What shapes feminist journalism? Comparing Dutch and French reporting on street harassment

Abstract

What leads journalists to adopt feminist framings by linking news topics to gender-based inequalities? While scholarship often mobilizes individualized explanations, such as journalists’ personal beliefs, this article investigates how structural factors inform feminist journalism. It draws from Dutch and French media reports on street harassment and interviews with journalists and their sources. Concepts of gender-based violence were largely absent from Dutch articles, whereas feminist framings dominated French reports on this issue. This article shows how the institutionalization of feminism and the existence of newspaper sections dedicated to gender issues inform whether journalists consider feminist knowledge as compatible with objectivity standards.