Women Issues in Press Media; The Question of Prominence

Abstract

The studies ofnewspaper media on women issues havewidely been carried out across the globe, but the question of how prominently are those issues covered in press media is left unanswered. To secure the answer to this question, this study was carried out doing quantitative content analysis of daily Jeejal newspaper. The six-month coverage of the said issues (extending from July 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020) was examined to this end. In total, 228 news related to women issues having an average ratio of 38 news a month were found in the newspaper, and the majority (130) of those were about honour killing and rape issues collectively. In terms of the placement of news,the majority (115) of the news were placed in the inside pages following 63 and 50 news placed in the front and back page of the newspaper respectively. Henceforth, the average rate of front-page news has stood 10.5 each month that is too insufficient as compared to note how serious are the issues prevailing across the country. Besides, the same statistics in terms of the average of inside pages news was 19 news each monthwhich is also insufficient because the inside pages contain different pages other than front and back pages. Thus, prominence in this study was categorized into two portions, frequency and the placement of news. Giving prominence to the news by frequency, the newspaper has succeeded but it has failed giving prominence to the news by placement.