WEBVTT

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Like most journalists, I'm an idealist.

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I love unearthing good stories,
especially untold stories.

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I just didn't think that in 2011,

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women would still be in that category.

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I'm the President of the Journalism
and Women Symposium -- JAWS.

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That's Sharky.

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(Laughter)

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I joined 10 years ago
because I wanted female role models,

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and I was frustrated by the lagging status
of women in our profession

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and what that meant
for our image in the media.

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We make up half
the population of the world,

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but we're just 24 percent
of the news subjects

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quoted in news stories.

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And we're just 20 percent
of the experts quoted in stories.

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And now, with today's technology,

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it's possible to remove women
from the picture completely.

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This is a picture of President
Barack Obama and his advisors,

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tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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You can see Hillary Clinton on the right.

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Let's see how the photo ran

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in an Orthodox Jewish
newspaper based in Brooklyn.

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Hillary's completely gone.

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(Laughter)

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The paper apologized,
but said it never runs photos of women;

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they might be sexually provocative.

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(Laughter)

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This is an extreme case, yes.

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But the fact is,

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women are only 19 percent
of the sources in stories on politics,

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and only 20 percent
in stories on the economy.

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The news continues to give us a picture

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where men outnumber women

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in nearly all occupational
categories, except two:

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students and homemakers.

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(Laughter)

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So we all get a very
distorted picture of reality.

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The problem is, of course,
there aren't enough women in newsrooms.

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They report at just 37 percent of stories
in print, TV and radio.

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Even in stories on gender-based violence,

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men get an overwhelming majority
of print space and airtime.

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Case in point:

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This March, the New York Times
ran a story by James McKinley

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about a gang rape of a young girl,

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11 years old, in a small Texas town.

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McKinley writes that
the community is wondering,

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"How could their boys
have been drawn into this?"

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"Drawn into this" --

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like they were seduced
into committing an act of violence.

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And the first person he quotes says,

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"These boys will have to live
with this the rest of their lives."

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(Groans, laughter)

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You don't hear much
about the 11-year-old victim,

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except that she wore clothes
that were a little old for her

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and she wore makeup.

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The Times was deluged with criticism.

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Initially, it defended itself,

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and said, "These aren't our views.

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This is what we found in our reporting."

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Now, here's a secret
you probably know already:

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Your stories are constructed.

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As reporters, we research, we interview.

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We try to give a good picture of reality.

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We also have our own unconscious biases.

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But The Times makes it sound like anyone
would have reported this story

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the same way.

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I disagree with that.

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So three weeks later,

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The Times revisits the story.

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This time, it adds another byline
to it with McKinley's:

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Erica Goode.

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What emerges is a truly sad, horrific tale

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of a young girl and her family
trapped in poverty.

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She was raped numerous times by many men.

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She had been a bright, easygoing girl.

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She was maturing quickly, physically,

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but her bed was still covered
with stuffed animals.

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It's a very different picture.

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Perhaps the addition of Ms. Goode
is what made this story more complete.

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The Global Media Monitoring Project
has found that stories by female reporters

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are more likely to challenge stereotypes
than those by male reporters.

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At KUNM here in Albuquerque,

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Elaine Baumgartel
did some graduate research

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on the coverage of violence against women.

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What she found was many of these
stories tend to blame victims

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and devalue their lives.

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They tend to sensationalize,
and they lack context.

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So for her graduate work,

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she did a three-part series
on the murder of 11 women,

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found buried on Albuquerque's West Mesa.

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She tried to challenge those patterns
and stereotypes in her work

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and she tried to show
the challenges that journalists face

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from external sources,
their own internal biases

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and cultural norms.

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And she worked with an editor
at National Public Radio

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to try to get a story aired nationally.

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She's not sure that would have happened
if the editor had not been a female.

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Stories in the news

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are more than twice as likely
to present women as victims than men,

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and women are more likely to be defined
by their body parts.

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Wired magazine, November 2010.

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Yes, the issue was about
breast-tissue engineering.

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Now I know you're all distracted,
so I'll take that off.

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(Laughter)

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Eyes up here.

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(Laughter)

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So --

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(Applause)

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Here's the thing:

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Wired almost never puts
women on its cover.

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Oh, there have been some gimmicky ones --

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Pam from "The Office,"

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manga girls,

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a voluptuous model
covered in synthetic diamonds.

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Texas State University professor
Cindy Royal wondered in her blog

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how are young women like her students
supposed to feel about their roles

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in technology, reading Wired.

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Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired,
defended his choice

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and said there aren't enough women,
prominent women

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in technology to sell a cover,
to sell an issue.

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Part of that is true,

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there aren't as many
prominent women in technology.

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Here's my problem with that argument:

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Media tells us every day what's important,

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by the stories they choose
and where they place them;

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it's called agenda setting.

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How many people knew
the founders of Facebook and Google

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before their faces
were on a magazine cover?

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Putting them there
made them more recognizable.

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Now, Fast Company Magazine
embraces that idea.

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This is its cover from November 15, 2010.

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The issue is about the most prominent
and influential women in technology.

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Editor Robert Safian
told the Poynter Institute,

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"Silicon Valley is very white
and very male.

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But that's not what Fast Company thinks

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the business world
will look like in the future,

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so it tries to give a picture
of where the globalized world is moving."

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By the way, apparently,
Wired took all this to heart.

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This was its issue in April.

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(Laughter)

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That's Limor Fried, the founder
of Adafruit Industries,

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in the Rosie the Riveter pose.

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It would help to have more women
in positions of leadership in media.

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A recent global survey

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found that 73 percent
of the top media-management jobs

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are still held by men.

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But this is also about something
far more complex:

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our own unconscious
biases and blind spots.

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Shankar Vedantam is the author

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of "The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious
Minds Elect Presidents,

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Control Markets, Wage Wars,
and Save Our Lives."

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He told the former ombudsman
at National Public Radio,

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who was doing a report
on how women fare in NPR coverage,

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unconscious bias flows
throughout most of our lives.

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It's really difficult
to disentangle those strands.

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But he did have one suggestion.

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He used to work for two editors

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who said every story had to have
at least one female source.

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He balked at first,

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but said he eventually followed
the directive happily,

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because his stories got better

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and his job got easier.

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Now, I don't know if one
of the editors was a woman,

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but that can make the biggest difference.

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The Dallas Morning News
won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994

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for a series it did on women
around the world,

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but one of the reporters told me

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she's convinced
it never would have happened

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if they had not had
a female assistant foreign editor,

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and they would not have gotten
some of those stories

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without female reporters
and editors on the ground,

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particularly one
on female genital mutilation --

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men would just not be allowed
into those situations.

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This is an important point to consider,

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because much of our foreign policy
now revolves around countries

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where the treatment of women is an issue,

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such as Afghanistan.

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What we're told in terms of arguments
against leaving this country

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is that the fate of the women is primary.

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Now, I'm sure a male reporter in Kabul
can find women to interview.

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Not so sure about rural,
traditional areas,

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where I'm guessing
women can't talk to strange men.

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It's important to keep talking about this,
in light of Lara Logan.

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She was the CBS News correspondent

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who was brutally sexually assaulted
in Egypt's Tahrir Square,

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right after this photo was taken.

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Almost immediately, pundits weighed in,

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blaming her and saying things like,

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"You know, maybe women shouldn't
be sent to cover those stories."

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I never heard anyone say this
about Anderson Cooper and his crew,

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who were attacked covering the same story.

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One way to get more women into leadership

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is to have other women mentor them.

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One of my board members is an editor
at a major global media company,

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but she never thought
about this as a career path,

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until she met female role models at JAWS.

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But this is not just a job
for super-journalists

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or my organization.

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You all have a stake
in a strong, vibrant media.

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Analyze your news.

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And speak up when there are gaps
missing in coverage,

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like people at The New York Times did.

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Suggest female sources
to reporters and editors.

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Remember -- a complete picture of reality
may depend upon it.

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And I'll leave you with a video clip

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that I first saw in [1987]
when I was a student in London.

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It's for The Guardian newspaper.

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It's actually long before I ever thought
about becoming a journalist,

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but I was very interested
in how we learn to perceive our world.

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Narrator: An event seen from one
point of view gives one impression.

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Seen from another point of view,

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it gives quite a different impression.

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But it's only when you get
the whole picture,

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you can fully understand what's going on.

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[The Guardian]

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Megan Kamerick: I think you'll all agree

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that we'd be better off
if we all had the whole picture.