Post #4: Where the Ladies are in Mainstream and Alternative Media

Even though females make up 51% of the United States population, women are still a minority group when it comes to working in the American mainstream media in 2014. The Women’s Media Center delivers the facts behind this claim with their annual Status of Women in the U.S. Media report. “The Women’s Media Center produces the annual Status of Women in U.S. Media Report to provide an overview of the role of women in media and thereby in society,” said Julie Burton, president of the Women’s Media Center. (18, Katti) The report provides gender and race statistics and analysis that constitute the industry quite thoroughly, covering many sectors such as newsroom staffing, the nation’s three most authoritative newspapers and four newspaper syndicates, various roles in radio and television e.g., talk show hosts, correspondents and news anchors, various roles both on and off the screen in film and television production, information technology, and the CEOs and board members at the top ten journalism and media companies, just to name a few. The 2014 report highlights that the gaming industry and sports journalism sphere have the most work to do, as the two areas are severely gender imbalanced with women making up only 12% of the gaming industry and only 10% in sports journalism.

A gender and racially balanced mainstream media landscape matters for many reasons. “Media remains a critical element in achieving equal opportunity and full participation in civic life. Media shapes public views of minority communities as well as views on the causes and scope of social problems and the best solutions. Thus, access to the media by the broadest sector of society is crucial to ensuring that diverse viewpoints are presented to the American people, and that all sectors of society are accurately depicted.” (civilrights.org) Further, without diverse media ownership, the amount of viewpoints becomes smaller and less varied, and if women play a smaller role or are absent all together, it’s possible that inaccurate, biased, little or no coverage may be given to issues that are important in the female community. As of this writing, only six corporations control the American mainstream media, and they are all headed by male CEO’s. Listed in the order of largest to smallest, they are the following: Brian L. Roberts CEO of Comcast, Bob Iger CEO of The Walt Disney Company, Philippe Dauman CEO of Viacom, Leslie Moonves CEO of CBS, Rupert Murdoch CEO of News Corporation, and Robert D Marcus CEO of Time Warner. It’s no wonder that negative stereotypes of women are still found in U.S. media, and really, the only way to change this is to put at least an equal amount of women in charge. An excerpt from The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2014 reads, “85 percent of survey respondents reported regularly seeing the proverbial, unmarried “Baby Mama” in the media, while 41 percent regularly encountered “Real Beauties,” which, along with “Young Phenoms,” “Girls Next Door” and “Modern Matriarchs,” were among the black women they’d prefer being captured by the media more often. (Katti, 53) To reinforce the point, if media ownership were more diverse and more women were involved, and people of all races and ethnicities at that, everyone would probably see a shift toward more diverse programming and less stereotypes in mainstream media.

American media lacks diversity in ownership and has been dominated by white men for a very long time. While this is disconcerting, it also calls attention to any and all efforts made by these major networks to place women in major news anchor roles simply because of how seminal and rare these moments are. For example, CBS spent millions of dollars in an effort to promote Katie Couric before she took over as the first solo female anchor of a network evening news broadcast in September 2006. (Filgate) While she lasted in this role for around five years and was overall successful, those five years were not without comments related to Katie’s gender and appearance, a scrutinization that was absent from the formerly male dominated space of evening news anchor. Is there any good reason that a journalist for the New York Times, actually commented on Couric’s clothing while she reported on the Virgina Tech shootings back in 2007? “Ms. Couric, who anchored Monday’s broadcast in white slacks and very little makeup to signal to viewers that she was hard at work in the field (actually, it was a university alumni room)….” (Filgate) Couric’s run at CBS should not be summed up with such a ridiculous comment, but it does help indicate where feminist progress stands and what lies ahead. Kudos to CBS for being the first network to employ a female as an anchor for the network evening news, as it must be celebrated as a significant moment in the feminist movement. 

“The African Feminist Forum is a biennial conference that brings together African feminist activists to deliberate on issues of key concern to the movement. It was developed out of the growing concern amongst feminists on the continent, that the efforts to advance the rights of women on the continent were under serious threat from a number of sources.” (africanfeministforum.com) The African Feminist forum is indeed a biennial conference that brings African feminist activists together from multiple countries to discuss feminist concerns, but their website also gives local and international readers some insight into who these women are, their background, and feminist concerns that are plaguing African countries. This group of feminists are particularly striking because most of Africa’s media is government controlled and Sub-Saharan Africa is part of the world where news coverage is extremely limited, and I can’t confirm that the information their providing is subversive, but I can’t imagine some of the information on their site is printed in a newspaper or heard on a radio station.. With that, this website provides A Survival Guide against the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Law, and an entry that reported on Youth Affairs Ronald Kibuule’s statement regarding women dressed inappropriately are asking to be raped. This group of African feminists and their website are important because it is informative for a global audience, mostly because these women are unheard of in terms of the good work that they are doing in Africa, as far as international media coverage is concerned. As far as their own internet audience within Africa, as of 2013 just about 21% of people are connected, and in comparison to the United States which is 85%, and further there are about 125 daily newspapers in all of Africa, compared with more than 1,770 dailies in the United States.(Hatchem, Scotton, 650) It’s also important to note that illiteracy is widespread in Africa, a stark contrast to America, so the group of women and all that they do are important to the people of Africa, and their website is helpful for people who can access it in Africa, and for the rest of the world. 

Since the African Feminist Forum is not specifically a news website, a second example of a subversive media website aimed specifically toward young girls is http://globalgirlmedia.org, a non-profit organization with the mission to empower high school age girls from underserved communities around the world through media, leadership and journalistic training to create or contribute their (the girls they work with) own news in their own universe and on the web. The organization, made up of women broadcasters and journalists, formed the organization specifically because they thought most of the media coverage today focuses on violence, celebrity and disaster and lacks coverage on every day young women. So, why not put the microphone into real girls hands and let them have at it? The website is rich with news stories related to girls and political issues from all over America, but mostly Los Angeles and Chicago, South Africa, and Morocco. There are images, videos, and text written by regular young ladies from underserved communities from their perspective. This website is a great way to read from the perspective of young ladies, something that is indeed absent from mainstream media, as basically adult white men run all of American mainstream media and adults are reporting the stores. There is also a section for anyone to submit their own story, giving girls worldwide the opportunity to contribute to the site, which is something pretty common on the internet but not so much on mainstream media outlets. 

Works Cited 

Collins, Gale. "Katie Couric Moves on." New York Times, sec. Editorials/Op Ed:May 20 2011. Print. 

Filgate, Michele. "Broadcast News: When Women Become Two out of Three." Women's Media Center. September 8 2009.Web. <http://www.womensmediacenter.com/blog/entry/broadcast-news-when-women-become-two-out-of-three>. 

Gray, Katti. The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2014  . Ed. Cindy Ph D. Royal. 3 Vol. , 2014. Web. 

"Internet World Stats." Internet World Stats. Aug 14, 2014 2014.Web. Miniwatts Marketing Group. Nov 14, 2014 <http://www.internetworldstats.com/america.htm#us>.

"Why You Should Care About Media Diversity." The Leadership Conference. 2014.Web. <http://www.civilrights.org/media/ownership/care.html>. 

Hachten, William A.; Scotton, James F. (2011-09-07). The World News Prism: Challenges of Digital Communication (Kindle Locations 650-651). Wiley. Kindle Edition.