalist’s sexual assault brings attention to larger issues of cultural norm of harrassment

Joy BaconLeave a comment

On Tuesday, CBS news issued a statement saying “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan had sustained “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.” As the news organization’s chief foreign correspondent, Logan was in the midst of the jubilation in Tahrir Square after former President stepped down. Logan was hospitalized upon her immediate return to the United States and is currently recovering in her Washington D.C. home, according to a CBS update.

After the story broke on several broadcast, print and online news organizations, controversy came from several different areas.

NYU Fellow and freelance journalist Nir Rosen tweeted that Logan was just trying to outdo CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper and she fabricated the assault. He posted apologies that added to public outrage, tweeting “ah f*** it, i apologize for being insensitive, its always wrong, thats obvious, but i’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she will get.”*

Rosen resigned from his NYU fellowship soon after. The Poytner Institute also reported other media mishandlings of the story, including a reader’s poll that asked if Logan was to blame for her own assault.

Logan’s assault and resulting news coverage finds us looking at several different aspects of this story: the cultural norm many women in Egypt experienced long before the assault, different media policies on covering a sexual assault and the treatment of female journalists on foreign assignments.

The Associated Press (as printed in the Washington Post) interviewed Egyptian women about their own experiences during the protests. Many women reported a “new Egypt” in which they were seen as equal participants in the political demonstrations, free to smoke, wear jeans and mingle in mixed sex groups. The Gender Report commented before on the critical role women were playing in the developing protests.

However, some women feared this norm would not last. A 2008 survey by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights found that 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women in Cairo said they had been harassed – while 62 percent of men admitted to harassing.

CNN’s American Morning aired an interview with Egyptian columnist Mona Eltahawy, who since the assault has used her Twitter page to discuss women’s rights in the Arab world. Eltahawy said as a woman and as a journalist who has been groped and harassed on several assignments, she wanted to open the discussion up to women in both Egypt and the U.S. who shared their own experiences with harassment and assault.

Ms. Magazine posted similar sentiments, saying,  “The people of Egypt, including women, know their power. I hope their next revolution will be to end gender-based harassment and assault. And I know that many there hope for the same.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists commented that they currently did not have good data on the sexual assault, rape or harassment of women journalists because the cases are rarely reported or the women ask that their stories not be made public. However, the site did review cases from the Congo, Columbia, Mexico, Pakistan in which journalists were attacked, kidnapped, or sexually assaulted. The story quoted journalist Franchou Namegabe Nabintu’s 2009 report to CPJ regarding sexual assault:

“Sexual violence against journalists will remain underreported until the stigma is removed. While that’s certainly true in principle, we also recognize that the decision to discuss sexual violence is a very personal one. We will continue to document incidents of sexual violence as they are brought to us, but always with the consent of the journalist involved.”

The Poynter Institute also reported information regarding the coverage of sexual assault cases. After it become a referenced piece in early articles about Logan’s attack, the Columbia Journalism Review reposted its 2007 article that looked at foreign correspondents and sexual abuse.

As best I can tell, the Associated Press (as published in the Washington Post) was the only news organization to formerly comment on the use of Logan’s name, saying “The Associated Press does not name victims of sexual assault unless the victim agrees to be identified.” Most news organizations follow a similar policy.

Read other commentary on this story:

  • Fox News, criticizing Rosen’s tweets
  • The Daily Beast, on harassment experiences of women in Egypt
  • The Atlantic, on Rosen’s tweets and the role of Twitter in journalism and public opinion

*Actual tweet used full spelling of profanity

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Update: We follow the same standards as news sites with our comment section, which means no personal attacks, threats or victim blaming will be allowed. If you do any of those, your comments will be deleted.

Week in Review: Jan. 24-28

Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

*Week in Review is a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

State of the Union

President Barack Obama gave his second State of the Union address Tuesday, discussing a plan to “win the future.” Media outlets focused in on key issues in the speech such as investing in education and infrastructure to stay competitive with other nations as well as working to reduce the deficit.

The blogosphere was a”twitter” with commentary, including some women who noted the absence of certain social issues. During their #sheparty discussion on Twitter on Wednesday, the Women’s Media Center asked what the take was on Obama’s speech. Commenters noticed missing issues such as equal pay, violence against women and abortion.

Also observed was the coverage of the speech. A post at Feministing provided a roundup of commentary on the address, noting at the end that it was “virtually impossible to find any female pundits commenting on the SOTU on the nation’s most notable progressive media outlets.”

At the same time, the Women’s Media Center released its report card for Obama on the state of the union for women and children, giving him an overall pass “with room for improvement.” Obama’s lowest grade on the report card, aside from some incompletes, was a C for appointing women. It cites the Center for American Women and Politics and notes that Obama appointed women to fill seven of 22 existing cabinet or sub-cabinet positions, or approximately 32 percent. The high for women was under President Bill Clinton at 42 percent. It also partly holds Obama responsible as a leader of the Democratic party for the lack of women running in recent elections. Quoting Katherine Kleeman with the CAWP, the report card notes, “the Democrats aren’t putting as much effort as the Republicans into grooming great women candidates at the local level.”

In other news

Also this week, women were part of the dialogue on the situations on Tunisia and Egypt. N’Dri Assie-Lumumba, a professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, has noted that women are playing significant roles in these social movements. She says, “Even if African and Middle Eastern women don’t always have easy access to public platforms to express their ideas and voice their opinions,… they have consistently constituted a formidable and determining force in the struggle against any system of oppression.”

Here are a couple articles to check out if you’ve missed them.

-NPR: “In Tunisia, Women Play Equal Role In Revolution”

-AFP: “Tunisian women fear Islamist return”

-Guardian: “An eyewitness account (by a woman) of the Egypt protests”

-Daily Beast: “Egypt Revolution: the Purity Protests” (Women increasingly taking part in the politics of the street)

Gender Check: 1/26/11 Northeast

Joy BaconLeave a comment

*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.

Website: The New York Times

On The New York Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 12:15 p.m. EST on Jan. 26 was titled “Protesters in Egypt Defy Ban as Government Cracks Down.” Its subject was the continuing protests in Cairo after the Egyptian government outlawed any public gatherings.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male and Female (dual byline)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Assumed Male – Official Interior Ministry statement. Minister is male.

2. Female – U.S. ambassador to Egypt

3. Female – U.S. secretary of state

4. Male – human rights advocate

5. Male – researcher director at the Carnegie Middle East Center

6. Male – Egyptian protestor

7. Female – Egyptian protestor

8. Female – mother of Egyptian protestor

9. Female – doctor who participated in the protests

Notes/analysis: A well-balanced representation of the story in terms of gender. Both male and female Egyptians participated in the protests and that is reflected in the story. The lead photo with the story appears to only picture male protestors confronting police but gender identification is not clear.


Website: ProPublica

On ProPublica, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 12:30 p.m. EST on Jan. 26 was titled “Climate Benefits of Natural Gas May be Overstated.” tIts subject was the EPA’s new analysis of the effects of natural gas as a primary energy source in the United States.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female – energy expert and professor at Carnegie Mellon University (cited her study, not directly quoted)

2. Male – CEO of a large energy company

3. Male – environmental biology professor at Cornell University (cited his research and comments)

4. Male – policy analyst

5. Male – president of a large energy company

Notes/analysis: A large portion of the information for the article comes from studies or comments and research from organizations or unnamed researchers.