Media Storm - Woman, Life, Freedom: Feminism across cultures and borders

Starting point is 00:00:00 Td Bank knows that running a small business is a journey, from startup to growing and managing your business. That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs. No matter the stage of business you're in, visit td.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. Media Stormers Unite. This September we have a chance to get together in person for a rare Media Storm live show. We're back at the London Podcast Festival at King's Place near Kingscross Station. We'll be taking to the stage at 7pm on Saturday the 16th of September. This will be a snappy, interactive show with lots of guests spanning some of our favourite topics.

Starting point is 00:00:51 Come for the most bizarre, the most brazen. the most outlandishly bonkers headlines of 2023. Bring someone you love or love to discuss the world with. Tickets are a tenor, but if you can't afford one, just message us as we'd still love you to join. The ticket link is in our notes below. Let's get on with the show. Hi Media Stormers, it's Helena here. Today, we're bringing you more from our latest episode,

Starting point is 00:01:25 with Nazanin Baniadi. If you're a Lord of the Rings fan, you probably know Nazanin. She plays Bronwyn in the Prime Video series The Rings of Power. Or you might know her from homeland or hotel Mumbai or how I met your mother. But aside from being a brilliant actress, Nazanin is also a determined activist. Since 2008, she has represented Amnesty International's campaigns for the restoration of stolen human rights.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Her main focus is on Iran. Since September 2022, demonstrations and protests have been ongoing in Iran after Masa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, died in police custody. The Islamic Republic of Iran stated that she had a heart attack at a police station, collapsed and fell into a coma. However, eyewitnesses reported that she was severely beaten and that she died as a result of police brutality. Her crime? Allegedly violating Iran's strict rules requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab. The news and the deep-seated resentment of the powers that be in Iran enraged the Iranian people. Protests, demonstrations, revolutions, revolutions are still happening now. This revolution is mostly being led by young people and women and girls.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Why is this all so important to Nazanin? She told us last episode. was born basically just a few months after the Islamic Revolution of 17.9. So my parents were dissidents against the newly forming Islamic Republic. And their lives were at risk. They tried to escape once when my mother was seven or eight months pregnant with me. And my father was summoned over the PA system at the airport to the Revolutionary Court. Of course, the fate back then, anybody who was summoned would have been the firing squad. And so, under the understanding that they had to leave, they basically found a way to escape to London when I was 20 days

Starting point is 00:03:27 old. And yeah, I grew up in London, but that sort of revolutionary fervour was always in my psyche. And I knew I had to use my freedoms to protect those of the people I left behind. And, you know, I always joke that my first protest was in my mother's room because she would be one of those brave women on the front lines, the same women that we're seeing today. bravely defy the Islamic Republic. So here's more from our discussion with Nazanin that we couldn't quite fit into last week's episode. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Starting point is 00:04:00 And remember, you can see more on Media Storm's Instagram at MediaStormPod. Can I ask your thoughts on something that's been on my mind, actually, Nazan. So I once had a discussion with a friend of mine, a guy who's Syrian, about a book I was reading called Gaddafi. Harim. So the book it is about the many girls who were abducted by Gaddafi, the Libyan ruler, and forced to become, well, essentially sex slaves to him. Now, my friend was upset that it had been published by a French journalist for a Western audience, not because the story wasn't important,

Starting point is 00:04:38 but because he felt it was being used to serve a political agenda to paint Gaddafi as an oppressor of women when a lot of his policy was actually seen as very liberal in the region, and that Western interveners, by contrast, could be presented as like the liberators of Libyan women. And I see his point, because in human rights reporting, you know, Western human rights reporting, particularly concerning, I think, Islamic regions, women are often held up as symbols of eastern backwardness and used to push orientalist narratives of the East as oppressive and the West as progressive. And it creates a bit of a conundrum for journalists. I wonder how do we shine a light on the plight of women and girls around the world without demonising foreign cultures

Starting point is 00:05:31 or appropriating their struggles for political gain? That is an excellent question. I always address this by saying, please, please demonise our brutal regime. Please demonize those who are oppressing the people. What we have to be careful of is differentiating between the people of a nation and their monstrous oppressors. For years in my activism, well-meaning progressives have said to me, you know, we want to be careful not to sort of appropriate or interfere in the cultural differences or offend anyone. And I think that's quite dangerous because women and girls of Iran have been rising up and the people of Iran have been rising up and risking everything, including their very lives, to show the world that the Islamic Republic's despotic

Starting point is 00:06:21 culture is not theirs. So for 44 years now, these well-meaning lawmakers in the West have said, oh, but we don't want to offend anyone and we don't want that's their culture. And finally, people have just, you know, reached their limit and said, this is not our culture. So please demonise those who are using violence to oppress us. No cultural norm needs to. to be enforced through threat of death and violence, frankly. The idea is if we're reporting accurately, the right people will be demonised. And also, the people of Iran, like I'm just contextualizing with the country that I know most about, will come off as the heroes they are. When we report accurately, when we tell the truth, whoever comes out looking demonized

Starting point is 00:07:10 will then probably be a demon. And that is why people have to be accurate with their language, right? That's why you have to make sure you're saying the Islamic state and you're not saying Muslim people. It's so simple, but actually that is why you have to be accurate because otherwise people of a whole country, a whole ethnicity are completely demonised. Well, that's exactly right. What we're talking about here is not the Muslim religion. We're talking about the Islamic Republic of Iran, which like ISIS essentially is an Islamic state. It's politicized Islam. It's when you're enforcing through violence, your ideology onto a population and all of your citizens. And I think that's the differentiation here. Many of us activists who've been

Starting point is 00:07:55 fighting against compulsory hijab for many years now have been accused of inciting sort of Islamophobia. Well, look at the people of Iran. Do we think that they're inciting Islamophobia? These people are Muslim. The vast majority of them are Muslim. And they're saying, All they're saying is let our religion be our choosing, let our practice be our choosing. If you're forcing us and you're using violence against us to put a piece of fabric on our head, then what kind of religion is that? Fighting for people's freedoms, even in the context of religion, is not inciting any kind of phobia against that religion. It's preventing abuse by the leaders of that state.

Starting point is 00:08:41 So that's where we have to draw the line, is we have to be able to condemn those who use religion as a pretext for violence and coercion and control. Yeah. Well, let's take a look at why this sexism still exists in media coverage. journalism and particularly war journalism, it is a very male dominated industry. So there is a shortage of women who are more likely to give women a voice in their reporting. But there's also a shortage of locals and local women in particular. So foreign correspondence, they rely on local fixes to help them put together their stories and their news reports in areas that are hit by crisis. Now, these fixes are often highly qualified journalists themselves, but they get

Starting point is 00:09:45 much less authority over the content of the story and they get less credit, less safety and probably less money for their work. When you read about news about crises in different countries, do you feel like you're getting an accurate portrayal of that country? A country like Iran, for example, because of the mass censorship inside the country, we have to be mindful of the fact that what we're hearing from foreign journalists on the ground in Iran will likely be a watered-down, whitewashed version of the truth, because they can't report factually. They can't condemn the government openly.

Starting point is 00:10:24 There's much that they can't do because they face the same risks as the people of Iran. When citizen journalists post something, they'll face imprisonment lashes or possibly worse. Those are real limitations, I think, within countries like Iran that we have to be mindful of. The truth is often exposed by fearless dissidents who find ways to post things and share things with people outside the country that either don't put themselves at risk or if they're willing to frankly just risk everything to get that report out or by people who escape the country and then are able to report freely from outside the country's borders. What I find tricky when it comes to reporting from a country like Iran is we have to rely on people on the ground to source information for us, but understanding full well that we are putting their lives at risk. And hopefully we find ways to remunerate them and give them the resources and money. At this, that's the very least we can do to pay them well enough so that they can do the work.

Starting point is 00:11:28 But that puts an added pressure on them because if it's found that they're being funded, by a foreign entity, they automatically will be charged with being a spy and in prison. So it's multi-layered, but we have to essentially find ways to get this information. I think the safest way is, of course, to get the dissidents outside the country to be able to report for you. I think you're right that definitely censorship and the situation on the ground is a factor. And often for women on the ground, it is even more dangerous than it is for men on the ground to work with foreign journalists and to be informers.

Starting point is 00:12:07 But I also feel that there's a bit of a problem with sensationalism in reporting on these areas. Something I've learned from the many refugees in my circle is that a country at war is nothing like I imagined. Yes, there is everyday danger and explosion and visible militancy that we see in the headlines. But there is also day-to-day survival. and peace-building work happening.

Starting point is 00:12:35 We don't paint a picture of this, and I think that maybe this is one of the places where women get lost in our reporting because they may be less visible in the dramatic, you know, militancy happening on the streets, but their work and how they're impacted may be much more visible if we were to look at household education, you know, the efforts to survive, the efforts to build peace.

Starting point is 00:12:57 And so I think that actually desensationalizing the news and making it less about drama and less about war and more about peace and survival is something that journalists could be working on too. Sure, yeah. Yeah, it's always good to sort of highlight the positives. I've always been sort of results oriented

Starting point is 00:13:18 in my advocacy work. Reporting on something is great, but finding a way forward and finding a solution to the problem and reporting on those, I think, is even more important. And there are so many people inside Iran and other countries who are doing tremendous work to achieve change and to create change. That's what we need to be covering is what is being done, what actions, what brave actions

Starting point is 00:13:42 are to being taken to bring about the changes we need. Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. That's just an extract of our overall conversation. So if you'd like to hear more, head to Media Storm's feed and listen to our episode, Women in Crisis, is conflict and disaster. sexist. And if you want to see MediaStorm live, we'll be at London Podcast Festival on Saturday, September the 16th. The ticket link is in the bio and we'd love to see you there.

Media Storm - Woman, Life, Freedom: Feminism across cultures and borders

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