A group of netizens call for China's media regulatory board's attention over CCTV's Spring Festival gala's "discriminatory" contents against women. (Photo : Reuters)
To give all-out entertainment without raising the brows of gender equality advocates, the production team of Spring Festival gala is urged to have a consultant who will provide comments on perceivable discriminatory contents.
The call is published in a commentary released by paper.cnwomen.com.
In recent weeks, the virtual world has witnessed heated discussion over a thousand netizens' joint letter stating their plans to boycott the 2015 Spring Festival gala. The letter contains the group's sentiments over the cultural show's "discriminatory" messages against women.
Meanwhile, the other party's concern centers on the joint letter's absurdity, emphasizing that the show does not contain any biases against the female. Instead, the petitioners have only been reading too much on the performance's dialogs and lines about the gender.
In fact, in a netease.com-posted survey, over two-thirds of the 33,184 respondents say that the program did not have any discriminatory themes. A small portion, 25 percent, sided with the petitioners' observations.
The joint letter signed by the netizens also calls for China's media regulatory body to stop the China Central Television (CCTV), the gala's home station, from airing such gender-insensitive broadcasts.
The group of 1,000 netizens earned another criticism saying that their voice is nearly negligible in comparison with the show's 700 million audience. CCTV's Spring Festival gala is regarded as one of the most-watched television programs in the world.
However, the recent concern raised by this particular group has served as a reminder that the media should be sensitive in themes that touch the issue of gender equality. It has also helped raise public awareness on the said advocacy.
