Gender Biases in Journalism: From the Classroom to the Newsroom
Female journalists endure tough competition in the male dominated fields of media. Females are expected to be behind the scenes of a story or appear in front of a camera as a speaking mechanism, not as a serious reporter. In modern journalism, women are present in the three main platforms of the discipline—broadcast, print and online. Within these realms, females are represented differently. News stories are circulated and repeated throughout the main platforms constantly; therefore information and ideas are spread to people in different forms. When females are under reported and under represented, these notions of inequality are further spread throughout the news industry visually in the case of broadcast, words in the case of print and online in the case of social media. The tenets of journalism are objectivity and neutrality, which often contradict feminist tenets, “we face the dilemma of how to incorporate feminist sensibilities into teaching journalism—a profession that strives for detachment and, at times, seems oblivious to its own position of power” (Walker, Geertsema and Barnett 177). Female participation and inclusion in broadcast, online media and print news is present due to the male domination of the news industry. Lesley Lavery, Cindy Elmore and Dustin Harp and Mark Tremayne explore the world of journalism from feminist theory lenses. The theorists incorporate the media bias theory, standpoint theory and network feminist theory in analyzing journalism platforms of broadcast, print and online.
POLITICS MISSING THE X: FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN BROADCAST MEDIA
Lavery focuses on the decline of women in local television broadcast newscasts. She sha...
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... the media, but still at a lower percentage than male counterparts.
By only analyzing Elmore’s standpoint theory, all other genres of journalism—such as photojournalism, blogs or entertainment journalism—are excluded from the conversation. Her standpoint theory is applicable to other genres, but Harp and Tremayne’s network feminist theory takes the standpoint theory beyond print journalism and into the Internet with blogs. By analyzing both theorists, well-rounded accounts of the gender biases in journalism are explored.
In conclusion, the theorists, Lavery, Elmore, Harp and Tremayne analyze feminist theory in the journalism world. The theses display despite the presence women have in broadcast, print or online journalism, the dominant voices are solidified in patriarchy. The theorists argue journalistic platforms are not immune to gendered media biases.
In the documentary film, Page One: Inside The New York Times, the inner world of journalism is revealed through journalists David Carr and Brian Stelter as the newspaper company The New York Times, struggles to keep alive within a new wave of news journalism. The film is dedicated to reveal the true inner mechanics of what modern day new journalists face on a daily basis and leaves the audience almost in a state of shock. It broadcasts news journalism as yes, an old school method of news generation, but it also highlights an important component that reveals the importance behind this “old school” methodology. We often think that progression always correlates with positive products, but the documentary insists that within the case of modern journalism, the new wave method is actually a detriment that can reap negative consequences.
Theses and Professional Projects from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Paper 2. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss/2
It is not uncommon to hear people complaining about what they hear on the news. Everyone knows it and the media themselves knows it as well. Some of the most renowned journalists have even covered the the media’s issues in detail. Biased news outlets have flooded everyday news. We find that journalism’s greatest problems lie in the media’s inability for unbiased reporting, the tendency to use the ignorance of their audience to create a story, and their struggles to maintain relevance.
Goodman, Mark. "Chapter 8: The Media Contribution to Racism and Sexism." Mass Media and Society. Mississippi State University, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.
In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of women, it purposely sets out to redefine women and the qualities by which they should define themselves. The contradictory messages received by women leave women not only in a love/hate relationship with the media, but also in a love/hate relationship with themselves.
With a devastatingly crucial issue such as women being shunned by the media, it’s not okay to have the ideas of other people in your work. In the article, “Controversial Hillary Cover of Time Illuminates Sexism in the Media” by Marianne Schnall, implies that the media is negatively affecting the chances of women becoming successful with all the sexism it is portraying. Marianne Schnall is a published writer and professional interviewer with many influential credentials that she is not afraid to use. In addition, this article's overall effectiveness was not what I was expecting. The article was overwhelming because of all the people she mentioned and then she tried elaborating what they all said after each interview!
On a daily basis people are exposed to some sort of misrepresentation of gender; in the things individuals watch, and often the things that are purchased. Women are often the main target of this misrepresentation. “Women still experience actual prejudice and discrimination in terms of unequal treatment, unequal pay, and unequal value in real life, then so too do these themes continue to occur in media portraits.”(Byerly, Carolyn, Ross 35) The media has become so perverted, in especially the way it represents women, that a females can be handled and controlled by men, the individual man may not personally feel this way, but that is how men are characterized in American media. Some may say it doesn’t matter because media isn’t real life, but people are influenced by everything around them, surroundings that are part of daily routine start to change an individual’s perspective.
In today's world, what we see in the media dictates our world. Media, by definition, is a form of mass communication, such as television, newspapers, magazines and the internet. Since the beginning of this media phenomenon, men and women have been treated very differently, whether it be through advertisements or news stories. As women have gained more rights and social freedoms, the media has not changed their views on women. They are often viewed as objects, whether for a man's pleasure, or for as a group to sell only cleaning products to.The portrayal of women in the media has a highly negative impact on the easily shaped young women of today. Women of power are often criticized, others hypersexualized. The media also directs advertisements for household things at women.
Throughout history when we think about women in society we think of small and thin. Today's current portrayal of women stereotypes the feminine sex as being everything that most women are not. Because of this depiction, the mentality of women today is to be thin and to look a certain way. There are many challenges with women wanting to be a certain size. They go through physical and mental problems to try and overcome what they are not happy with. In the world, there are people who tell us what size we should be and if we are not that size we are not even worth anything. Because of the way women have been stereotyped in the media, there has been some controversial issues raised regarding the way the world views women. These issues are important because they affect the way we see ourselvescontributing in a negative way to how positive or negative our self image is.
This article focuses on research that reveals the de-professionalization and democratization of traditional journalism. The article explores the consequences of both the relation between traditional journalism and citizen journalism. The author argues that the emergence of citizen journalism is a consequence of the current factors effecting the changes in traditional journalism. The lines between professional journalism content and amateur journalism content have become blurred. The author explains how these factors have shown to affect the field of journalism in areas of employment, media technologies, shifting patterns of media use, and media consumption.
Bates, Stephen. “The Reporter’s Privilege, Then and Now.” Society Aug. 2001: 41-54. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 March. 2014.
The Representation of Men and Women in the Media Men and women are both represented differently in the media these days. Then the sand was sunk. Ironically it was even represented differently in the title of this essay. Men came before women! I am writing an essay to explain how men and women are represented in the media.
An article by Christina N Baker, Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A content Analysis of Black And White Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazine emphasizes on how women’s are portrayed in media such as advertisements and Magazine. The author analyzes how media has a huge impact in our society today; as a result, it has an influence on race and gender role between men and women.
Gender bias has a long history and continues to occur in the workplace today. Research indicates that women remain significantly disadvantaged and mistreated compared to men in the workforce. How do the disparities of hiring, promotion, and salaries affect women in the workplace?
McLoed and Hawley (as cited in Wilson, 1995) elucidated appropriately, "a recurrent journalistic controversy has involved the question whether journalism is a true profession or merely a craft." Sparked primarily by Lippmann and Dewey, extending into the age of the penny press (mid 1980s) and later, the attempt to commercialise the news (late 1980s) to our present era, there has existed a contentious debate on journalism being distinguished as a profession (Wilson, 1995). Encapsulated in a democratic homeland since the advent of time, media systems are habitually acclaimed as the “fourth power,” with its journalists often hailed as the “watch-dogs” of such a society. Lending itself to act as ‘gatekeeper’ for the wider society and performing the traditional role of journalism, the media (overall) exist as powerful “instruments of knowledge” that perform the function of providing information to the masses in a public sphere, where issues may be discussed, justified and contested (Scannell, 1995, p. 17). Evidently, media workers play a pivotal role in our society; however, their status in the realm of professions is not definite.