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Women should represent women in media | Megan Kamerick | TEDxABQ

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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.
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    (Applause)
Title:
Women should represent women in media | Megan Kamerick | TEDxABQ
Description:

How do you tell women’s stories? Ask women to tell them. At TEDxABQ, Megan Kamerick shows how the news media underrepresents women as reporters and news sources, and because of that tells an incomplete story.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
10:27

English subtitles

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