Feminist Journalism

Abstract

Feminists have always used whatever communication and media technologies are available to help them collect and disseminate news about feminism and women’s issues, and to offer their own definitions of feminism, women, and news from a feminist perspective. Often feminist activists’ journalistic efforts have followed, if not always consciously, feminist principles or feminist ethics; and often these efforts have involved experimentation with alternative structures, such as flattened hierarchies and collaborative decision-making. Some feminist journalists have eschewed advertising that was inconsistent with feminist values or even refusing all advertising. Feminist journalism, especially in the context of magazines, is not the same as women’s magazines. Likewise, women working in journalism are not all feminist journalists, although historically, most feminist journalists are women and feminist journalism has served women. These days, feminist news, here and below referring to news about feminism and/or from feminist perspectives, remains available in print, documentary film, broadcasting, and cable; feminists are turning to Internet sites and podcasts to both share and find news that challenges dominant conceptions of women, exposes oppression, promotes feminist causes and issues, and advocates expanded political, social, and cultural roles for women of all kinds. Although efforts in feminist advocacy journalism rarely last very long, the ease and low costs of Internet access encourage a proliferation of feminist news activities. Each medium’s material and technological structure may either constrain or promote activists and facilitate (or discourage) certain ways of interacting, especially when engaged in social movement advocacy. Different media require different kinds and degrees of material investment and technical skills. Therefore, feminists must calculate the goals and available human and financial resources against the costs and investments required. Whatever the choices, feminist media usually insist that, whether they are entirely women-produced or not, women have important and leading roles in their production, especially in their editorial direction. As feminists become increasingly sensitive to the need for intersectional consciousness and intersectional analysis, some of these projects address specific problems of race, class, and sexuality and thus can be even more specialized in their audiences and their takes on the meanings of feminism and its prospects. Meanwhile, scholars have critiqued the otherwise naturalized values and structures of journalism and have used feminist theorizing to generate alternative models for addressing ethical dilemmas in journalism; this has also led to approaching journalism history from a feminist perspective. Feminists, including feminist scholars are divided over the feminist potential of a range of media formations, especially women’s magazines and “post-feminist” news sites. And they have not always avoided reifying gender per se. But scholars justifiably take equity, avoidance of sex/gender stereotyping, and fairness in content and newsroom practice, policy, and leadership to be feminist issues. The scholarship referenced here comes primarily from journalism/media studies, given the attention in this field to the structures, routines, and cultures or epistemologies that significantly impact who is allowed to produce news, which audiences are addressed, and whose issues are regarded as newsworthy. The question is interdisciplinary, however; and increasingly scholars in literature, gender studies, and women’s history are investigating these questions.