When "journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling stepped back onto American soil after being detained in North Korea for over four months. Their safe return was covered widely in the American media, and rightfully so," writes Women In Media & News guest blogger Tristin Aaron (8/12/09), "yet their reason for traveling to North Korea has been all but forgotten in the media reports on Lee and Ling": Euna Lee and Laura Ling were reporting on the trafficking of women from North Korea into China. As Ji-Yeon Yuh notes in, "What Were Laura Ling and Euna Lee Looking For in North [...]
Aug
12
2009
'Snobbery, Cruelty & Ugliness' in NYT 'Journalism Fail'
Blogging at Jezebel, Sadie Stein (8/12/09) turns the spotlight on the New York Times' Cintra Wilson "in a remarkably nasty piece. Brace yourselves, kids": In a paper often characterized by a tone as carefully bland as NPR's, she can be a breath of fresh air. But today's column, on Manhattan's first J.C. Penney, is a marvel of snobbery, cruelty and ugliness…. It took me a long time to find a size 2 among the racks. There are, however, abundant size 10s, 12s and 16s…. The petites section features a bounty of items for women nearly as wide as they are [...]
Aug
12
2009
Anti-Hate Activists Win S.F. City Media Resolution
By 1 Comment
The Hispanic/Latino Anti-Defamation Coalition, along with the National Hispanic Media Coalition (8/11/09), "applauds" the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for being "the first elected body to take a stand against hate speech in media" by having approved unanimously a resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a comprehensive investigation on hate speech in media, allowing public participation via public hearings, and for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to update its 1993 report the "Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes." The Supervisors responded to grassroots activists in the Bay Area who have organized to call attention to [...]
Aug
10
2009
A Look 'Behind the Propaganda' About Afghanistan
Johann Hari (ZNet, 8/6/09) has an in-depth write-up of "the story of Malalai Joya" that "turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out": In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and–when they were toppled–cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists. But she says: "Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic [...]
Aug
09
2009
WaPo 'Screw-You' Video Follows 'Mad Bitch' Offense
By 2 Comments
Guest Women In Media & News blogger Adele M. Stan (8/5/09) has some more to say about the WashingtonPost.com's "now-infamous 'Mad Bitch' video": Last Friday, Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler shone a light on a video produced by the Washington Post that featured one of the two columnists hosting the piece suggesting that, at a future White House beer summit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton be given a brew called "Mad Bitch." Then all hell broke loose. The Post apparently thought it could fix the problem by simply pulling the video. A note was posted above the hole where the [...]
Aug
07
2009
Snarky WaPo-er 'Surprised by the Ferocity out There'
By 5 Comments
Howard Kurtz recently offered fellow Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza a chance to apologize for having, in an online Post feature, "implied Hillary Clinton was a 'bitch.'" But American Prospect's Tapped blogger Adam Serwer (8/5/09) has a question regarding Milbank's aside that "it's a brutal world out there in the blogosphere…. I'm often surprised by the ferocity out there, but I probably shouldn't be": What's the sound of a million hands facepalming? No one who goes around using obscenities to describe other reporters and administration officials should be complaining about the "ferocity" of blogs–if Milbank is bothered [...]
Aug
07
2009
AP Responds to 'Hit-Us-Over-the-Head Bluntness'
By 1 Comment
As news comes of "yet another horrific mass shooting by yet another disaffected man armed with ammo and a deep hatred of women"–this time "killing three women and injuring nine more" at a Pennsylvania health club–Jennifer Pozner (Women In Media & News, 8/5/09) notices that "the gunman's stated intention to target only women is eerily similar to the Montreal Massacre of 1989, in which a man opened fire on students after screaming: 'You're women, you're going to be engineers. You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists'": Perhaps it takes this level of hit-us-over-the-head bluntness for media to notice [...]
Aug
05
2009
Women's Mags Rife With Phony 'Body Acceptance'
By 3 Comments
Editorial cartoonist Mikhaela Reid has a new drawing (Women In Media & News, 7/29/09) in reaction to the fact that even Vogue has an annual "Shape" issue where they patronizingly allow someone as (*GASP*) huge as Beyonce or Kate Winslet on the cover in addition to their usual sub-zero model roundupâ┚¬Ã‚¦ then offer drastic dieting tipsâ┚¬Ã‚¦ all while mysteriously claiming to promote body acceptance. With faux-enthusiasm, Reid implores you, "don't miss the small print under the 'LOVE YOUR BODY!' headlines," which feature "LOSE Belly fat, TIGHTEN thighs" in Essence, "Your Thinner, Taller, Just-Right Wardrobe" on the cover of InStyle and [...]
Jul
17
2009
Time Marriage 'Concern' Really Just 'Attack on Liberals'
By
In Katha Pollitt's latest Nation column (7/15/09), she finds it "not hard to poke holes in" the July 2 Time magazine cover story by "Caitlin Flanagan–professional antifeminist, author of a whole book of essays attacking working mothers, herself excepted"–being full of "Flanagan's predictions of universal doom for the children of divorced or never-married parents": After all, President Clinton and President Obama turned out all right. Most children of divorce do. There are plenty of countries where divorce and unmarried parenthood are common, but children do fine–Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands. Some of the measured bad effects on kids are more [...]
Jul
15
2009
'Freed' Afhan Women Suffer 'Rape, Pillage, Plunder'
The latest segment to be made available online (7/7/09) from Robert Greenwald's Rethink Afghanistan documentary features the president of the Global Fund for Women Kavita Ramdas challenging U.S. media tropes about improved women's conditions since the U.S. invasion: "The perception of the women of Afghanistan having been severely oppressed only under the regime of the Taliban, and then having been freed by the united States' military intervention in 2001, is a false perception." The film continues: Ann Jones, author Kabul in Winter: We got reports back that indeed that had been accomplished and the women had thrown off their burqas [...]
Jul
12
2009
Bias 'Packaged as "News" and Endlessly Discussed'
The Women's Media Center has a new action (7/10/09) asking you to support "Media Justice for Sotomayor" against the fact that ,"since the announcement of [her] nomination to the Supreme Court, some in the media have engaged in sexist and racist attacks against her" which are "often packaged as 'news' and endlessly discussed in mainstream media outlets": The Women's Media Center is releasing its new video, "Media Justice for Sotomayor." It documents some of these racist and sexist comments already delivered on high-profile television programs, radio, print and online outlets. As Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearings approach on July 13, the [...]
Jul
10
2009
News on Female Pols 'Insulting, Irrelevant… Drivel'
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 [...]
Jul
10
2009
Sports Media Sexism 'Infuriating' and Just Plain 'Tired'
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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: [...]
