Jennifer L. Pozner has a version of her new NPR commentary on the Women In Media & News website she founded (7/8/09), in which she asks you to "think carefully: Can you remember any passionate TV news debates about whether journalists or voters might want to get naked with former vice president Dick Cheney?" If you're answer is no, that's not only unsurprising, but also, says Pozner, "good. Because such an insulting, irrelevant topic would--and should--never be considered newsworthy." She then calls attention to the fact that, "unfortunately, this sort of drivel frequently passes for journalism when the politician at the center of the story is female":

Take Alaska's soon-to-be-former governor, Sarah Palin. When she dropped her resignation bombshell--dubbed "breathless" "girlish burbling" by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd--CNN's Rick Sanchez wondered, "Hey, could she be pregnant again?," while others chalked it up to post-partum depression. Meanwhile, MSNBC analyst Donny Deutsch told Morning Joe viewers that the Quittah from Wasilla is divisive specifically because: "This is the first woman in power with sexual appeal.... We're used to seeing a woman in power as non-threatening."...

The ugly, nonpartisan truth is that corporate media have always seen women in power as threatening. That's why they trivialize women who dare seek office by obsessing over their bodies, hair, shoes, makeup and motherhood--as if these have anything to do with their abilities and track records. Whether it's cable news branding Hillary Clinton a "bitch," the New York Times reporting that Condoleezza Rice wears a size six, or the Washington Post detailing Loretta and Linda Sanchez' hairstyles, housekeeping preferences and "hootchy shoes," journalistic double standards condition us to consider women as ladies first, leaders a distant second--and inherently less qualified.

Pozner describes the consequences: "We'll never know how many talented people were dissuaded from politics because they knew it would be significantly harder for them to run, win and govern." See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Beyond Clinton & Palin: Coverage of Women in Election Misses Real Women's Issues" (1/09) by Julie Hollar.

Sports media critic Dave Zirin has posted on his Edge of Sports blog (7/6/09) about Wimbledon tennis tournament host All England Club having "blithely admitted that for women players 'physical attractiveness is taken into consideration' when it comes to court assignments" and how "several players, including some of these 'easy-on-the-eye unknowns,' were upset with the setup":

But much of the media dismissed the story as unimportant. L.Z. Granderson, a normally sane voice in the ESPN archipelago, wrote a column in which he stated simply, "I don't see the harm." After conceding the obvious--that the policy is sexist--Granderson played devil's advocate: "I actually find the Wimbledon officials' honesty quite refreshing.... Last I checked, gender equity in the workplace wasn't a beer on tap at the Kit Kat Club. Sometimes people like what they like, and accepting that also requires a certain degree of tolerance."

That would mean tolerance for sexism, an acceptance of the fact that no matter what their skills, women athletes should be prepared to be seen as objects first and athletes second.

Having written for some time of such matters, for Zirin, "the fact that sportswriters don't only ignore this practice but defend it is more than just annoying, upsetting or infuriating. It's tired."

Reading Caitlin Flanagan's Time magazine cover story (7/2/09) on the "increasingly fragile construct" of marriage--which claims that "the divorce culture became a fact of life" over "the past 2½ decades"--one would never guess that U.S. divorce rates have actually dropped by almost a third since 1992, from 4.8 per thousand people to 3.5.

In Women In Media & News' announcement (6/18/09) that former FAIR staffer Jennifer Pozner has won a New Leaders Council "40 Under 40" Award--given to those "who exemplify the spirit of progressive political entrepreneurship"--Women's Rights blogger Jennifer Nedeau spells out why "women in media are crucial to the future of progressive leadership":

Because they can often best represent the issues that matter most to progressives. Women own a large stake in issues of equality, civil rights, a stable economy, a clean environment, accessible healthcare and education, among other progressive topics. More women need to be seen on television, read in newspapers, heard on the radio and seen in new media forums in order to make a positive impact in the progressive movement. However, just as consciousness-raising and media appearances matter--it is also incredibly important to stop and take a moment to thank those who ensure that the infrastructure exists to make this progress possible.

To this end, Pozner is recognized for having "'founded WIMN to strengthen that infrastructure and transform the media landscape for women." In fact, "for eight years, Women In Media & News has worked to increase diverse women's presence and power in the public debate."

Blogging about a male-only film promotion contest at San Diego's Comic-Con, Charlie Jane Anders (io9.com, 6/15/09) also notices the "L.A. Times published an insulting 'guide for girls'" about the convention--which

starts out by assuring readers that contrary to what you might believe, the event "is not just for nerdy guys anymore. And it's not all just about the influx of squealing Twilight girls, either." Wow, really? You mean women can be into genre entertainment other than Twilight? Apparently so. Because there are more vampires, from True Blood and the upcoming show The Vampire Diaries. And there'll be "ass-kicking heroines" from TV shows like Dollhouse, plus maybe Brad Pitt will be there and you can ogle him!

Plus maybe Jake Gyllenhaal will be there for Prince of Persia: "Women will be rushing the stage, offering to do star Jake Gyllenhaal's laundry on those washboard abs that he acquired for the film, since he spends much of it fighting, shirtless or both."

Noting that the guide's "write-ups for other upcoming science fiction franchises assure us that they feature an 'emotion-driven storyline' or 'bittersweet tears,'" Anders distills the Times' message: "So girls, don't feel intimidated by Comic-Con. You can do Jake Gyllenhaal's laundry!"

Columnist Katha Pollitt (Nation, 6/10/09) has examined the extent to which, "in the immediate aftermath of Dr. Tiller's murder, it was astonishing how many men were called upon to weigh in on abortion on national television":

CNN featured William Schneider, Sanjay Gupta and Bill Press. On Fox, Bill O'Reilly defended his use of "baby killer" and "death mill" to describe Dr. Tiller and his clinic. On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann--who the last time I checked in spent a whole segment making fun of Miss Anti-Gay Marriage California's breast implants with waspish misogynist Michael Musto--had only men: Slate's Will Saletan, who thinks we can "end" abortion by stigmatizing women with unwanted pregnancies, because right now everyone is just too kind....

In the more than three decades since Roe v. Wade, "the fetus" gradually became the star of the abortion drama, and the voices of women who had abortions, aka "the woman," leached out of the public discussion. How many embryos can dance on the head of a pin--now that's interesting! Off-the-cuff judgments about how late is too late and what kinds of health problems count as serious--everyone's a doctor!

Noticing that "the murder of Dr. Tiller has gotten more women telling their stories," Pollitt calls that "a crucial, good thing"--but "not so that panels of pundits can approve or disapprove but so that society can hear, firsthand, what girls and women go through." Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Fred Clarkson on Tiller Murder" (6/5/09).

In wonderment that, as "Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is making the rounds of the Capitol this week," corporate pundit "jackasses are still saying she has to explain her 'wise Latina' comment," Laura Flanders (Women In Media & News, 6/4/09) remarks that "the money-media have spent the week making the comment 'controversial' (and then calling it that)." After citing FAIR's debunking of this media tempest by actually contextualizing Sotomayor's 2001 hope that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," Flanders explains how "out here in the actual, lived USA--white males have been the norm," while "all 'others' have had a different experience....not of snow or rain or the price of beans--but of discrimination":

In a week that saw the killing of an off-duty police officer by an another police officer in New York, and the killing of a women’s doctor in Wichita, it's hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would disagree with Sotomayor.

The New York shooter took the victim for a criminal at least in part because the victim was a black man.

Women’s lives are not the same. The assassination of the country's eighth abortion provider brought out of the margins and into the media the reality that women seeking legal care and the people who look after them are still, after decades, subject to the kind of daily harassment, vandalism and threats that no corporate CEO would tolerate for a weekend.

Considering these events, Flanders finds it "hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would argue that to mention difference in America is to be racist--or that to have experienced discrimination might make one smarter about it." In her eyes, big media's "right minds would rather that we pretend we’re all already equal, because then we’ll stop working to make it that way."

Read the FAIR Media Advisory: "Misquoting Sotomayor: Media Let Right-Wing Critics Frame Debate" (6/2/09)

In Tuesday's New York Times online edition, the paper's neo-neo-con columnist Ross Douthat laid out a sprawling argument that seemed to conclude that pro-choice activists and the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling were responsible for violence against women's healthcare providers, including the murder of Dr. George Tiller last week.

"If anything, by enshrining a near-absolute right to abortion in the Constitution, the pro-choice side has ensured that the hard cases are more controversial than they otherwise would be," wrote Douthat, who argued that

One reason there's so much fierce argument about the latest of late-term abortions--Should there be a health exemption? A fetal deformity exemption? How broad should those exemptions be? --is that Americans aren't permitted to debate anything else.

Douthat elaborated on what seemed to be a plan for conciliation: "If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically," because "arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester--as many advanced democracies already do--would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions."

It is true that if you take away constitutional protections, people opposed to those protections will be happier. For instance, those rightists who called for jailing reporters who reported secret aspects of the Bush White House's warrantless wiretapping and black sites programs would probably be happier if the First Amendment were suspended to make such jailing possible. But what about the Constitution? And what about those who lost their protections? One begins to sense that Douthat's plan for reconciliation would only make one side happier.

It's also worth noting that, as much as Douthat may think they are all powerful,  pro-choice advocates are incapable of making concessions regarding the Constitution. Roe was "enshrined " by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will also be in charge of future decisions regarding its disposition.

But just when you thought Douthat's plan might be somewhat was lopsided, he explains how there really is something in it for the pro-choice people:

The result would be laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases--and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller’s murder.

As Village Voice blogger Roy Edroso summed up the Times columnist's reconciliation plan, “So, see, Douthat gets the end of abortion on demand, and you heathens get killed less often by right-wing nuts; he's meeting you halfway.”

Megan, a blogger at Jezebel.com, put it slightly differently: “To sum up: If we just roll over, accept the end of abortion access and let them teach us about respect for human life, they won't kill any more abortion providers. Good to know whose hands Douthat thinks Tiller's blood is really on.”

The website Gawker (6/9/09) caught Newsweek making some sneaky changes in an online article--changes that were ordered by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, and which just happened to favor the host of a show that Meacham appears on regularly.

On the afternoon of Friday, June 5, Newsweek's website put up an interview with Joe Scarborough, the conservative host of MSNBC's Morning Joe program.  The introduction pointed out that Scarborough had once been the defense attorney for an anti-abortion terrorist who murdered a doctor, and noted that the host had been criticized for giving insufficient attention to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, which occurred less than a week before the interview appeared.

By Friday night, though, the introduction to the interview had been completely rewritten.  Gone was any reference in the lead to abortion shootings, replaced instead by rather bland observations about "the rise of partisan media outlets" and "how conservatives lost their way."  What happened?  Jon Meacham happened, that's what. The Newsweek editor, a frequent guest on Morning Joe, told Gawker he was contacted about the interview by "a member of Scarborough's team," and after looking at the item he decided that "it was better to include that material in the flow of the interview."

Journalists don't usually think it's "better" to make the lead of a story less newsworthy by taking out references to current events.  But then newsworthiness might not be the first thing you think of when you're editing a story about your friend--especially a friend who routinely gives you valuable national TV exposure.  Which is why the better thing to do would have been for Meacham to tell the member of Scarborough's team that he couldn't second-guess the Web editor's decision-making.

Writing at Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) on the murder of "Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife," Gabriel Winant wants us to know that

there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on the Factor on February 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

Winant provides some choice quotes amply demonstrating how the Fox star has never been one to let any politically correct fear of hypocrisy stand in the way his righteous bombast: "He's guilty of 'Nazi stuff,' said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005" and "'This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union,' said O'Reilly on November 9, 2006."

For another example of corporate media promotion of attacks on abortion providers, see Extra! Update: Koppel's 'Tough Question': Should Doctors Be Killed (2/94).

Attempting to add appropriate context to mainstream reportage of Sunday's murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller, the Media Justice Fund blog has reprinted (6/1/09) an October 8, 2006, Women In Media & News post by Jennifer Pozner titled "The Terrorists Who Aren't in the News: Anti-Abortion Fanatics Spread Fear by Bombings, Murders and Assaults, but the Media Take Little Notice." In it, Pozner recounts how, "on September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire." Yet

no national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) was silent about this latest act of terrorism in America.

Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women's Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism--even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they're fighting a holy war.

Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation.

Abortion providers and activists received 77 letters threatening anthrax attacks before 9/11, yet the media never considered anthrax threats as terrorism until after 9/11, when such letters were delivered to journalists’ offices and members of Congress.

Rueing the fact that "every fresh incident of anti-abortion terrorism is a reminder that women’s health supporters are not safe," Pozner asks if we think of each anti-choice attacker as "a lone nutcase, or a member of that network of violent extremists?" Alas, "we don’t know, because journalists haven’t investigated. Nor," Pozner adds, "have they reported that just [in 2005], nearly one in five abortion clinics experienced gunfire, arson, bombings, chemical attacks, assaults, stalking, death threats and blockades." Her conclusion: "As we continue national debates on how to keep America safe from terrorism, journalists do us--and especially women--no good pretending that the threats come only from radical Muslims outside our borders."

Claiming that he doesn't "know at this point whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice for Supreme Court justice or a bad one," critic Dave Lindorff (ThisCantBeHappening.net, 5/28/09) does note that she "is a lousy judge for writers and other creative people" for ruling "that the [New York] Times and periodical publishers could reprint, without any additional compensation, any freelance works they contracted." Then Lindorff proceeds to get to the real problem at the core of so much of the media criticism directed toward Sotomayor:

But the elite--the white male editors and TV commentators, the white male politicians, and the white male public--don't see their own decisions as rooted in their white male expereience. They see their experience as being "normal" and "unbiased." It is, to them, only others who are not "normal" like them who are biased, or or who are carrying some kind of chip on their shoulders.

See some particularly egregious examples recently critiqued on FAIR Blog by activism director Peter Hart and editor Jim Naureckas.

Charlie Savage did some good reporting on the Bush signing statements, but  his front-page story in today's New York Times on reproductive rights groups' reaction to Sotomayor is way off course. His lead explains that abortion rights advocates are worried about Sotomayor, because "when she has written opinions that touched tangentially on abortion disputes, she has reached outcomes in some cases that were favorable to abortion opponents."

OK, so what are those opinions? Here's what he names: She ruled in favor of the Bush administration's reinstatement of the global gag rule; she ruled that anti-abortion protesters could take police to court for allegedly using excessive force to break up one of their demonstrations; and she's ruled in a few cases in favor of Chinese refugees seeking asylum because of China's forced abortion policies.

Now, who's uneasy about these? I've looked around, and the only one cited by any reproductive rights groups I've seen is the first--it was a case brought by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (now the Center for Reproductive Rights)--though I've also seen other reproductive rights advocates say it was a narrow ruling based pretty clearly on precedent and not something that would threaten Roe. The second one I haven't seen mentioned --it would seem to be about abusive police conduct rather than reproductive rights, anyway, so it's not really clear why it should be included here.

But the third category is just absurd. Those are pro-reproductive rights rulings that no reproductive rights group I've heard of is protesting (and it would be frankly bizarre and troubling if they were). He even quotes an anti-choice activist saying basically as much, though in a much more pejorative way: "even 'the most radical feminist' would object to forcing women to abort wanted pregnancies."

So why were those seemingly unrelated cases included in the piece? It seems Savage got most of the material for this article--an article about reproductive rights groups' reactions to Sotomayor, remember--from a religious anti-choice group's website. And as far as one can tell from reading the article, the only people he actually spoke to were two anti-choice advocates. That's a mighty odd way to write about reproductive rights backers' feelings on the subject. Since part of the way the anti-choice movement works to chip away support of reproductive rights is to falsely frame advocates as "pro-abortion," Savage plays right into their hands, making that association for them on the front page of the New York Times.

It does seem that some reproductive rights groups are concerned about Sotomayor's position on Roe v. Wade, since that hasn't been spelled out yet. If you're going to write about that, here's a much more logical (and responsible) way to do it--talking to reproductive rights groups in order to frame your story about what their concerns are, rather than using their opponents' talking points to conjure up false arguments.

In a column on media treatment of Michelle Obama, Katha Pollitt (Nation, 4/20/09) points out this forehead-smacking quote from New York magazine's David Samuels (3/15/09):

There are clear limits to Michelle's ambition. She went to excellent schools, got decent grades, stayed away from too much intellectual heavy lifting, and held a series of practical, modestly salaried jobs while accommodating her husband's wilder dreams and raising two lovely daughters. In this, she is a more practical role model for young women than Hillary Clinton, blending her calculations about family and career with an expectation of normal personal happiness.

To which Pollitt responds:

Would you like some manly condescension with that factual misinformation, ladies? By all means, avoid "too much intellectual heavy lifting"! If Samuels regards $273,618--Michelle Obama's salary in her last year as head of community affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals--as modest, he must be the richest magazine journalist in the world. Michelle Obama, who made almost twice as much as her husband the senator, earned more than 99 percent of the population, and 98 percent of men. Moreover, she did so while raising two small children, often without her husband, who was off legislating in Springfield and Washington. That Samuels, like a 1950s home ec teacher, advises "young women" to keep their ambitions "practical" if they want to be happy shows just how disturbing Hillary Clinton--or rather the nightmare fantasy of Hillary Clinton--has been to certain male psyches. Because what if women wanted to be the ones with the wild dreams? What if they wanted men to be the enablers and nurturers? That would be awful.

Author and journalist Sheila Gibbons has some regrettably foreseeable news (Womens eNews, 3/30/09) on how female reporters who "worked hard to establish themselves in what had long been a male-dominated field" are faring in a time of massive media cutbacks and layoffs:

By the end of 2009, a quarter of all the newsroom jobs that existed in 2001 will be gone, says the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

This outgoing tide is taking away the reporting, editing and producing jobs of seasoned journalists, many of them women.

I'm thinking of investigative reporting ace Roberta Baskin of WJLA-TV in Washington, who in January picked up a prestigious duPont-Columbia University Award for her work at the station and lost her job the next day.

Another casualty: Glenda Holste, former associate editor of the editorial page at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who left the paper when her values and those of her corporate bosses "no longer matched," as she put it, and staffing levels began to shrink.

Margie Freivogel, for 34 years a reporter and editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, took a buyout in 2006 when the paper was sold.

They, and many like them, lost or left jobs for which they were superbly qualified. What a loss for them, for their viewers and readers, and for younger people to whom they could have been marvelous mentors.

"It sometimes takes so long for women to get to those spots, it is worrisome," says Dawn Garcia...president of the Journalism and Women Symposium.

Holste's and Freivogel's silver-lining optimism--"the new platforms make the traditional media gatekeeper less relevant than it's ever been," since "the Internet may be friendlier to women" than traditional media--takes on added importance in light of the other veteran reporter's history:

In 1996, Baskin managed to break the story on Nike's Vietnam sweatshops on CBS's 48 Hours, which received enormous attention. The program was updated for re-airing in 1997 but was pulled after CBS and Nike inked a deal for coverage of the upcoming Winter Olympics that put CBS's correspondents in clothing displaying the Nike "swoosh," Baskin says.