Women in Newsroom - Editor's Take
"It's not an equal world. Women do not have the same place as men. And I think some of these entitlements come from the gender that you're born in."
In a world where people believe that women are not political, women have proved time and again that their struggles have actively shaped their political mindset.
Women are not just a part of the world, they shape it!
Chinki Sinha editor Outlook reflects on women in newsroom and the innate lens of looking at the whole of a story than just parts. This is one of the reasons why women possess the ability to empathise with other communities which are fighting for their rights. In an unequal world, the time for women has finally come.
This International Women’s Day, let’s recognise the resilience and power of women in driving change across the world.
#InternationalWomensDay #WomensDay2024 #WomensDay #WomenInNewsroom #WomenEmpowerment #GenderEquality #Feminism #WomensRights #WomenInPolitics #GenderJustice
In a world where people believe that women are not political, women have proved time and again that their struggles have actively shaped their political mindset.
Women are not just a part of the world, they shape it!
Chinki Sinha editor Outlook reflects on women in newsroom and the innate lens of looking at the whole of a story than just parts. This is one of the reasons why women possess the ability to empathise with other communities which are fighting for their rights. In an unequal world, the time for women has finally come.
This International Women’s Day, let’s recognise the resilience and power of women in driving change across the world.
#InternationalWomensDay #WomensDay2024 #WomensDay #WomenInNewsroom #WomenEmpowerment #GenderEquality #Feminism #WomensRights #WomenInPolitics #GenderJustice
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NewsTranscript
00:00 So, Chinki, you are possibly one of the very few news editors that I know of.
00:14 How do you look at news from your perspective?
00:17 I'll say that it's not an equal world.
00:20 Women do not have the same place as men.
00:23 And I think some of these entitlements come from the gender that you're born in.
00:29 The other thing is that people look at women, and I've been a woman in the newsroom, which
00:34 is a highly gendered space, saying that women are not political.
00:38 And I say to them that by being in this gender, or by being born as a woman, we're inherently
00:45 political.
00:46 Because you have to struggle at every step in your life to get things that men get automatically.
00:51 And I come from a very, very liberal family.
00:52 But still, I mean, the struggles out there in the world are different.
00:57 And you, but the gender itself gives me a great standpoint in understanding a lot of
01:04 things because I come from the space of loss as well.
01:07 And loss is a very interesting lens to look at things.
01:10 For example, we have looked at caste, for instance, and I wrote in one of the introductions
01:15 that I'm able to understand caste or indigenous tribal rights or these kinds of other communities
01:22 that are fighting for their rights and equality and all of those things only because I have
01:29 the advantage and the privilege of being a woman.
01:32 And that gives me that whole thing to kind of look and sympathize, empathize and also
01:37 understand.
01:38 And I am saying empathize in a very different way.
01:40 I'm very well aware of the politics of empathy, but to understand and that's why we focus
01:46 a lot on understanding things.
01:49 And I always believed growing up that in two things, women of the world unite and the time
01:54 for women has come.
01:56 And I think Outlook made a very interesting decision to hire female editors because my
02:03 experience in the newsroom here and abroad is that women only get to a certain point.
02:08 They never become the decision makers.
02:10 And when you give the decision making to a woman, I think the story itself changes.
02:17 And I'll give you one example that when we were looking, I mean, 2022 in fact, came out
02:22 with this issue on Ramayana, right?
02:25 I remember there was a, I mean, who in this country will take the name of Ram in vain?
02:31 And we've decided to do a lot, many things.
02:34 We have looked at secularism.
02:35 We have looked at the constitution.
02:36 We have looked at federalism.
02:37 We have looked at all kinds of things.
02:39 But Ramayana, that one issue remains one of my favorites.
02:43 It's one of my favorites.
02:45 Exactly.
02:46 And we coded Ram because Ram is mythological figure.
02:49 He's not a historical figure.
02:51 And from that point onwards, things shift.
02:52 And this year we took the women of Ramayana.
02:55 I mean, even if mythology is actually the political course in this country, let us understand
03:00 who Ram is firstly, right?
03:02 And growing up in Bihar, you know, we never thought that lens, that the major North Indian
03:08 lens did not apply to us.
03:10 And in South India, it did not apply.
03:12 So it is also public service journalism.
03:14 We want, and that's where Read, Think, Understand comes in.
03:17 We are giving you all this, whatever examples we can gather to understand Ram, rather than
03:22 taking a popular TV series that was offered to us as the only reductive version of Ram.
03:28 And that's where our journalism matters because women look at the whole, not in parts.
03:35 [MUSIC]