This month of March, the Camer Today News Project is turning the spotlight inward – onto the lived realities of women working within Cameroon’s media ecosystem. Beyond the headlines and bylines are quieter battles over safety, dignity, job security, and digital survival. These conversations matter not only for gender equality but for the future of journalism itself.
In this special interview, Giyo Ndzi speaks with Khadijah El-Usman, Senior Programmes Officer at Paradigm Initiative, whose work on digital rights and the Clicks That Hurt research has helped document the growing threat of online harassment against women journalists across Africa. Drawing from both regional evidence and practical newsroom realities, she unpacks how online abuse is reshaping women’s participation in public discourse, why institutional responses remain uneven, and what urgent steps newsrooms must take.
Her insights arrive at a critical moment for Cameroon’s media sector, one where digital visibility is rising, but protections for women journalists are still struggling to catch up.
1) How does online harassment specifically affect women journalists in media spaces like Cameroon’s?
Online harassment affects women journalists indiscriminately and disproportionately; this has been documented by various multiple regional and global studies including Paradigm Initiative’s Clicks That Hurt research. In media spaces like Cameroon’s, online harassment is best understood as an extension of gender-based violence rooted in deep social and cultural biases.
When a woman journalist expresses an opinion, investigates a sensitive issue, or challenges dominant narratives, harassment is often deployed deliberately to humble, punish, silence, or put her in her place. These attacks are frequently sexualised, personal, and moralising rather than focused on professional work.
The cumulative effect is not just emotional harm but behavioural change. Many women journalists learn to become less vocal, reduce their online presence, avoid certain topics, or withdraw entirely from public digital spaces. This has direct implications for press freedom, diversity of voices, and democratic discourse.
2) Across the board, are media institutions doing enough to protect female reporters from coordinated online abuse?
No, and not consistently.
While some media institutions acknowledge online abuse, many still lack clear, enforceable policies that make women feel genuinely protected. Too often, online harassment is treated as a personal issue rather than an institutional responsibility.
Protection is not only about internal policies. It is also about visible solidarity. Newsrooms must be seen to actively rally around journalists who experience online abuse, publicly affirming their credibility and safety. Equally important is accountability. Institutions need mechanisms that support consequences for perpetrators, including legal and platform-based escalation where appropriate.
Without visible institutional backing, women journalists are left to manage coordinated abuse alone, which reinforces silence rather than safety.
3) What gaps currently leave women journalists vulnerable online?
While socio-cultural gender biases drive much of the abuse, institutional and systemic gaps significantly worsen women’s vulnerability.
These include the lack of newsroom-level protections by design such as clear reporting pathways, response timelines, and escalation mechanisms. Platform policy failures also play a major role. Reporting systems are often opaque, slow, or ineffective. Recent challenges around automated systems and AI tools, including the unresolved issues surrounding Grok on X, highlight how difficult it can be for women to secure redress.
Weak or inconsistent government policies further compound the problem, particularly where online gender-based violence is not clearly recognised or enforced. The absence of cross-institutional accountability leaves journalists stuck between platforms, employers, and state actors with no clear protection.
4) From Paradigm Initiative’s work, what best practices should newsrooms adopt immediately?
Based on Paradigm Initiative’s digital safety and digital rights work, including the Clicks That Hurt research, newsrooms should urgently adopt the following practices.
They should provide mandatory online safety training for all staff, not just women, covering harassment response, account security, and evidence documentation. Newsrooms should establish clear whistleblowing mechanisms so journalists can safely report online abuse without fear of retaliation or dismissal.
There must be explicit sexual harassment policies that include online and digital forms of abuse, not just physical workplace misconduct. Media houses should also pursue institution-led litigation and legal support, where organisations take responsibility for strategic cases instead of leaving women journalists to navigate legal systems alone.
Documentation and escalation protocols should be standard practice so incidents are recorded, assessed, and responded to consistently.
5) How can digital safety be integrated into newsroom duty-of-care policies?
Digital safety should be treated as a core occupational safety issue.
This requires embedding digital risk assessments into editorial planning, especially for high-risk beats such as politics, corruption, elections, and conflict. Duty-of-care policies should clearly define online harassment, doxxing, impersonation, and coordinated abuse.
Newsrooms should designate clear focal persons or teams responsible for digital safety response and provide access to legal, technical, and psychosocial support as part of staff welfare. Freelancers, regional correspondents, and contract staff must be covered and not excluded.
When digital safety is embedded into duty-of-care, harassment is recognised as workplace harm rather than a personal failure.
6) What should Women’s Day conversations include that is currently being ignored in newsroom digital wellbeing discussions?
Women’s Day conversations often focus on resilience and empowerment while ignoring structural responsibility.
What is missing is recognition that digital wellbeing is a labour and safety issue, not a personal coping challenge. There is also limited discussion about how newsroom cultures sometimes normalise abuse as part of the job.
Emerging threats such as AI-enabled harassment, including deepfakes, impersonation, and automated pile-ons, are often overlooked. The unequal visibility tax women journalists pay for being online and outspoken is rarely acknowledged.
Most importantly, Women’s Day discussions must centre institutional accountability and ask what newsrooms, platforms, and governments are actually doing, not just promising to protect women journalists.