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