JINHA entering its 4th age in 3 languages on March 8
DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - This March 8, JINHA (Woman News Agency), headquartered in Diyarbakır in Northern Kurdistan, will enter its fourth year of producing news by and about women in all four parts of Kurdistan, Turkey and beyond.
JINHA is the only all-women news agency in Kurdistan and one of the few all-women news agencies in the world. A group of women founded JINHA in 2012 to address the under- and misrepresentation of women in media. Today, JINHA provides news in Kurdish, Turkish and English from four parts of Kurdistan as well as Turkey. The agency will provide news also in Arabic as soon as possible. The agency has bureaus in Diyarbakır, Van, Izmir, Batman, Şırnak, Antalya, Siirt and Istanbul and teams of reporters in Rojava, South Kurdistan.
JINHA's operative principle of producing news through women's solidarity, rather than competition, is designed to counter a capitalist and patriarchal system that individualizes women. From camerapeople to reporters to bureau chiefs, JINHA's news is produced entirely by women. In their original statement, founding JINHA journalists said they were frustrated by images of women that ranged from the wretched to the monstrous to the pornographic, but consistently reduced women to an objectified position.
Four years later, the misrepresentation of women and especially Kurdish women remains an issue, with Kurdish women appearing widely in the world press due to their role in the Rojava women's revolution and the defense of Kobanê from ISIS.
'We are aiming at changing the language of media'
JINHA editor Zehra Doğan says that they set out against the male mentality and media defining women as "cursed and pornographic" and adds, "The male system directed the reactions towards women up to now. Women are defined in the pro-male media as either pornographic material, or victim, or in the position of 'malefactor'. We are endeavouring to set up our alternative against this. We are working to say 'stop' to this. We are aiming at changing the language of media."
Reporter from JINHA, Asya Tekin, underlines that they found this agency through the struggle of lots of women pioneers in the world and Kurdistan like Virginia Woolf, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Gurbeteli Ersöz, Şilan Aras, Sakine Cansız and Deniz Fırat. Tekin says, "We are producing our news amid 'What job have you got' insight of male-media turned into a masculine cover. We will continue to struggle against such mentalities."
(nt)
