Sexism and “Diversity” in Journalism
Media reports about the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have placed a big spotlight on sexual harassment, discrimination and inequality in the workplace. Ironically, female journalists, tasked with reporting these stories, continue to have career challenges and obstacles. Women make up more than two-thirds of graduates with journalism or mass communications degrees. Yet the media industry is just one-third women. That number decreases for women of color, reports show. According to the Women’s Media Center report The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2017, men receive 62 percent of bylines and other credits in online, television, print, and wire news. Men also took home 84 percent of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize over a century.
Three acclaimed WBEZ reporters will share with us their experiences, and analysis on issues of race, gender and class in journalism.
- Monica Eng is WBEZ’s Curious City reporter. Her recent popular radio report is “Baring It All: Why Boys Swam Naked In Chicago High Schools”.
- Natalie Moore is WBEZ’s South Side reporter. She’s author of the critically-acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.
- Linda Lutton is WBEZ’s senior education reporter. She’s reporter for the award-nominated radio story “The View From Room 205: Can schools make the American Dream real for poor kids?”
They’ll tell us what changes they believe must take place to improve diversity, inclusion and fairness in newsrooms, both in Chicago, and across America.
Below are some interview highlights.
Whether current discussions of diversifying newsrooms represent a “moment:”
Moore: I’ve been in journalism for 20 years, and every newsroom I’ve been in we’ve talked about diversity issues. It’s great that the conversation is happening, maybe for people who hadn’t been thinking about it, but it doesn’t feel like a moment because this has been going on since before I even got into journalism.
Eng: When I got to the Chicago Tribune in the mid-90s, there was tons of talk and actually some action. But then as I saw newspaper budgets shrinking, you stopped hearing these conversations, it just kind of went away, and I don’t see an emphasis on creating more diverse newsrooms as much as I did 20 years ago.
Lutton: It’s an ongoing discussion within journalism, but because of the time we are in and because of the way society is looking at a lot of structural questions and institutions, we’re seeing this outside attention to journalism. I also think there’s a demand from minority communities and women to have their stories told the way they want them told.
Why diversity in journalism matters:
Moore: I teach journalism off and on, and the first thing I tell students is, there’s no such thing as objectivity, we’re all subjective. So let’s just throw that out the window. You can be fair and balanced and nuanced, and tell even more than just two sides. Being subjective is okay because a newsroom should be a place where there are multiple viewpoints, multiple life experiences, and those things can inform you if they don’t get in the way. [When people say] ‘Oh, I’m just a white male…’ no, you’re not just a white male. Where are you from? There’s something in your life that has shaped you no matter who you are. I remember working in newsrooms and at the morning meeting to decide what goes in the paper the next day, everyone was white and suburban and had small kids. So those are the kinds of stories that got on the front page. If your leadership is all the same type of person who all lives in the same community all at the same life point, then that can be a problem in shaping the coverage and seeing what gets in print or on the air.
Eng: Diversity isn’t just being Latino or Asian or African-American, but having more people who are for same-sex marriage because they’re in a same-sex marriage. It’s people whose parents didn’t go to college, people who grew up in a different part of the city. I think that’s what gets the most rich coverage, when you have people who have all sorts of life experiences weighing in and being able to look at something and say I don’t know if you want to use that word or run that headline, because I think when you get these monolithic newsrooms, you end up having some blind spots.
Lutton: For a local newsroom, I think the real goal should be connections to all our various communities, and that would recognize diversity even, for instance, within the city of Chicago. I think from a management standpoint and a numbers standpoint, sometimes we can get into just checking the boxes or saying that x percent of our reporters are Black. I think the question to a local newsroom should be, do we have good, deep connections to our communities?
How being a woman affects their experiences as journalists:
Lutton: News is a very hard industry to be in and be simultaneously a parent. You have almost no control over your schedule, so it’s very tough for women especially with smaller kids to also be competitive in their newsrooms. I think you see that in terms of who climbs the ladder and who is moved toward management and who also gets sort of the plum jobs in journalism.
Eng: Those first months back are the hardest thing. You feel like a crap journalist and a crap mom and you feel like you’re never going to be able to bounce back and I’m into sure how many men also have that same feeling coming back.
Lutton: Reporting on the education beat is interesting because it’s 70 percent women, according to the Education Writers’ Association Survey. Also, 20 percent of the reporters on that beat nationwide are nonwhite, so that’s also a higher percentage than it is in general across all beats in newsrooms. I don’t actually know why, but education is seen as a beat for women. It was also always seen as a stepping stone. But I think the heavy presence of women on this beat and some of the excellent schools reporting being done by those women is shifting how we think about education reporting.
Eng: The Women’s News section at the Tribune was seen as, if you did something bad or you crossed the editor, guess what section you got sent to? There was a very high profile person who had a very high profile job at the Tribune who crossed an editor and basically they wanted him to quit so they made him a copy editor on women news, and that is really insulting to women. But then they finally got rid of the section because, you know, why cover women? We always felt like, why can’t the full paper cover women?
How to foster diversity in the newsroom:
Moore: One of the things you often hear is, ‘we couldn’t find anyone qualified.’ There are a number of organizations, the National Association of Black Journalists, Hispanic, Asian, Native-American, Gay and Lesbian, etc. These were organizations that started in the 70s as a response to getting these groups into mainstream newsroom. There are resources out there, there are conventions, there are conferences, there are local chapters, and there are listservs, so there’s no reason that you shouldn’t have a pool to pull from. But it’s not just hiring the people, are you giving them the same opportunities that other people have in the newsroom?
Lutton: I think the retention point is really important and I think developing people from within, sort of seeing potential leaders within the ranks of your newsroom, I think that’s an easy one and it’s often overlooked by management. There is absolutely no reason that a newsroom in the city of Chicago shouldn’t be a third Black, a third white, and a third Latino. There really isn’t any excuse. We have budding journalists out there who come from our communities who are so talented. Why are those young people not ending up in our newsrooms and then moving up through our newsrooms?
This interview was adapted for web by Anna Waters. Listen to the full interview here.
