Feminist Media Project

Media worldwide are covering the Pickton trial in BC. But a recent poll found that almost one in two B.C. residents are not interested in the trial. This fact conflicts with the media's perception that sensational crime stories, such as serial murder and sexual homicides drive audience interest. These types of crimes tend to gain large amounts of media coverage in North America, with crime and violent content often filling between 20 and 25 per cent of the news section in newspapers and on television. If not the media, who has the power and reach to speak for the many women who disappeared and died?

Feminist Journalism: Playing for the Girl's Team
By Becky Atkinson
Relying upon the traditional news value of ‘objectivity’ to achieve clarity, traditional journalism reports facts gained from ‘legitimate’ patriarchal sources and authorities without the gender analysis and context provided by feminists. Because it diverts our attention away from gender, ‘objectivity’ obscures the social and political reality of patriarchy and reflects and reinforces patriarchal values and institutions.

Conversations with three feminist reporters covering the Pickton Trial
By Jessalynn Keller
The Missing Women trial in Vancouver involves the key issues of second and third wave feminism: sexual abuse, violence against women, sexuality and the roles that race, class and gender play in power relations. Why then is the media coverage of the case still so reflective of dominant cultural stereotypes of women, violence, sex and race? Jessalyn Keller interviewed women journalists from the Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail and the Canadian Press wire service.

Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse
By Yasmin Jiwani and Mary Lynn Young
Employing a frame analysis, the authors analyze 128 articles from The Vancouver Sun published between 2001 and 2006. They argue that prevailing and historically entrenched stereotypes about women, Aboriginality, and sex-trade work continue to demarcate the boundaries of ‘respectability’ and degeneracy, interlocking in ways that situate these women’s lives, even after death, in the margins.