1 00:00:01,046 --> 00:00:03,820 Like most journalists, I'm an idealist. 2 00:00:03,820 --> 00:00:09,082 I love unearthing good stories, especially untold stories. 3 00:00:09,082 --> 00:00:11,583 I just didn't think that, in 2011, 4 00:00:11,583 --> 00:00:14,410 women would still be in that category. 5 00:00:14,410 --> 00:00:17,892 I'm the President of the Journalism & Women Symposium, 6 00:00:17,892 --> 00:00:21,108 JAWS. That's Sharky. (Laughter) 7 00:00:21,108 --> 00:00:23,914 I joined 10 years ago because I wanted female role models, 8 00:00:23,914 --> 00:00:26,925 and I was frustrated by the lagging status of women 9 00:00:26,925 --> 00:00:29,787 in our profession, and what that meant for our image 10 00:00:29,787 --> 00:00:32,086 in the media. 11 00:00:32,086 --> 00:00:34,173 We make up half the population of the world, 12 00:00:34,173 --> 00:00:36,453 but we're just 24 percent of the news subjects 13 00:00:36,453 --> 00:00:38,604 quoted in news stories, 14 00:00:38,604 --> 00:00:42,339 and we're just 20 percent of the experts quoted in stories, 15 00:00:42,339 --> 00:00:44,405 and now, with today's technology, 16 00:00:44,405 --> 00:00:48,021 it's possible to remove women from the picture completely. 17 00:00:48,021 --> 00:00:51,654 This is a picture of President Barack Obama 18 00:00:51,654 --> 00:00:54,596 and his advisors tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden. 19 00:00:54,596 --> 00:00:56,860 You can see Hillary Clinton on the right. 20 00:00:56,860 --> 00:00:58,196 Let's see how the photo ran 21 00:00:58,196 --> 00:01:02,122 in an Orthodox Jewish newspaper based in Brooklyn. 22 00:01:02,122 --> 00:01:06,483 Hillary's completely gone. (Laughter) 23 00:01:06,483 --> 00:01:08,384 The paper apologized but said 24 00:01:08,384 --> 00:01:10,227 it never runs photos of women. 25 00:01:10,227 --> 00:01:14,066 They might be sexually provocative. (Laughter) 26 00:01:14,066 --> 00:01:16,873 This is an extreme case, yes, but the fact is, 27 00:01:16,873 --> 00:01:19,283 women are only 19 percent of the sources 28 00:01:19,283 --> 00:01:21,505 in stories on politics, 29 00:01:21,505 --> 00:01:25,418 and only 20 percent in stories on the economy. 30 00:01:25,418 --> 00:01:27,979 The news continues to give us a picture where men 31 00:01:27,979 --> 00:01:31,128 outnumber women in nearly all occupational categories 32 00:01:31,128 --> 00:01:36,032 except two: students and homemakers. (Laughter) 33 00:01:36,032 --> 00:01:39,799 So we all get a very distorted picture of reality. 34 00:01:39,799 --> 00:01:41,635 The problem is, of course, 35 00:01:41,635 --> 00:01:43,350 there aren't enough women in newsrooms. 36 00:01:43,350 --> 00:01:45,728 They reported just 37 percent of stories 37 00:01:45,728 --> 00:01:48,080 in print, TV and radio. 38 00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:50,713 Even in stories on gender-based violence, 39 00:01:50,713 --> 00:01:53,383 men get an overwhelming majority of print space 40 00:01:53,383 --> 00:01:54,597 and airtime. 41 00:01:54,597 --> 00:01:56,549 Case in point, 42 00:01:56,549 --> 00:01:58,944 this March, the New York Times ran a story 43 00:01:58,944 --> 00:02:01,336 by James McKinley about a gang rape of a young girl, 44 00:02:01,336 --> 00:02:04,245 11 years old, in a small Texas town. 45 00:02:04,245 --> 00:02:06,495 McKinley writes that the community's wondering, 46 00:02:06,495 --> 00:02:10,993 "How could their boys have been drawn into this?" 47 00:02:10,993 --> 00:02:12,953 "Drawn into this," like they were 48 00:02:12,953 --> 00:02:15,774 seduced into committing an act of violence. 49 00:02:15,774 --> 00:02:17,451 And the first person he quotes says, 50 00:02:17,451 --> 00:02:20,274 "These boys will have to live with this the rest of their lives." 51 00:02:20,274 --> 00:02:23,128 (Crowd reacts) 52 00:02:23,128 --> 00:02:26,413 You don't hear much about the 11-year-old victim, 53 00:02:26,413 --> 00:02:29,708 except that she wore clothes that were a little old for her 54 00:02:29,708 --> 00:02:32,223 and she wore makeup. 55 00:02:32,223 --> 00:02:35,177 The Times was deluged with criticism. 56 00:02:35,177 --> 00:02:37,952 Initially, it defended itself, and said, "These aren't our views. 57 00:02:37,952 --> 00:02:40,385 This is what we found in our reporting." 58 00:02:40,385 --> 00:02:43,591 Now, here's a secret you probably know already: 59 00:02:43,591 --> 00:02:45,114 Your stories are constructed. 60 00:02:45,114 --> 00:02:47,609 As reporters, we research, we interview. 61 00:02:47,609 --> 00:02:51,091 We try to give a good picture of reality. 62 00:02:51,091 --> 00:02:53,681 We also have our own unconscious biases, 63 00:02:53,681 --> 00:02:55,006 but the Times makes it sound like 64 00:02:55,006 --> 00:02:59,056 anyone would have reported this story the same way. 65 00:02:59,056 --> 00:03:00,647 I disagree with that. 66 00:03:00,647 --> 00:03:04,410 So three weeks later, the Times revisits the story. 67 00:03:04,410 --> 00:03:07,881 This time, it adds another byline to it with McKinley's: 68 00:03:07,881 --> 00:03:09,240 Erica Goode. 69 00:03:09,240 --> 00:03:12,996 What emerges is a truly sad, horrific tale of a young girl 70 00:03:12,996 --> 00:03:15,512 and her family trapped in poverty. 71 00:03:15,512 --> 00:03:18,769 She was raped numerous times by many men. 72 00:03:18,769 --> 00:03:21,216 She had been a bright, easygoing girl. 73 00:03:21,216 --> 00:03:23,530 She was maturing quickly, physically, 74 00:03:23,530 --> 00:03:26,558 but her bed was still covered with stuffed animals. 75 00:03:26,558 --> 00:03:28,184 It's a very different picture. 76 00:03:28,184 --> 00:03:29,998 Perhaps the addition of Ms. Goode 77 00:03:29,998 --> 00:03:32,960 is what made this story more complete. 78 00:03:32,960 --> 00:03:35,122 The Global Media Monitoring Project has found that 79 00:03:35,122 --> 00:03:37,442 stories by female reporters are more likely 80 00:03:37,442 --> 00:03:40,377 to challenge stereotypes than those by male reporters. 81 00:03:40,377 --> 00:03:42,937 At KUNM here in Albuquerque, Elaine Baumgartel 82 00:03:42,937 --> 00:03:44,945 did some graduate research on the coverage 83 00:03:44,945 --> 00:03:46,345 of violence against women. 84 00:03:46,345 --> 00:03:48,946 What she found was many of these stories 85 00:03:48,946 --> 00:03:51,520 tend to blame victims and devalue their lives. 86 00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:55,138 They tend to sensationalize, and they lack context. 87 00:03:55,138 --> 00:03:57,747 So for her graduate work, she did a three-part series 88 00:03:57,747 --> 00:03:59,561 on the murder of 11 women 89 00:03:59,561 --> 00:04:01,911 found buried on Albuquerque's West Mesa. 90 00:04:01,911 --> 00:04:04,183 She tried to challenge those patterns and stereotypes 91 00:04:04,183 --> 00:04:06,760 in her work, and she tried to show the challenges 92 00:04:06,760 --> 00:04:09,864 that journalists face, from external sources, 93 00:04:09,864 --> 00:04:13,603 their own internal biases, and cultural norms, 94 00:04:13,603 --> 00:04:16,118 and she worked with an editor at National Public Radio 95 00:04:16,118 --> 00:04:18,892 to try to get a story aired nationally. 96 00:04:18,892 --> 00:04:20,834 She's not sure that would have happened 97 00:04:20,834 --> 00:04:23,332 if the editor had not been a female. 98 00:04:23,332 --> 00:04:25,669 Stories in the news are more than twice as likely 99 00:04:25,669 --> 00:04:28,787 to present women as victims than men, 100 00:04:28,787 --> 00:04:31,129 and women are more likely to be defined 101 00:04:31,129 --> 00:04:33,370 by their body parts. 102 00:04:33,370 --> 00:04:36,307 Wired magazine, November 2010. 103 00:04:36,307 --> 00:04:40,019 Yes, the issue was about breast tissue engineering. 104 00:04:40,019 --> 00:04:44,348 Now, I know you're all distracted, so I'll take that off. (Laughter) 105 00:04:44,348 --> 00:04:49,030 Eyes up here. (Laughter) 106 00:04:49,030 --> 00:04:53,366 So -- (Applause) 107 00:04:53,366 --> 00:04:55,446 Here's the thing. 108 00:04:55,446 --> 00:04:58,471 Wired almost never puts women on its cover. 109 00:04:58,471 --> 00:04:59,983 Oh, there have been some gimmicky ones. 110 00:04:59,983 --> 00:05:01,716 Pam from The Office. 111 00:05:01,716 --> 00:05:03,471 Manga girls. 112 00:05:03,471 --> 00:05:07,486 A voluptuous model covered in synthetic diamonds. 113 00:05:07,486 --> 00:05:10,254 Texas State University professor Cindy Royal wondered 114 00:05:10,254 --> 00:05:12,704 in her blog, "How are young women like her students 115 00:05:12,704 --> 00:05:16,538 supposed to feel about their roles in technology reading Wired?" 116 00:05:16,538 --> 00:05:20,040 Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, defended his choice 117 00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:22,306 and said, there aren't enough women, prominent women 118 00:05:22,306 --> 00:05:26,581 in technology to sell a cover, to sell an issue. 119 00:05:26,581 --> 00:05:28,208 Part of that is true. There aren't as many 120 00:05:28,208 --> 00:05:30,395 prominent women in technology. 121 00:05:30,395 --> 00:05:32,651 Here's my problem with that argument. 122 00:05:32,651 --> 00:05:35,490 Media tells us every day what's important, 123 00:05:35,490 --> 00:05:37,756 by the stories they choose and where they place them. 124 00:05:37,756 --> 00:05:40,441 It's called agenda-setting. 125 00:05:40,441 --> 00:05:42,425 How many people knew the founders of Facebook 126 00:05:42,425 --> 00:05:45,384 and Google before their faces were on a magazine cover? 127 00:05:45,384 --> 00:05:48,037 Putting them there made them more recognizable. 128 00:05:48,037 --> 00:05:51,121 Now, Fast Company Magazine embraces that idea. 129 00:05:51,121 --> 00:05:54,139 This is its cover from November 15, 2010. 130 00:05:54,139 --> 00:05:56,863 The issue is about the most prominent and influential women 131 00:05:56,863 --> 00:05:58,304 in technology. 132 00:05:58,304 --> 00:06:01,390 Editor Robert Safian told the Poynter Institute, 133 00:06:01,390 --> 00:06:03,972 "Silicon Valley is very white and very male, 134 00:06:03,972 --> 00:06:07,037 but that's not what Fast Company thinks the business world 135 00:06:07,037 --> 00:06:09,933 will look like in the future, so it tries to give a picture 136 00:06:09,933 --> 00:06:13,204 of where the globalized world is moving." 137 00:06:13,204 --> 00:06:15,908 By the way, apparently Wired took all this to heart. 138 00:06:15,908 --> 00:06:19,934 This was its issue in April. (Laughter) 139 00:06:19,934 --> 00:06:22,775 That's Limor Fried, the founder of Adafruit Industries, 140 00:06:22,775 --> 00:06:25,382 in the Rosie the Riveter pose. 141 00:06:25,382 --> 00:06:27,850 It would help to have more women in positions of leadership 142 00:06:27,850 --> 00:06:30,761 in the media. A recent global survey found that 143 00:06:30,761 --> 00:06:32,913 73 percent of the top media management jobs 144 00:06:32,913 --> 00:06:35,017 are still held by men. 145 00:06:35,017 --> 00:06:37,850 But this is also about something far more complex: 146 00:06:37,850 --> 00:06:41,571 our own unconscious biases and blind spots. 147 00:06:41,571 --> 00:06:44,357 Shankar Vedantam is the author of "The Hidden Brain: 148 00:06:44,357 --> 00:06:46,401 How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, 149 00:06:46,401 --> 00:06:49,087 Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives." 150 00:06:49,087 --> 00:06:51,751 He told the former ombudsman 151 00:06:51,751 --> 00:06:53,199 at National Public Radio, who was doing 152 00:06:53,199 --> 00:06:56,264 a report on how women fare in NPR coverage, 153 00:06:56,264 --> 00:06:59,728 unconscious bias flows throughout most of our lives. 154 00:06:59,728 --> 00:07:02,720 It's really difficult to disentangle those strands. 155 00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:05,199 But he did have one suggestion. 156 00:07:05,199 --> 00:07:08,396 He used to work for two editors who said 157 00:07:08,396 --> 00:07:11,918 every story had to have at least one female source. 158 00:07:11,918 --> 00:07:14,414 He balked, at first, but said he eventually 159 00:07:14,414 --> 00:07:17,497 followed the directive happily because his stories got better 160 00:07:17,497 --> 00:07:20,014 and his job got easier. 161 00:07:20,014 --> 00:07:22,530 Now, I don't know if one of the editors was a woman, 162 00:07:22,530 --> 00:07:25,037 but that can make the biggest differences. 163 00:07:25,037 --> 00:07:28,566 The Dallas Morning News won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 164 00:07:28,566 --> 00:07:31,230 for a series it did on women around the world, 165 00:07:31,230 --> 00:07:34,038 but one of the reporters told me she's convinced 166 00:07:34,038 --> 00:07:36,318 it never would have happened if they had not had 167 00:07:36,318 --> 00:07:39,078 a female assistant foreign editor, 168 00:07:39,078 --> 00:07:41,358 and they would not have gotten some of those stories 169 00:07:41,358 --> 00:07:44,216 without female reporters and editors on the ground, 170 00:07:44,216 --> 00:07:47,127 particularly one on female genital mutilation. 171 00:07:47,127 --> 00:07:50,071 Men would just not be allowed into those situations. 172 00:07:50,071 --> 00:07:52,478 This is an important point to consider, 173 00:07:52,478 --> 00:07:54,973 because much of our foreign policy now revolves around 174 00:07:54,973 --> 00:07:57,655 countries where the treatment of women is an issue, 175 00:07:57,655 --> 00:08:01,657 such as Afghanistan. 176 00:08:01,657 --> 00:08:04,625 What we're told in terms of arguments against leaving 177 00:08:04,625 --> 00:08:09,837 this country is that the fate of the women is primary. 178 00:08:09,837 --> 00:08:12,301 Now I'm sure a male reporter in Kabul can find women 179 00:08:12,301 --> 00:08:16,713 to interview. Not so sure about rural, traditional areas, 180 00:08:16,713 --> 00:08:20,827 where I'm guessing women can't talk to strange men. 181 00:08:20,827 --> 00:08:22,439 It's important to keep talking about this 182 00:08:22,439 --> 00:08:24,969 in light of Lara Logan. 183 00:08:24,969 --> 00:08:27,057 She was the CBS News correspondent who was 184 00:08:27,057 --> 00:08:29,679 brutally sexually assaulted in Egypt's Tahrir Square 185 00:08:29,679 --> 00:08:31,985 right after this photo was taken. 186 00:08:31,985 --> 00:08:34,316 Almost immediately, pundits weighed in 187 00:08:34,316 --> 00:08:37,928 blaming her and saying things like, "You know, 188 00:08:37,928 --> 00:08:41,480 maybe women shouldn't be sent to cover those stories." 189 00:08:41,480 --> 00:08:44,121 I never heard anyone say this about Anderson Cooper 190 00:08:44,121 --> 00:08:48,163 and his crew who were attacked covering the same story. 191 00:08:48,163 --> 00:08:50,336 One way to get more women into leadership 192 00:08:50,336 --> 00:08:52,640 is to have other women mentor them. 193 00:08:52,640 --> 00:08:55,087 One of my board members is an editor at a major 194 00:08:55,087 --> 00:08:57,399 global media company, but she never thought about this 195 00:08:57,399 --> 00:09:02,326 as a career path until she met female role models at JAWS. 196 00:09:02,326 --> 00:09:04,794 But this is not just a job for super-journalists, 197 00:09:04,794 --> 00:09:07,573 or my organization. You all have a stake in a strong, 198 00:09:07,573 --> 00:09:09,813 vibrant media. 199 00:09:09,813 --> 00:09:12,829 Analyze your news, and speak up when there are gaps 200 00:09:12,829 --> 00:09:16,030 missing in coverage like people at the New York Times did. 201 00:09:16,030 --> 00:09:19,246 Suggest female sources to reporters and editors. 202 00:09:19,246 --> 00:09:21,704 Remember, a complete picture of reality 203 00:09:21,704 --> 00:09:23,332 may depend upon it. 204 00:09:23,332 --> 00:09:26,858 And I'll leave you with a video clip that I first saw in 2007 205 00:09:26,858 --> 00:09:28,972 when I was a student in London. 206 00:09:28,972 --> 00:09:30,464 It's for the Guardian newspaper. 207 00:09:30,464 --> 00:09:31,989 It's actually long before I ever thought about 208 00:09:31,989 --> 00:09:34,326 becoming a journalist, but I was very interested 209 00:09:34,326 --> 00:09:38,485 in how we learn to perceive our world. 210 00:09:38,485 --> 00:09:41,449 Narrator: An event seen from one point of view 211 00:09:41,449 --> 00:09:48,579 gives one impression. 212 00:09:48,579 --> 00:09:50,235 Seen from another point of view, 213 00:09:50,235 --> 00:09:54,842 it gives quite a different impression. 214 00:09:54,842 --> 00:09:57,704 But it's only when you get the whole picture 215 00:09:57,704 --> 00:10:03,450 you can fully understand what's going on. 216 00:10:03,450 --> 00:10:05,362 "The Guardian" 217 00:10:05,362 --> 00:10:06,628 Megan Kamerick: I think you'll all agree 218 00:10:06,628 --> 00:10:11,057 that we'd be better off if we all had the whole picture.