Media should protect women and children -Tissa Karalliyadda

By L.S. Ananda WEDAARACHCHI

The Mass Media has a great responsibility in improving the socio-economic standard of the people especially to empower women, said Child Development and Women’s Affairs Minister Tissa Karalliyadda.

He was addressing a one day workshop on media and women, organised by the Child Development and Women’s Affairs Ministry in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund.

The minister said that the mere physical development of a country was meaningless unless it was matched by improved living standards and inner development of its people.

“The mass media plays a vital role in changing the social and updating knowledge. It makes a great impact on the society at all levels. Media personnel should use every opportunity to ensure the well-being of women and children”, the Minister said.

“The girls from rural areas in Free Trade Zones and garment factories countrywide face enormous difficulties. Their salaries are relatively low. In their households their husbands ill treat them. Children more often than not become victims of cruelty and incidents of child abuse are often spotlighted in the media. The media should safeguard the future of those victims when the culprits are dealt with by law. In the modern world there should not be any room for women or child molestation although such vices have been reported repeatedly in this country, he said.

For over three decades incidents of domestic violence, abuse of children and rape or killings of women had been over shadowed by terrorism.

Dr. Subangi Herath

Sunethra Rajakarunanayake

Women in the North and remote parts of the country are beset with numerous problems and as such it is incumbent on the authorities to seek solutions for them, the minister said.

Senior Lecturer of the Colombo University’s Sociology Department Dr. Subangi Herath said that it is time that attitudes towards women change.

The discrimination and attempts at marginalising women by men cannot be permitted any longer. The role of a mother, wife or sister should be appreciated in the larger interests of the society, she said.

Field research conducted in the Hambantota district recently had brought to light an incident where a father of six daughters had sexually abused three of them.

Paradoxically the area’s Grama Niladhari laid the blame on the culprit’s wife, for her uncleanliness and weaknesses.

In most of these incidents it is the women who are held accountable, when the men commit such anti-social vices with impunity and escape the long arm of the law.

This situation needs to be rectified without delay.

Referring to the print and electronic media, she said that except for day-to-day incidents or cake-making cookery and use of cosmetics there are hardly any newspaper articles or programs on important issues such as women empowerment, safeguarding women’s rights and interests or improving the lot of womankind.

Award winning writer and senior journalist Sunethra Rajakarunanayake said that the attitudes towards women and children by the local and international media is totally unacceptable.

When the Nepalese royal family was massacred by a member of the same family in 1991, the BBC attributed the apparent cause of the tragedy to a princess who had an alleged love affair with the assassin in prince.

The BBC staff and other professionals, however condemned the reporting which was biased against the princess, she said.

That report ran contrary to BBC ethics. Although media organisations too have a code of ethics they are very often observed in the breach. Apart from having a new set of ethics the existing code is more than enough if it is properly observed. Some electronic media advertisements discriminate women and children. The senior journalist and former Tharuni and Sirikatha editor Anula de Silva said that the electronic and print media have a vital role in the context of upholding the dignity of women and promote the status of women.

Some women’s weeklies carry articles purely for commercial gains. Serious articles and well articulated television programs have better leverage in promoting women empowerment, she said.Twenty-four resolutions were adopted at the conclusion of the workshop. Motivation and training of media personnel including decision-makers on women empowerment was one of the resolutions in the larger interests of womenkind.

Secretary, Child Development and Women’s Affairs Ministry Sumithra Rahubaddha, Additional Secretary, Asoka Alawatta, Director, Planning J.P.S. Jayasinghe and United Nations Population Fund Representative Shamila Daluwatta also addressed the workshop.