"Women make India proud at Rio Olympics", India today,December 27, 2016
"Sydney Olympic Games gave me belief to win gold: Abhinav Bindra", TOI,Aug 21, 2017.
"8 women, 2 children among 18 killed in Satara tempo mishap",TNN, Apr 11, 2018
"Three people killed as bus rams into commercial complex in Coimbatore",TOI, Aug 27, 2013
"Texas teacher who had sex almost daily with 13-year-old student gets 10 years in prison", Washington post,January 15, 2017
"Professor Arrested For Allegedly Raping Minor Student In Madhya Pradesh",NDTV,June 16, 2018
Headlines like this show the inherent misandry that is present in today's media.
In News number (1) and (2) we see that when women won Olympic medals, their gender is highlighted. But when a man wins Olympic medal his gender is not highlighted.
News number (3) highlights the fact that eight women and two children were killed. The fact that eight men were also killed in the accident was considered unimportant.
News number (4) all the victims of accident where men. Hence the fact was not highlighted.
News number (5) when a lady rapes a minor student, it is not called rape. Instead media underplayed the incidence as sex between two individuals.
However in news number (6) when a man has sex with a minor student, it is called rape.
If you take a close look into headlines of some of our newspapers, it will be apparent that they underplay the gender of men who are victims of violence, whereas gender is usually highlighted when women are victims.Similarly, the gender of male offenders is usually highlighted, but not so for female offenders.
So why is our media biased against men?
Reason is most of our journalist have a left liberal leaning.They regard their missions as not reporting and informing the truth, but indoctrinating. Also today, women which feminist leaning, constitute a significant proportion of journalist.
Hence newspapers and electronic media are full of stories that perpetuate myths about rape culture, wage gap, women as victim of oppression by men, inherent evilness of masculinity etc.
The other reason is today media is increasingly dependent on advertisement for revenue.
Advertisers pay newspapers to reach their messages to target demographic groups.
The preferred target demographic group by companies is women because worldwide, 80% of all purchases are made by women (even though men make more money than women). Women also own 60% wealth of the world.
In their desperate quest to maintain profit margins, newspapers are in constant competition to deliver the female demographic to potential advertisers.
So how do newspapers deliver the female demographic to their advertisers?
Women, enjoy seeing men fail. This fact is backed by various studies. When men are painted in a negative light, and women in a positive one, it creates a feel-good factor among women. Media has been exploiting this time-proven technique for a long time now. Women consistently come back to read newspapers and magazines which make them feel good in some way. Hence media is full of stories that show men in poor light and women in positive light.
Men are routinely portrayed as uncouth,violent and perverted.
Commercials regularly portray men as idiots and irresponsible beings who must be saved by clever and smart women. It is also “acceptable” for women to kick, and slap men.
Men's Rights Activists (MRA's) must fight against the negative portrayal of men by the media. Only then can they fight the larger misandry that is present in our society.
About the author:
Amartya Talukdar has Masters in engineering from IIT (BHU) Varanasi. He is a Men's Rights Activist and a blogger, having interest in various fields.