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Feminist Bias in New Zealand Media

Filed under: Gender Politics,General — Ministry of Men's Affairs @ 10:11 am Sun 11th September 2011

Western populations may well be starting to realize that they have been manipulated and misled by feminist lies, rubbish research, distorted accounts of history and often unjustified demands to maintain endless victim status. However, a review of news articles any week of the year shows that NZ is still heavily captured by feminist propaganda and happy to promote inequality as long as men are on the losing side.

One positive spur towards fairness to men will almost certainly come from the decision by RADAR to expand its focus from exposing falsehhood regarding domestic violence to exposing misandry in the media. RADAR has achieved considerable success informing both public opinion and legislators in the US concerning facts rather than false propaganda about DV.

We can turn our own radar on recent misandry, male denigration and gender inequality in the news media of NZ. A good place to start is Dunne’s IRD report on so-called ‘child support’. On the day of its release National Radio, paid for through our taxes, saw fit to interview only one feminist lawyer to comment on the possible changes that Dunne seems to prefer. Unsurprisingly, she expressed concern that the proposed changes may be unfair to receiving parents (mainly women) and showed total disregard for the unfairness of the current system on paying parents (mainly men). National Radio did interview other concerned parties over the subsequent two weeks, but its feminist bias is often blatantly evident. It is a shame because generally I love National radio.

Next up, you can always rely on news accounts that hide or play down the gender of men who are victims of violence, whereas gender is usually emphasized or headlined when women are victims. Similarly, the gender of male offenders is usually headlined or emphasized, but not so for female offenders. I prepared the following table concerning recent news articles:

Article Headline

Offender’s gender in headline

Victim’s gender in headline

Victim’s gender mentioned in article

Victim’s experience described

Father and son charged with murder named

Male, yes

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, no

Man charged with shopping centre stabbing

Male, yes

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, no

Man reverses onto police car, sparks chase

Male, yes

?, no

?, no

?, no

Five rugby players banned for life

Male, yes (implied)

?, no

?, no

?, no

Police officer injured in knife attack

Male, yes

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, no

Knife-point robbery in Hamilton

?, no

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, no

Man pleads guilty over 1080 punch

Male, yes

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, no

Murder victim stabbed and cut 59 times by
killer

Male, no

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, yes

Life in jail for stabbing

Male, no

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, no

Man holds up service station with bottle

Male, yes

Male? no

Male? no

Male? no

Hastings man died after assault

Offender unknown

Male, yes

Male, yes

Male, yes

Suicide case turns into homicide investigation

Offender unknown

Male, no

Male, yes

Male, no

Shovel used to hit woman in home invasion

Male, no

Female, yes

Female, yes

Female, yes

Elderly woman held up at home by armed man

Male, no

Female, yes

Female, yes

Female, yes

Afternoon sex attack on woman

Male, no

Female, yes

Female, yes

Female, yes

Jail for woman’s four-day sex ordeal

Male, no

Female, yes

Female, yes

Female, yes

Inspection of the table suggests that for violent offences against men, the male gender of the offender is headlined but the male gender of the victim is usually not headlined, and is sometimes not seen as important enough to mention at all throughout the article. For violent offences against women, the female gender of the victim is almost always headlined and always highlighted in the body of articles. The male gender of offenders against women was often not headlined but this appeared to be due to priority given to highlighting the female gender of victims. Further, for male victims of violence articles usually don’t bother to mention much or anything about the traumatic experience of the victim, but for female victims their traumatic experience is always highlighted in some way.

A few specific comments about the articles are in order. First, where there is a question mark about the gender of the victim (because the article gives no clue), it’s a safe bet that those victims were male because if they had been female this would have been headlined or emphasized. Men’s victimization is not seen as very important even though men are much more often the victims of violence in society generally than are women.

Secondly, the frequency of serious violence towards males in our society is easily evident from any monitoring of news. Yet our Human Rights Commission continues year after year to use taxes paid by men and women to fund campaigns that call only for a rejection against violence against women. Perhaps its name should be changed to the “Female-only Rights Commission”.

Thirdly, the article headlined “Man holds up service station with bottle” doesn’t bother to mention the gender of the victim at all, even though it is not a ‘service station’ that is held up but the person behind the counter. Given the late hour of the crime it is likely that it was a sole male attendant behind the counter, men much more often accepting dangerous roles to make a living. But the real giveaway concerning the male gender of the victim is the fact that nothing including gender is mentioned about the victim; if the threatened attendant had been a female, this would have been headlined and repeatedly mentioned, and the distressing effects on her would have been emphasized. In drawing attention to these double standards I am not suggesting that we should not show caring towards the gender and trauma of female victims, but I am calling for real gender equality in how violent crimes are reported. Specifically, I would demand that the frequency with which men are victims of violent crime is made clear through headlines and commentary and that men, who hurt and suffer as much when assaulted or killed, are shown a similar degree of empathy as are female victims.

Fourthly, the article headlined “Suicide case turns into homicide investigation” described a case in which police may have brought gender discrimination into their work. They readily accepted that he must have committed suicide rather than giving due consideration to the possibility that his wife killed him, perhaps because they find it hard to believe that women might commit serious violence. A similar tendency appeared to be involved in another incident headlined “Police “sorry’ for failing to answer attack call” , in which the main victim was a male while the violent attacker offender was a female. Although the victims told police that the female offender was in the process of attacking them, police didn’t see a violent female as dangerous enough to need their attention.

Finally, I don’t think journalists apply sexism on purpose to denigrate men, or even that they are aware they are doing it. I suspect it simply reflects longstanding stereotypes about men, disregard for men’s suffering compared women’s suffering, and their accurate beliefs about the newsworthiness of female victims compared with male victims. But journalists do apply sexist double standards frequently, of that there is no doubt.

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