ABSTRACT
This chapter explores feminist perspectives on journalism and the public sphere. A basic feminist requirement of news is that it should enable women and men to make sense of their own social and political circumstances in such a way that they feel empowered to criticize and change them. The chapter suggests that a more particularist feminist approach, which uses as a starting-point the way gendered audiences make sense of the news. In the case of Dutch television news, women's increased visibility runs parallel with a conscious editorial policy to construct an informal and intimate relationship with the audience. The intimization of Dutch television news is an example of how some values from the private sphere are transferred to the public sphere of the news. In the Dutch case too the high visibility of women marks another expression of traditional femininity, but there is a remarkable difference as to what element of femininity is exploited.
