Audio Guide: Gender-Based Violence Sensitive Reporting

This audio guide, published by Radio for Peacebuilding Africa, intends to serve as a guide for journalists and media professionals in producing more responsible programming on gender-based violence. It has been created to help journalists cover survivor stories in an appropriate and sensitive manner and serve the public without compromising survivors' rights. The guide is divided into two parts. The first part reviews and expands on the concept of gender, gender-based violence and the relationship between cultural context and violence against women. The second part proposes ethical, legal and professional considerations in order to assist journalists as they report on survivors and gender-based violence.

According to the publisher, most of the current literature on gender-based violence and the media illustrates how the media has played a negative role in the coverage and imaging of violence against women. The representation of women as sex objects and the media's failure to link gender-based violence to human rights, gender equality, and issues of national development, often leads to isolated, sensational reporting. New issues, such as human trafficking, the spread of pornography, and violence against women through new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are under-reported news in media across the African continent. Reporting on sexual and gender-based violence often leads to further stigmatisation or retaliation, which poses further challenges to journalists.