Women should represent women in media Megan Kamerick

like most journalists I’m an idealist

I love unearthing good stories

especially untold stories I just didn’t

think that in 2011 women would still be

in that category I’m the president of

the journalism and women’s symposium

jaws that’s Sharky

I joined ten years ago because I wanted

female role models and I was frustrated

by the lagging status of women in our

profession and what that meant for our

image in the media we make a path the

population of the world but were just

twenty four percent of the news subjects

quoted in news stories and we’re just

twenty percent of the experts quoted in

stories now with today’s technology it’s

possible to remove women from the

picture completely this is a picture of

President Barack Obama and his advisors

tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden

you can see Hillary Clinton on the right

let’s see how the photo ran in an

Orthodox Jewish newspaper based in

Brooklyn Hillary’s completely gone the

paper apologized but said it never runs

photos of women they might be sexually

provocative this is an extreme case yes

but the fact is women are only 19

percent of the sources and stories on

politics and only 20 percent in stories

on the economy the news continues to

give us a picture where men outnumber

women in nearly all occupational

categories except to students and

homemakers so we all get a very

distorted picture of reality the problem

is of course there aren’t enough women

in newsrooms they reported just 37

percent of stories in print TV and radio

even in stories on gender-based violence

men get an overwhelming majority of

print space and airtime case in point

this March the New York Times are in a

story by James McKinley about a gang

rape of a young girl 11 years old in a

small Texas town

McKinley writes that the community’s

wondering quote how could their boys

have been drawn

into this drawn into this like they were

seduced into committing an act of

violence and the first person he quotes

says these boys will have to live with

us the rest of their lives you don’t

hear much about the 11 year old victim

except that she wore clothes that were a

little old for her and she wore makeup

The Times was deluged with criticism

initially it defended itself and said

these aren’t our views this is what we

found in our reporting now here’s a

secret you probably know already your

stories are constructed as reporters we

research we interview we try to give a

good picture of reality we also have our

own unconscious biases but the times

makes it sound like anyone would have

reported this story the same way I

disagree with that so three weeks later

The Times revisits the story this time

it adds another byline to it with

McKinley’s Erica good what emerges is a

truly sad horrific tale of a young girl

and her family trapped in poverty she

was raped numerous times by many men she

had been a bright easygoing girl she was

maturing quickly physically but her bed

was still covered with stuffed animals

it’s a very different picture perhaps

the addition of him is good is what made

this story more complete the global

media monitoring project has found that

stories by female reporters are more

likely to challenge stereotypes than

those by male reporters at Keio and I’m

here in Albuquerque Elaine bomb guard

all did some graduate research on the

coverage of violence against women what

she found was many of these stories tend

to blame victims and devalue their lives

they tend to sensationalize and they

black context so for her graduate work

she did a three-part series on the

murder of eleven women found buried on

Albuquerque’s West Mesa she tried to

challenge those patterns and stereotypes

in her work and she tried to show the

challenges that journalists face from

external sources their own internal

biases and cultural norms and she worked

with an editor at National Public Radio

to try to get it to get a story aired

nationally she’s not sure that would

have happened if the editor had not been

a female

stories in the news are more than twice

as likely to present women as victims

than men and women are more likely to do

me to find by their body parts Wired

magazine November 2010 yes the issue was

about breast tissue engineering I know

you’re all distracted so I’ll take that

off eyes up here

so

here’s the thing wired almost never puts

women on its cover oh there have been

some gimmicky ones Pam from the office

manga girls a voluptuous model covered

in synthetic diamonds Texas State

University professor Cindy Royale

wondered in her blog how are young women

like her students supposed to feel about

their roles in technology reading wired

Chris Anderson the editor of Wired

defended his choice and said there

aren’t enough women prominent women in

technology to sell a cover to sell an

issue part of that is true there aren’t

as many prominent women in technology

here’s my problem with that argument

media tells us everyday what’s important

by the stories they choose and where

they place them it’s called agenda

setting how many people knew the

founders of Facebook and Google before

their faces were on a magazine cover

putting them there made them more

recognizable now Fast Company magazine

embraces that idea this is its cover

from November 15th 2010 the issue is

about the most prominent and influential

women in technology editor Robert Safety

and told the Poynter Institute Silicon

Valley is very white and very male but

that’s not what Fast Company thinks the

business world will look like in the

future so it tries to give a picture of

where the globalised world is moving by

the way apparently wired took all this

to heart this was its issue in April

that’s Lee Moore freed the founder of

Adafruit Industries and the Rosie the

Riveter pose it would help to have more

women in positions of leadership in

media a recent global survey it found

that 73 percent of the top media

management jobs are still held by men

but this is also about something far

more complex our own unconscious biases

and blind spots Shankar vedantam is the

author of the hidden brain how our

unconscious minds elect presidents

control markets wage wars and save our

lives he told the former Ombudsman at

National Public Radio who was doing a

report on how women fare and NPR

coverage unconscious bias flows

throughout most of our lives it’s really

difficult to disentangle those strands

but he did have one suggestion he used

to work for

to editors who said every story had to

have at least one female source he

balked at first but said he eventually

followed the directive happily because

his stories got better and his job got

easier now I don’t know if one of the

editors was a woman but that can make

the biggest difference the Dallas

Morning News won a Pulitzer Prize in

1994 for a series it did on women around

the world but one of the reporters told

me she’s convinced it never would have

happened if they had not had a female

assistant foreign editor and they would

not have gotten some of those stories

without female reporters and editors on

the ground particularly one on female

genital mutilation

men just would not be allowed into those

situations this is an important point to

consider because much of our foreign

policy now revolves around countries

where the treatment of women is an issue

such as Afghanistan what we’re told in

in terms of arguments against leaving

this country is that the fate of the

women is primary now I’m sure if a male

reporter in Kabul can find women to

interview not so sure about rural

traditional areas where I’m guessing

women can’t talk to strange men it’s

important to keep talking about this in

light of Laura Logan she was the CBS

News correspondent who was brutally

sexually assaulted in Egypt’s Tahrir

Square right after this photo was taken

almost immediately pundits weighed in

blaming her and saying things like you

know maybe women shouldn’t be sent to

cover those stories I never heard anyone

say this about Anderson Cooper and his

crew who were attacked covering the same

story one way to get more women into

leadership is to have other women mentor

them one of my board members is an

editor to major global media company but

she never thought about this as a career

path until she met female role models at

jaws but this is not just a job for

super journalists or my organization you

all have a stake in a strong vibrant

media analyze your news and speak up

when there are gaps missing and coverage

like people at the New York Times stood

suggests female sources to reporters and

editors remember a complete

picture of reality may depend upon it

and I’ll leave you with a video clip

that I first saw in 2007 when I was a

student in London it’s for The Guardian

newspaper it’s actually long before I

ever thought about becoming a journalist

but I was very interested in how we

learn to perceive our world

an event seen from one point of view

gives one impression seen from another

point of view it gives quite a different

impression but it’s only when you get

the whole picture you can fully

understand what’s going on I think

you’ll all agree that we’d be better off

if we all had the whole picture

you