The News Minute Editorial | December 29, 2014 | 09:49 am IST
Former Rajya Sabha member and intellectual at large N.K. Singh has said miscreants must be dealt with firmly and need a bamboo inserted into them from dérierre.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh said today that he couldn’t figure out if former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati was a man or a woman.
Noted socialite and television personality Suhel Seth said Malala was the “Chick of the Year.”
What would happen if this was truly the case - huh?
All of the statements above are right, but they have been wrongly attributed to men. They were spoken/written by women and reported by journalists including women. The first comment was made by Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of Bengal criticizing her CPM opponents, the second by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shaina NC and the third by columnist and author Shobhaa De. The outrage and decibel levels that normally follow the first two and to a lesser extent the third were muted leading us to ask leading us at The News Minute (TNM) to ask - do we in the media give women a longer rope than we accord men?
In January 2014, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Asha Mirje asked why Nirbhaya, the 23-year old physiotherapy student who succumbed to her injuries in Delhi in December 2012 was out late at night. That comment passed easier than the “highly dented and painted” reference by Congress politician Abhijit Mukherjee and son of India’s President’s about women protesting the Nirbhaya incident through candle light vigils and silent marches.
We have no data or evidence to underpin what we observe. But it does appear that we are less critical of women when they hit below the belt and this is not something we agree with. Responsibility and accountability has no gender.