David Ansen (Newsweek, 12/22/08) has a point when he says that the movie Borat "epitomized the [Bush] era." But he strikes a jarring note when he says:

Racism, misogyny and homophobia come pouring out of the mouths of [Sasha] Baron Cohen's unsuspecting dupes, and in a time of political correctness, when the slightest suggestion of bias on the lips of a public figure gets raked over the media coals, there was something fantastically liberating (and frightening) about seeing the national id so baldly exposed.

Presumably Ansen's thinking of someone like Don Imus, who was "raked over the media coals" not after he showed "the slightest suggestion of bias," but after years of wallowing in racist, homophobic and misogynist schtick with the tacit approval of his multitude of pals in the media elite.

In a media environment where the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter have wildly lucrative careers, there's no shortage of opportunities to get what Ansen calls the "national id" exposed--and celebrated.   What Borat provided--in the wake of the 2006 election's repudiation of Bushism--was an opportunity to see such creepiness ridiculed and scorned.  That's what makes the film, as Ansen rightly notes, a cultural landmark.

As President-elect Barack "Obama has made a point of appointing a diverse group of thinkers to his cabinet," Courtney E. Martin's American Prospect article (12/8/08) asks, "What about the diversity of opinion outside the White House?":

Let's start at the top. Kristal Brent Zook, author of I See Black People: The Rise and Fall of African American-Owned Television and Radio, reports, "Women of all races own just 5 percent of the 1,400 commercial broadcast television stations in America. People of color, who make up 33 percent of the national population (and will be more than 50 percent by 2050), own just 3.6 percent." But what about radio, favored medium of so many sharp-tongued and strong-willed politicos? Brent Zook also reports those abysmal numbers: "Women and minorities own just 6 and 7.7 percent of all broadcast radio stations in the country respectively. This means that listeners in an average radio market have 16 white male-owned stations to choose from, but just one woman-owned and two minority owned alternatives." Check out Out of the Picture and Off the Dial, two reports put out by Free Press, a D.C.-based media reform organization, for even more inexcusable statistics.

In case you "think it doesn't matter," Martin cites a Free Press finding that "having a minority- or female-owned station in a market is significantly correlated with a market airing both conservative and progressive programming." In short: "More diversity means more vigorous debate means a more enlightened democracy."

And independent media aren't immune either; see the current issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Huffington Post Mutes Women's Voices: New Media, Same Gender Imbalance" (11-12/08) by Jessica Wakeman

Blogger Carole Cohen has posted (Cleveland Real Estate News, 12/2/08) Margot Friedman's mass email wherein the media activist bemoans NBC's choice of yet another white male to host their premier Sunday news show--yet Friedman finds a silver lining:

Thank you for writing a letter to the president of NBC News to ask that the network consider a woman and/or person of color as the next moderator of Meet the Press. As you may have heard, news reports have been circulating since last night that NBC has chosen David Gregory. I am sad, but not surprised, that NBC is going with a "safe" choice rather than keeping up with the pace of change and reflecting the experiences of diverse Americans.

But did our campaign have an effect? The answer is yes and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for participating in it. When we first launched www.DontLetNBCdisWomen.org, the names of women and people of color had fallen off the radar screen and only David Gregory and Chuck Todd were being mentioned. After your letters started rolling in, and the campaign got a boost in media coverage (L.A. Times, New York Observer, Guardian of London, etc.), Gwen Ifill and Andrea Mitchell started getting mentioned again, along with Katie Couric.

Declaring this this "one time when we couldn't be passive about what's on TV," Friedman promises that "our fight for media justice will continue."

See the study results announced in FAIR's Media Advisory: "Women's Opinions Also Missing on Television: Women of Color Virtually Invisible on Sunday Shows" (3/24/05)

Feministing blogger Vanessa Valenti (11/21/08) plugs the recent FAIR study of gender disparity at Huffington Post, saying that "too many of us feel that women bloggers are underrepresented and undervalued in the progressive blogosphere, but hard evidence is always helpful." Valenti's request for readers' "thoughts" is met by commenter Renee's observation that

not only are female blogger underrated, we have to work twice as hard to get anywhere. Time after time, feminist blogs are attacked by angry trolls.... I am sure I am not only feminist/womanist blogger to be threatened online, either.

Indeed, as Lucinda Marshall wrote at Women In Media & News, "While the phenomena of blogging and comment sections is quite new, the harassment and silencing of women writers and of women who speak out has a long and damaging history":

One of the key points made in [a Washington Post piece about the 'abusive and sometimes threatening comments that are becoming frighteningly common on blogs written by women'] was the silencing effect that such harassment has. Women are less likely to write freely and openly if they feel uncomfortable or threatened.... Continued harassment of women bloggers is not, as some assert, merely the exercise of free speech. It is, rather, the latest salvo in the ongoing, systemic, global and toxic effort to silence women.

Read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Huffington Post Mutes Women's Voices: New Media, Same Gender Imbalance" (11-12/08) by Jessica Wakeman

Noam Chomsky points out that a Boston Globe analysis (11/9/08) of the Obama victory claims that the president-elect owes nothing to "traditional Democratic constituencies" like labor, women, ethnic minorities and the peace movement, because a "grassroots army of millions"--seemingly unconnected to such constituencies--"propelled" Obama's win.

It's worth noting, however, that this idea of a Democratic Party set free from the voting blocs that support it is a longstanding dream of corporate media and the political establishment--represented in the Globe piece by corporate Democrat Steve McMahon and conservative think-tanker Norman Ornstein. Ornstein, in fact, offers the same argument in the paper that he gave to CNN (11/14/92) during a similar round of "liberal interest group" bashing after Bill Clinton's election in 1992, when Ornstein claimed that Clinton "enters office with the fewest debts owed to interest groups in his own party of any Democratic president in modern times."

But the reality is not exactly as corporate media dream it. The Globe quotes McMahon--who it identifies as a "Democratic strategist," but not as a flak for PhRMA, the prescription drug lobby--as saying that Obama "owes nothing to anyone except the people who elected him." That's not actually how politics works, as any corporate lobbyist knows full well, but it's instructive to look at who the voters were who "propelled" Obama's victory.

Among white voters, according to exit polls, Obama lost by 12 percentage points, but he more than made up this deficit with his margins with African-American (91 points), Latino (36) and Asian (27) and "other" (35) voters. Women gave Obama a decisive 13-point advantage, compared to his narrow 1-point win among men.

Obama won among those making less than $50,000 a year by a 22-point margin; the votes of those who made more than $50,000 were evenly split. Union households went for the Democrat by a 20-point margin, vs. 4 points for non-union households. Seventy-six percent of those who disapprove of the Iraq War supported Obama; 86 percent of Iraq War supporters went for McCain.

Obviously, voters' opinions don't translate directly into politicians' actions; we'd live in a much different world if they did. But voters do matter enough that corporate media routinely try to wish them away.

Calling herself "more of an ally than an activist for transgender people," Veronica Arreola admits (Women In Media & News, 11/16/08) to "not being on top of each nuance of the movement" but still is aghast "at most of the media's reaction to [Thomas] Beatie's second pregnancy":

It's not the headlines that upset me; most of them have been fairly tame, like "Pregnant Man Expecting Again." But it has been the delivery on local news broadcasts as well as cable news broadcasts.... One of my local news teams announced it and the anchorman said something like, "And you thought it wasn't a weird day." I saw the news listed on "weird news" on Twitter.

The most genuine "weird" question about Beatie's second pregnancy...--why so soon? The answer appears obvious, he had to go off testosterone in order to get pregnant. The sooner he "finishes" having babies, the sooner he can get back to his hormones.

In Arreola's eyes, "the only thing odd or weird is how someone's personal decision between two adults on how to create a family stirs up other people's transphobia."

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Transforming Coverage: Transgender Issues Get Greater Respect--but Anatomy Remains Destiny" (11-12/07) by Julie Hollar

For those who have had enough election coverage, here's the alternate story of the day: "Sex on TV Increases Teen Pregnancy, Says Report" (Time, 11/3/08). "Teen Pregnancies Tied to Viewing Sexy TV Shows" (AP, 11/3/08). "Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies" (Washington Post, 11/3/08).

Stories like these are catnip for the news media, which loves a chance to moralize about entertainment media's obsession with teenage sex while indulging its own prurient fascination with the subject. The trouble is that the study the story is based on is pretty obviously bogus.

The study, published in Pediatrics (11/5/08), found that teenage girls who get pregnant watch sexier TV shows than their non-pregnant counterparts. The interesting question, though, is whether watching sexy TV makes you more likely to get pregnant--and that seems unlikely, despite the tendency of journalists writing up the study to assume that correlation proves causality. (Time's Alice Park fell particularly hard for this fallacy, writing that the study's findings "may explain in part why the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is double that of other industrialized nations.")

The study's lead researcher, Anita Chandra, is quoted in the Washington Post story: "Sexual content on television has doubled in the last few years, especially during the period of our research"--the study period being 2001-04. So what was happening to teen pregnancy rates while sex on TV doubled?

Well, they dropped every year--the birthrate for teens 15-17 was 27.4 in 2000, 25.2 in 2001, 23.2 in 2002, 22.4 in 2003, 22.1 in 2004 and 21.4 in 2005. If that's what happens when you double the sex on TV, then it's very unlikely that sex on TV has much influence on teen pregnancy rates. Or, if you work from the assumption that correlation means causality, then sexy TV might be a very effective form of birth control.

Too many things to say, really, about this New York Times online opinion piece by former Dole advisor Douglas MacKinnon. But here’s just one:

Regarding the Obama phenomenon and the media fascination with him, a senior staffer for a rival Democrat primary opponent offered up this theory to me for part of the bias. This person reasoned that the pressure within the news business to diversify and be politically correct means more minorities, women and young people are being hired. And young and ethnically diverse reporters and editors go easier on candidates who look more like them, are closer to their age or represent their ideal of a presidential candidate

In other words, the media are biased because of affirmative action in the newsroom. Considering newsrooms are still overwhelmingly white (86 percent) and male (63 percent), doesn't this argument kind of undermine itself? Ah, but the difference is that those young, female and/or minority reporters and editors can’t control their instinct to "go easier on candidates who look more like them"--while all the old, white, male journalists can.

The New York Observer's Felix Gillette brings our attention (10/20/08) to a new self-described "grassroots" website created after "NBC/MSNBC was criticized during the 2008 election for sexism in its coverage." Founder Margot Friedman further explains that "picking a qualified woman and/or person of color to host Meet the Press would help repair some of the damage to the network's brand." Gillette reports:

"The New York Times has reported that NBC will name a new moderator for Meet the Press between Election Day and early December," reads the website DontLetNBCDisWomen.org. "Chuck Todd and David Gregory are in the running. Both men are fine journalists, but they do not represent the racial or gender diversity that their viewers deserve. It is important for viewers to be exposed to a broad range of perspectives and not exclusively those of Caucasian males."

The site goes on to encourage readers to click on a link that allows them to send a message to NBC News president Steve Capus, urging him "to consider a woman and/or person of color" for the MTP job.

While careful to note that her "campaign does not endorse a particular candidate for this position," Friedman judges that "there is no shortage of talented women and/or people of color who could do the job, including CNN's Campbell Brown, PBS's Gwen Ifill or NBC's Andrea Mitchell."

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: Misogyny's Greatest Hits: Sexism in Hillary Clinton Coverage (5-6/08) by Jessica Wakeman

First-time film director Michelle Garcia discovers (Women In Media & News, 10/13/08) how sexism affects media images of such underreported issues as the U.S. government "denying passports to Mexican-American--CITIZENS--whose birth were attended to by midwives":

[WIMN editor Jennifer L. Pozner] mentions the images and voices contained in the piece are not often widely seen. After we--my all-female team--wrapped up shooting, my director of photography, Carmen Vidal, told me that a mere 5 PERCENT of top feature films are shot by women. I probably would never have understood the significance of this statistic if I had not directed a shoot--the relationship/vibe between the director and the D.P. is critical, because as a filmmaker you are entrusting your vision to their eyes.

Garcia writes that she "came away from the experience wondering if more women were involved in telling the border stories, if immigration and border security were a 'women's issue,' would what we see be different?"