0:00:01.046,0:00:03.820 Like most journalists, I'm an idealist. 0:00:03.820,0:00:09.082 I love unearthing good stories, especially untold stories. 0:00:09.082,0:00:11.583 I just didn't think that, in 2011, 0:00:11.583,0:00:14.410 women would still be in that category. 0:00:14.410,0:00:17.892 I'm the President of the Journalism & Women Symposium, 0:00:17.892,0:00:21.108 JAWS. That's Sharky. (Laughter) 0:00:21.108,0:00:23.914 I joined 10 years ago because I wanted female role models, 0:00:23.914,0:00:26.925 and I was frustrated by the lagging status of women 0:00:26.925,0:00:29.787 in our profession, and what that meant for our image 0:00:29.787,0:00:32.086 in the media. 0:00:32.086,0:00:34.173 We make up half the population of the world, 0:00:34.173,0:00:36.453 but we're just 24 percent of the news subjects 0:00:36.453,0:00:38.604 quoted in news stories, 0:00:38.604,0:00:42.339 and we're just 20 percent of the experts quoted in stories, 0:00:42.339,0:00:44.405 and now, with today's technology, 0:00:44.405,0:00:48.021 it's possible to remove women from the picture completely. 0:00:48.021,0:00:51.654 This is a picture of President Barack Obama 0:00:51.654,0:00:54.596 and his advisors tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden. 0:00:54.596,0:00:56.860 You can see Hillary Clinton on the right. 0:00:56.860,0:00:58.196 Let's see how the photo ran 0:00:58.196,0:01:02.122 in an Orthodox Jewish newspaper based in Brooklyn. 0:01:02.122,0:01:06.483 Hillary's completely gone. (Laughter) 0:01:06.483,0:01:08.384 The paper apologized but said 0:01:08.384,0:01:10.227 it never runs photos of women. 0:01:10.227,0:01:14.066 They might be sexually provocative. (Laughter) 0:01:14.066,0:01:16.873 This is an extreme case, yes, but the fact is, 0:01:16.873,0:01:19.283 women are only 19 percent of the sources 0:01:19.283,0:01:21.505 in stories on politics, 0:01:21.505,0:01:25.418 and only 20 percent in stories on the economy. 0:01:25.418,0:01:27.979 The news continues to give us a picture where men 0:01:27.979,0:01:31.128 outnumber women in nearly all occupational categories 0:01:31.128,0:01:36.032 except two: students and homemakers. (Laughter) 0:01:36.032,0:01:39.799 So we all get a very distorted picture of reality. 0:01:39.799,0:01:41.635 The problem is, of course, 0:01:41.635,0:01:43.350 there aren't enough women in newsrooms. 0:01:43.350,0:01:45.728 They reported just 37 percent of stories 0:01:45.728,0:01:48.080 in print, TV and radio. 0:01:48.080,0:01:50.713 Even in stories on gender-based violence, 0:01:50.713,0:01:53.383 men get an overwhelming majority of print space 0:01:53.383,0:01:54.597 and airtime. 0:01:54.597,0:01:56.549 Case in point, 0:01:56.549,0:01:58.944 this March, the New York Times ran a story 0:01:58.944,0:02:01.336 by James McKinley about a gang rape of a young girl, 0:02:01.336,0:02:04.245 11 years old, in a small Texas town. 0:02:04.245,0:02:06.495 McKinley writes that the community's wondering, 0:02:06.495,0:02:10.993 "How could their boys have been drawn into this?" 0:02:10.993,0:02:12.953 "Drawn into this," like they were 0:02:12.953,0:02:15.774 seduced into committing an act of violence. 0:02:15.774,0:02:17.451 And the first person he quotes says, 0:02:17.451,0:02:20.274 "These boys will have to live with this the rest of their lives." 0:02:20.274,0:02:23.128 (Crowd reacts) 0:02:23.128,0:02:26.413 You don't hear much about the 11-year-old victim, 0:02:26.413,0:02:29.708 except that she wore clothes that were a little old for her 0:02:29.708,0:02:32.223 and she wore makeup. 0:02:32.223,0:02:35.177 The Times was deluged with criticism. 0:02:35.177,0:02:37.952 Initially, it defended itself, and said, "These aren't our views. 0:02:37.952,0:02:40.385 This is what we found in our reporting." 0:02:40.385,0:02:43.591 Now, here's a secret you probably know already: 0:02:43.591,0:02:45.114 Your stories are constructed. 0:02:45.114,0:02:47.609 As reporters, we research, we interview. 0:02:47.609,0:02:51.091 We try to give a good picture of reality. 0:02:51.091,0:02:53.681 We also have our own unconscious biases, 0:02:53.681,0:02:55.006 but the Times makes it sound like 0:02:55.006,0:02:59.056 anyone would have reported this story the same way. 0:02:59.056,0:03:00.647 I disagree with that. 0:03:00.647,0:03:04.410 So three weeks later, the Times revisits the story. 0:03:04.410,0:03:07.881 This time, it adds another byline to it with McKinley's: 0:03:07.881,0:03:09.240 Erica Goode. 0:03:09.240,0:03:12.996 What emerges is a truly sad, horrific tale of a young girl 0:03:12.996,0:03:15.512 and her family trapped in poverty. 0:03:15.512,0:03:18.769 She was raped numerous times by many men. 0:03:18.769,0:03:21.216 She had been a bright, easygoing girl. 0:03:21.216,0:03:23.530 She was maturing quickly, physically, 0:03:23.530,0:03:26.558 but her bed was still covered with stuffed animals. 0:03:26.558,0:03:28.184 It's a very different picture. 0:03:28.184,0:03:29.998 Perhaps the addition of Ms. Goode 0:03:29.998,0:03:32.960 is what made this story more complete. 0:03:32.960,0:03:35.122 The Global Media Monitoring Project has found that 0:03:35.122,0:03:37.442 stories by female reporters are more likely 0:03:37.442,0:03:40.377 to challenge stereotypes than those by male reporters. 0:03:40.377,0:03:42.937 At KUNM here in Albuquerque, Elaine Baumgartel 0:03:42.937,0:03:44.945 did some graduate research on the coverage 0:03:44.945,0:03:46.345 of violence against women. 0:03:46.345,0:03:48.946 What she found was many of these stories 0:03:48.946,0:03:51.520 tend to blame victims and devalue their lives. 0:03:51.520,0:03:55.138 They tend to sensationalize, and they lack context. 0:03:55.138,0:03:57.747 So for her graduate work, she did a three-part series 0:03:57.747,0:03:59.561 on the murder of 11 women 0:03:59.561,0:04:01.911 found buried on Albuquerque's West Mesa. 0:04:01.911,0:04:04.183 She tried to challenge those patterns and stereotypes 0:04:04.183,0:04:06.760 in her work, and she tried to show the challenges 0:04:06.760,0:04:09.864 that journalists face, from external sources, 0:04:09.864,0:04:13.603 their own internal biases, and cultural norms, 0:04:13.603,0:04:16.118 and she worked with an editor at National Public Radio 0:04:16.118,0:04:18.892 to try to get a story aired nationally. 0:04:18.892,0:04:20.834 She's not sure that would have happened 0:04:20.834,0:04:23.332 if the editor had not been a female. 0:04:23.332,0:04:25.669 Stories in the news are more than twice as likely 0:04:25.669,0:04:28.787 to present women as victims than men, 0:04:28.787,0:04:31.129 and women are more likely to be defined 0:04:31.129,0:04:33.370 by their body parts. 0:04:33.370,0:04:36.307 Wired magazine, November 2010. 0:04:36.307,0:04:40.019 Yes, the issue was about breast tissue engineering. 0:04:40.019,0:04:44.348 Now, I know you're all distracted, so I'll take that off. (Laughter) 0:04:44.348,0:04:49.030 Eyes up here. (Laughter) 0:04:49.030,0:04:53.366 So -- (Applause) 0:04:53.366,0:04:55.446 Here's the thing. 0:04:55.446,0:04:58.471 Wired almost never puts women on its cover. 0:04:58.471,0:04:59.983 Oh, there have been some gimmicky ones. 0:04:59.983,0:05:01.716 Pam from The Office. 0:05:01.716,0:05:03.471 Manga girls. 0:05:03.471,0:05:07.486 A voluptuous model covered in synthetic diamonds. 0:05:07.486,0:05:10.254 Texas State University professor Cindy Royal wondered 0:05:10.254,0:05:12.704 in her blog, "How are young women like her students 0:05:12.704,0:05:16.538 supposed to feel about their roles in technology reading Wired?" 0:05:16.538,0:05:20.040 Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, defended his choice 0:05:20.040,0:05:22.306 and said, there aren't enough women, prominent women 0:05:22.306,0:05:26.581 in technology to sell a cover, to sell an issue. 0:05:26.581,0:05:28.208 Part of that is true. There aren't as many 0:05:28.208,0:05:30.395 prominent women in technology. 0:05:30.395,0:05:32.651 Here's my problem with that argument. 0:05:32.651,0:05:35.490 Media tells us every day what's important, 0:05:35.490,0:05:37.756 by the stories they choose and where they place them. 0:05:37.756,0:05:40.441 It's called agenda-setting. 0:05:40.441,0:05:42.425 How many people knew the founders of Facebook 0:05:42.425,0:05:45.384 and Google before their faces were on a magazine cover? 0:05:45.384,0:05:48.037 Putting them there made them more recognizable. 0:05:48.037,0:05:51.121 Now, Fast Company Magazine embraces that idea. 0:05:51.121,0:05:54.139 This is its cover from November 15, 2010. 0:05:54.139,0:05:56.863 The issue is about the most prominent and influential women 0:05:56.863,0:05:58.304 in technology. 0:05:58.304,0:06:01.390 Editor Robert Safian told the Poynter Institute, 0:06:01.390,0:06:03.972 "Silicon Valley is very white and very male, 0:06:03.972,0:06:07.037 but that's not what Fast Company thinks the business world 0:06:07.037,0:06:09.933 will look like in the future, so it tries to give a picture 0:06:09.933,0:06:13.204 of where the globalized world is moving." 0:06:13.204,0:06:15.908 By the way, apparently Wired took all this to heart. 0:06:15.908,0:06:19.934 This was its issue in April. (Laughter) 0:06:19.934,0:06:22.775 That's Limor Fried, the founder of Adafruit Industries, 0:06:22.775,0:06:25.382 in the Rosie the Riveter pose. 0:06:25.382,0:06:27.850 It would help to have more women in positions of leadership 0:06:27.850,0:06:30.761 in the media. A recent global survey found that 0:06:30.761,0:06:32.913 73 percent of the top media management jobs 0:06:32.913,0:06:35.017 are still held by men. 0:06:35.017,0:06:37.850 But this is also about something far more complex: 0:06:37.850,0:06:41.571 our own unconscious biases and blind spots. 0:06:41.571,0:06:44.357 Shankar Vedantam is the author of "The Hidden Brain: 0:06:44.357,0:06:46.401 How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, 0:06:46.401,0:06:49.087 Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives." 0:06:49.087,0:06:51.751 He told the former ombudsman 0:06:51.751,0:06:53.199 at National Public Radio, who was doing 0:06:53.199,0:06:56.264 a report on how women fare in NPR coverage, 0:06:56.264,0:06:59.728 unconscious bias flows throughout most of our lives. 0:06:59.728,0:07:02.720 It's really difficult to disentangle those strands. 0:07:02.720,0:07:05.199 But he did have one suggestion. 0:07:05.199,0:07:08.396 He used to work for two editors who said 0:07:08.396,0:07:11.918 every story had to have at least one female source. 0:07:11.918,0:07:14.414 He balked, at first, but said he eventually 0:07:14.414,0:07:17.497 followed the directive happily because his stories got better 0:07:17.497,0:07:20.014 and his job got easier. 0:07:20.014,0:07:22.530 Now, I don't know if one of the editors was a woman, 0:07:22.530,0:07:25.037 but that can make the biggest differences. 0:07:25.037,0:07:28.566 The Dallas Morning News won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 0:07:28.566,0:07:31.230 for a series it did on women around the world, 0:07:31.230,0:07:34.038 but one of the reporters told me she's convinced 0:07:34.038,0:07:36.318 it never would have happened if they had not had 0:07:36.318,0:07:39.078 a female assistant foreign editor, 0:07:39.078,0:07:41.358 and they would not have gotten some of those stories 0:07:41.358,0:07:44.216 without female reporters and editors on the ground, 0:07:44.216,0:07:47.127 particularly one on female genital mutilation. 0:07:47.127,0:07:50.071 Men would just not be allowed into those situations. 0:07:50.071,0:07:52.478 This is an important point to consider, 0:07:52.478,0:07:54.973 because much of our foreign policy now revolves around 0:07:54.973,0:07:57.655 countries where the treatment of women is an issue, 0:07:57.655,0:08:01.657 such as Afghanistan. 0:08:01.657,0:08:04.625 What we're told in terms of arguments against leaving 0:08:04.625,0:08:09.837 this country is that the fate of the women is primary. 0:08:09.837,0:08:12.301 Now I'm sure a male reporter in Kabul can find women 0:08:12.301,0:08:16.713 to interview. Not so sure about rural, traditional areas, 0:08:16.713,0:08:20.827 where I'm guessing women can't talk to strange men. 0:08:20.827,0:08:22.439 It's important to keep talking about this 0:08:22.439,0:08:24.969 in light of Lara Logan. 0:08:24.969,0:08:27.057 She was the CBS News correspondent who was 0:08:27.057,0:08:29.679 brutally sexually assaulted in Egypt's Tahrir Square 0:08:29.679,0:08:31.985 right after this photo was taken. 0:08:31.985,0:08:34.316 Almost immediately, pundits weighed in 0:08:34.316,0:08:37.928 blaming her and saying things like, "You know, 0:08:37.928,0:08:41.480 maybe women shouldn't be sent to cover those stories." 0:08:41.480,0:08:44.121 I never heard anyone say this about Anderson Cooper 0:08:44.121,0:08:48.163 and his crew who were attacked covering the same story. 0:08:48.163,0:08:50.336 One way to get more women into leadership 0:08:50.336,0:08:52.640 is to have other women mentor them. 0:08:52.640,0:08:55.087 One of my board members is an editor at a major 0:08:55.087,0:08:57.399 global media company, but she never thought about this 0:08:57.399,0:09:02.326 as a career path until she met female role models at JAWS. 0:09:02.326,0:09:04.794 But this is not just a job for super-journalists, 0:09:04.794,0:09:07.573 or my organization. You all have a stake in a strong, 0:09:07.573,0:09:09.813 vibrant media. 0:09:09.813,0:09:12.829 Analyze your news, and speak up when there are gaps 0:09:12.829,0:09:16.030 missing in coverage like people at the New York Times did. 0:09:16.030,0:09:19.246 Suggest female sources to reporters and editors. 0:09:19.246,0:09:21.704 Remember, a complete picture of reality 0:09:21.704,0:09:23.332 may depend upon it. 0:09:23.332,0:09:26.858 And I'll leave you with a video clip that I first saw in 2007 0:09:26.858,0:09:28.972 when I was a student in London. 0:09:28.972,0:09:30.464 It's for the Guardian newspaper. 0:09:30.464,0:09:31.989 It's actually long before I ever thought about 0:09:31.989,0:09:34.326 becoming a journalist, but I was very interested 0:09:34.326,0:09:38.485 in how we learn to perceive our world. 0:09:38.485,0:09:41.449 Narrator: An event seen from one point of view 0:09:41.449,0:09:48.579 gives one impression. 0:09:48.579,0:09:50.235 Seen from another point of view, 0:09:50.235,0:09:54.842 it gives quite a different impression. 0:09:54.842,0:09:57.704 But it's only when you get the whole picture 0:09:57.704,0:10:03.450 you can fully understand what's going on. 0:10:03.450,0:10:05.362 "The Guardian" 0:10:05.362,0:10:06.628 Megan Kamerick: I think you'll all agree 0:10:06.628,0:10:11.057 that we'd be better off if we all had the whole picture.