June Fernández (Bilbao, 1984) has participated in a round table organized by the Laia School in the civic center of Espejo. The director of Pikara Magazine has talked extensively about the relationship between the media and feminism in Basque society. During these years, women have been the protagonists of the news, have revolutionized various journalistic formats and plurality has become the symbol of the journal. The director of Pikara stressed that they have made people break with what they expect in a feminist media and that there are debates that are uncomfortable for women. Sometimes they have had to pay a high price.

What has feminism contributed to journalism?

Resources to identify androcentric inertias; discover that in the hegemonic media the main protagonist is man, and not any man, but a certain profile: white, bourgeois, heterosexual… Thanks to feminism, we look like journalists. For example, in traditional media it seems that politics is what political parties do, that the economy is what big companies do, and that sport is football for men. That agenda has been questioned by feminism. When we started in Pikara, we began to reflect on what feminist journalism was and we always focused on issues; over time we realized that feminism also has to bring an internal process and change internal dynamics. We are feminists not only because we treat any topic from a feminist perspective, but because we put everything in question: what is news, who is expert. Feminism questions all this and proposes a new journalistic culture.

What has journalism brought to feminism?

The media has played a role in the listening that feminism has had. Alternative media has always been alongside the feminist movement, and now almost all hegemonic media have seen feminism interesting and producing important news. There may be some kind of symbiosis, but yet many people see with mistrust that El País or El Correo have gone up in the fashion of feminism. I think one achievement of the feminist movement is that the most caseous newspapers on the right also accept that the feminist agenda is interested.

Have you ever felt challenged, uncomfortable…?

Yes. In this sense, social networks have been an important intermediary. So far, the relationship between the feminist movement and the media has not been comfortable. The feminist movement has a logical mistrust, because on many occasions the hegemonic media are foreign, but through social networks people have had the opportunity to react and when there is a chauvinist headline it is reported through Twitter and often the media changes it. Thanks to social media, we feminists can monitor the role of the media; it has been clearly seen in the case of male violence or in the recent Olympics on Twitter how they spread the image of women.

Should quality journalism necessarily incorporate a gender perspective?

Yes. It has a partial look if it doesn't identify androcentrism. The gender perspective is an essential tool to understand and explain reality, such as the class perspective or the racial perspective. Journalism cannot turn its back on half of the population and in order to understand and explain the realities well, gender inequalities must be taken into account; in most social processes the gender inequality factor must be taken into account.

 

 

 

 

What's the most important thing to open your eyes?

The key is to change everyday routines, to stand up and think, for example, to look at the agenda, and when I need a scientist to see how many men and how many women I have among the sources of trust. The data at the state level is that in the media agenda only one in ten experts is a woman. That is very worrying. Many non-feminist journalists can say, "I don't take gender into account, I look for people who are referents and I care about gender," but if you realize, like inertia, most of the agenda will be men. It is also true that we are a Pikara magazine, and as the pace is quieter, we have the opportunity to turn the agenda around; that in a newspaper is difficult, especially if it is news about what the government does or news about the high economy, it is difficult to include the view of women there.

The presence of women is also scarce in the debates.

We need to reflect on radio and television formats, which are often patriarchal, and most women don't feel comfortable. To participate in tertulias, for example, I always tell you no, because the environment is very strange, scandals seem to be burning. Once I was proposed to go to TV about abortion and have a talk with a priest…, I said no, it was strange, I wouldn’t feel comfortable. The opinion that is now fashionable is also very patriarchal. We need to question the current formats and ask each person in what format they feel comfortable.

Pikara has become a referent in feminism. Did you believe it for that purpose?

The objective has been somehow maintained: to be a means of reference for the feminist movement, promoting plurality. In feminism there are many currents and we want to be there, as a forum for debate, and we also want to get our analyses to people who are not immersed in feminism.

There was a gap.

In Bizkaia were the journal Andra or la Frida, and there was no relay; and in the Spanish State there was no other attractive feminist communication. We saw that there was room for such a medium. Pikara was born when they were propelling social media and was a young, fresh medium of communication, but we didn't expect the structure and expansion that we have today. In addition, a quarter of the visits entering Pika go outside the Spanish State, especially in Latin America, and we did not expect it to be a reference there.

You chose a digital medium in 2010. Why digital and not paper?

Because digital seemed cheaper and more flexible, you don't have to compromise, how many pages you stuffed... Facebook had been around for a couple of years, twitter was also in its early stages, and we saw that being digital would help people participate, and that it would be more dynamic. In 2016, we jumped onto paper, at first with fear and as a self-mastery, because it makes us illusion. We were afraid because it seemed very expensive and complex, but in the end it has happened that paper editing is a product that makes our economy easier. We do it through crowfunding and sales.

Where have you invented it?

We had some clear keys from the very beginning, and others we've found along the way. For example, when the illustrators have entered the project we have made Pikarak a very powerful and attractive graphic image: With the katana Txanogorritxu, for example, it has become a feminist icon. On the other hand, we've tried to break with what people expect in a feminist environment, find what they don't expect, and sometimes open debates that can be uncomfortable for women. We try to do a very broad journalism, and we like to say that we are not a specialized journal, but generalist, because Pika works on everything: economy, politics, society, international issues, sexuality… but with a feminist look. At a time when feminism is fashionable, what can we give differently? It's the non-hegemonic feminisms that we put at the center.

Do you like there being debates?

Like June, as a journalist, it's my obsession to break taboos. I am concerned about the loss of critical capacity and the drop in dogmatism in any space, even in left-wing environments; that is why it is important for me that if there is a main discourse there are other speeches. But polemics are also painful, they take a lot of energy from us; today, for example, with the issue of prostitution we measure it a lot and we do not accept any proposal. In addition, it often happens that when there is a hegemonic opinion on one topic, when you expose other speeches, people think you get on the side of that other. Pika is known to be in favour of the regularisation of prostitution, despite the diversity of opinions in the group; our commitment is to launch the demands of sex workers, the speeches of abolitionists and those outside these two poles.

The interview with the porn actress Amarna Miller brought with her a long rope.

I had a very bad time. So we saw that people often don't understand what journalism and press freedom is. It is not fair that we oppose a means of communication and encourage sexual exploitation or that we say such barbarity to interview a woman who presents herself as a feminist. Their profession is porn, and for us it is legitimate to ask what contradictions they have, what are their strategies to move in such a patriarchal world... That doesn't mean that I'm on the side of Amarna Miller or that Pika is promoting porn. Our contribution must be to foster critical awareness.

These criticisms also have a personal cost.

Of course. It is known that the Matxitroll will insult you, but the criticism or aggression of the people next to you is more painful. Social media is like guiding, people rush immediately, they criticize with anonymity, and they feed on polarization. I don't feel like a polemist; there are people who love that, who are at the center of the controversy.

What new projects does Pika have?

We are increasingly concerned about accessibility. We cannot say that we are a means of feminist communication and, at the same time, exclude deaf women, blind women or women with functional diversity. Now, for example, given that there are many people with reading difficulties, we have made a classification of the contents of Pikara and the Easy Reading association has modified them to make them available. We'll publish them in the digital magazine and on paper.

This interview was carried out by Arabako Aleak and we brought it thanks to the Creative Commons license.