WEBVTT 00:00:01.341 --> 00:00:03.833 Like most journalists, I'm an idealist. 00:00:03.857 --> 00:00:08.158 I love unearthing good stories, especially untold stories. 00:00:09.126 --> 00:00:11.559 I just didn't think that in 2011, 00:00:11.583 --> 00:00:13.744 women would still be in that category. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:14.538 --> 00:00:18.515 I'm the President of the Journalism and Women Symposium -- JAWS. 00:00:18.539 --> 00:00:19.691 That's Sharky. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:19.715 --> 00:00:21.206 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:21.230 --> 00:00:24.034 I joined 10 years ago because I wanted female role models, 00:00:24.058 --> 00:00:28.257 and I was frustrated by the lagging status of women in our profession 00:00:28.281 --> 00:00:30.926 and what that meant for our image in the media. 00:00:32.086 --> 00:00:34.189 We make up half the population of the world, 00:00:34.213 --> 00:00:36.800 but we're just 24 percent of the news subjects 00:00:36.824 --> 00:00:38.324 quoted in news stories. 00:00:38.752 --> 00:00:42.065 And we're just 20 percent of the experts quoted in stories. 00:00:42.461 --> 00:00:44.533 And now, with today's technology, 00:00:44.557 --> 00:00:47.739 it's possible to remove women from the picture completely. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:48.588 --> 00:00:52.460 This is a picture of President Barack Obama and his advisors, 00:00:52.484 --> 00:00:54.572 tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden. 00:00:54.596 --> 00:00:56.730 You can see Hillary Clinton on the right. 00:00:57.261 --> 00:00:58.581 Let's see how the photo ran 00:00:58.605 --> 00:01:01.453 in an Orthodox Jewish newspaper based in Brooklyn. 00:01:02.327 --> 00:01:04.040 Hillary's completely gone. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:04.064 --> 00:01:06.912 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:06.936 --> 00:01:09.985 The paper apologized, but said it never runs photos of women; 00:01:10.009 --> 00:01:11.941 they might be sexually provocative. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:11.965 --> 00:01:14.075 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:14.099 --> 00:01:16.147 This is an extreme case, yes. 00:01:16.171 --> 00:01:17.338 But the fact is, 00:01:17.362 --> 00:01:21.481 women are only 19 percent of the sources in stories on politics, 00:01:21.505 --> 00:01:24.517 and only 20 percent in stories on the economy. 00:01:26.210 --> 00:01:28.091 The news continues to give us a picture 00:01:28.115 --> 00:01:29.727 where men outnumber women 00:01:29.751 --> 00:01:32.465 in nearly all occupational categories, except two: 00:01:32.489 --> 00:01:34.977 students and homemakers. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:35.001 --> 00:01:36.258 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:36.282 --> 00:01:39.311 So we all get a very distorted picture of reality. 00:01:40.414 --> 00:01:43.520 The problem is, of course, there aren't enough women in newsrooms. 00:01:43.544 --> 00:01:47.449 They report at just 37 percent of stories in print, TV and radio. 00:01:48.006 --> 00:01:51.086 Even in stories on gender-based violence, 00:01:51.110 --> 00:01:54.713 men get an overwhelming majority of print space and airtime. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:54.737 --> 00:01:55.888 Case in point: 00:01:56.999 --> 00:01:59.903 This March, the New York Times ran a story by James McKinley 00:01:59.927 --> 00:02:01.581 about a gang rape of a young girl, 00:02:01.605 --> 00:02:03.943 11 years old, in a small Texas town. 00:02:04.515 --> 00:02:07.570 McKinley writes that the community is wondering, 00:02:07.594 --> 00:02:10.416 "How could their boys have been drawn into this?" 00:02:11.136 --> 00:02:12.540 "Drawn into this" -- 00:02:12.564 --> 00:02:15.644 like they were seduced into committing an act of violence. 00:02:15.668 --> 00:02:17.653 And the first person he quotes says, 00:02:17.677 --> 00:02:20.750 "These boys will have to live with this the rest of their lives." 00:02:20.774 --> 00:02:23.016 (Groans, laughter) 00:02:23.636 --> 00:02:26.620 You don't hear much about the 11-year-old victim, 00:02:26.644 --> 00:02:30.061 except that she wore clothes that were a little old for her 00:02:30.085 --> 00:02:31.497 and she wore makeup. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:32.223 --> 00:02:34.918 The Times was deluged with criticism. 00:02:35.370 --> 00:02:36.949 Initially, it defended itself, 00:02:36.973 --> 00:02:38.694 and said, "These aren't our views. 00:02:38.718 --> 00:02:40.646 This is what we found in our reporting." 00:02:40.670 --> 00:02:42.952 Now, here's a secret you probably know already: 00:02:43.492 --> 00:02:45.090 Your stories are constructed. 00:02:45.114 --> 00:02:48.135 As reporters, we research, we interview. 00:02:48.159 --> 00:02:51.067 We try to give a good picture of reality. 00:02:51.091 --> 00:02:53.836 We also have our own unconscious biases. 00:02:53.860 --> 00:02:57.383 But The Times makes it sound like anyone would have reported this story 00:02:57.407 --> 00:02:58.558 the same way. 00:02:59.175 --> 00:03:00.623 I disagree with that. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:01.083 --> 00:03:02.835 So three weeks later, 00:03:02.859 --> 00:03:04.386 The Times revisits the story. 00:03:04.410 --> 00:03:08.159 This time, it adds another byline to it with McKinley's: 00:03:08.183 --> 00:03:09.659 Erica Goode. 00:03:09.683 --> 00:03:12.585 What emerges is a truly sad, horrific tale 00:03:12.609 --> 00:03:15.568 of a young girl and her family trapped in poverty. 00:03:15.592 --> 00:03:18.267 She was raped numerous times by many men. 00:03:18.703 --> 00:03:21.093 She had been a bright, easygoing girl. 00:03:21.117 --> 00:03:23.679 She was maturing quickly, physically, 00:03:23.703 --> 00:03:26.695 but her bed was still covered with stuffed animals. 00:03:26.719 --> 00:03:28.282 It's a very different picture. 00:03:28.640 --> 00:03:32.327 Perhaps the addition of Ms. Goode is what made this story more complete. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:37.070 The Global Media Monitoring Project has found that stories by female reporters 00:03:37.094 --> 00:03:40.863 are more likely to challenge stereotypes than those by male reporters. 00:03:40.887 --> 00:03:42.260 At KUNM here in Albuquerque, 00:03:42.284 --> 00:03:44.419 Elaine Baumgartel did some graduate research 00:03:44.443 --> 00:03:46.712 on the coverage of violence against women. 00:03:46.736 --> 00:03:50.109 What she found was many of these stories tend to blame victims 00:03:50.133 --> 00:03:51.652 and devalue their lives. 00:03:51.676 --> 00:03:54.883 They tend to sensationalize, and they lack context. 00:03:55.423 --> 00:03:56.638 So for her graduate work, 00:03:56.662 --> 00:03:59.559 she did a three-part series on the murder of 11 women, 00:03:59.583 --> 00:04:02.159 found buried on Albuquerque's West Mesa. 00:04:02.183 --> 00:04:05.547 She tried to challenge those patterns and stereotypes in her work 00:04:05.571 --> 00:04:08.412 and she tried to show the challenges that journalists face 00:04:08.436 --> 00:04:11.956 from external sources, their own internal biases 00:04:11.980 --> 00:04:13.279 and cultural norms. 00:04:13.652 --> 00:04:16.375 And she worked with an editor at National Public Radio 00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:18.932 to try to get a story aired nationally. 00:04:18.956 --> 00:04:22.901 She's not sure that would have happened if the editor had not been a female. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:23.472 --> 00:04:24.671 Stories in the news 00:04:24.695 --> 00:04:28.932 are more than twice as likely to present women as victims than men, 00:04:28.956 --> 00:04:32.805 and women are more likely to be defined by their body parts. 00:04:33.562 --> 00:04:35.750 Wired magazine, November 2010. 00:04:36.440 --> 00:04:39.550 Yes, the issue was about breast-tissue engineering. 00:04:40.769 --> 00:04:43.443 Now I know you're all distracted, so I'll take that off. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:43.467 --> 00:04:44.468 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:44.492 --> 00:04:45.646 Eyes up here. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:45.670 --> 00:04:48.922 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:48.946 --> 00:04:50.097 So -- NOTE Paragraph 00:04:50.121 --> 00:04:54.299 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:54.323 --> 00:04:55.483 Here's the thing: 00:04:55.507 --> 00:04:58.064 Wired almost never puts women on its cover. 00:04:58.414 --> 00:05:00.391 Oh, there have been some gimmicky ones -- 00:05:00.415 --> 00:05:02.017 Pam from "The Office," 00:05:02.041 --> 00:05:03.950 manga girls, 00:05:03.974 --> 00:05:06.595 a voluptuous model covered in synthetic diamonds. 00:05:07.863 --> 00:05:11.431 Texas State University professor Cindy Royal wondered in her blog 00:05:11.455 --> 00:05:15.446 how are young women like her students supposed to feel about their roles 00:05:15.470 --> 00:05:16.938 in technology, reading Wired. 00:05:16.962 --> 00:05:20.215 Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, defended his choice 00:05:20.239 --> 00:05:22.628 and said there aren't enough women, prominent women 00:05:22.652 --> 00:05:25.775 in technology to sell a cover, to sell an issue. 00:05:26.581 --> 00:05:27.740 Part of that is true, 00:05:27.764 --> 00:05:30.312 there aren't as many prominent women in technology. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:30.336 --> 00:05:32.334 Here's my problem with that argument: 00:05:32.850 --> 00:05:35.429 Media tells us every day what's important, 00:05:35.453 --> 00:05:37.956 by the stories they choose and where they place them; 00:05:37.980 --> 00:05:39.445 it's called agenda setting. 00:05:40.433 --> 00:05:43.168 How many people knew the founders of Facebook and Google 00:05:43.192 --> 00:05:45.360 before their faces were on a magazine cover? 00:05:45.384 --> 00:05:47.846 Putting them there made them more recognizable. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:48.265 --> 00:05:51.061 Now, Fast Company Magazine embraces that idea. 00:05:51.085 --> 00:05:54.010 This is its cover from November 15, 2010. 00:05:54.371 --> 00:05:58.445 The issue is about the most prominent and influential women in technology. 00:05:58.827 --> 00:06:01.366 Editor Robert Safian told the Poynter Institute, 00:06:01.390 --> 00:06:04.237 "Silicon Valley is very white and very male. 00:06:04.261 --> 00:06:06.555 But that's not what Fast Company thinks 00:06:06.579 --> 00:06:08.943 the business world will look like in the future, 00:06:08.967 --> 00:06:12.643 so it tries to give a picture of where the globalized world is moving." NOTE Paragraph 00:06:13.354 --> 00:06:16.020 By the way, apparently, Wired took all this to heart. 00:06:16.459 --> 00:06:18.008 This was its issue in April. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:18.032 --> 00:06:19.910 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:19.934 --> 00:06:22.751 That's Limor Fried, the founder of Adafruit Industries, 00:06:22.775 --> 00:06:24.449 in the Rosie the Riveter pose. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:25.704 --> 00:06:29.174 It would help to have more women in positions of leadership in media. 00:06:29.198 --> 00:06:30.435 A recent global survey 00:06:30.459 --> 00:06:33.325 found that 73 percent of the top media-management jobs 00:06:33.349 --> 00:06:34.993 are still held by men. 00:06:35.335 --> 00:06:37.968 But this is also about something far more complex: 00:06:37.992 --> 00:06:40.960 our own unconscious biases and blind spots. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:41.817 --> 00:06:43.441 Shankar Vedantam is the author 00:06:43.465 --> 00:06:46.513 of "The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, 00:06:46.537 --> 00:06:49.199 Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives." 00:06:49.718 --> 00:06:52.845 He told the former ombudsman at National Public Radio, 00:06:52.869 --> 00:06:56.606 who was doing a report on how women fare in NPR coverage, 00:06:56.630 --> 00:06:59.720 unconscious bias flows throughout most of our lives. 00:06:59.744 --> 00:07:02.712 It's really difficult to disentangle those strands. 00:07:03.311 --> 00:07:04.920 But he did have one suggestion. 00:07:05.301 --> 00:07:08.092 He used to work for two editors 00:07:08.116 --> 00:07:11.487 who said every story had to have at least one female source. 00:07:12.099 --> 00:07:13.592 He balked at first, 00:07:13.616 --> 00:07:16.568 but said he eventually followed the directive happily, 00:07:16.592 --> 00:07:18.033 because his stories got better 00:07:18.057 --> 00:07:19.533 and his job got easier. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:20.014 --> 00:07:22.612 Now, I don't know if one of the editors was a woman, 00:07:22.636 --> 00:07:25.013 but that can make the biggest difference. 00:07:25.037 --> 00:07:29.003 The Dallas Morning News won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 00:07:29.027 --> 00:07:31.630 for a series it did on women around the world, 00:07:31.654 --> 00:07:33.361 but one of the reporters told me 00:07:33.385 --> 00:07:35.734 she's convinced it never would have happened 00:07:35.758 --> 00:07:39.169 if they had not had a female assistant foreign editor, 00:07:39.193 --> 00:07:41.677 and they would not have gotten some of those stories 00:07:41.701 --> 00:07:44.192 without female reporters and editors on the ground, 00:07:44.216 --> 00:07:47.118 particularly one on female genital mutilation -- 00:07:47.142 --> 00:07:49.807 men would just not be allowed into those situations. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:50.220 --> 00:07:52.454 This is an important point to consider, 00:07:52.478 --> 00:07:55.734 because much of our foreign policy now revolves around countries 00:07:55.758 --> 00:07:58.179 where the treatment of women is an issue, 00:07:58.203 --> 00:07:59.568 such as Afghanistan. 00:08:01.578 --> 00:08:05.702 What we're told in terms of arguments against leaving this country 00:08:05.726 --> 00:08:08.590 is that the fate of the women is primary. 00:08:09.701 --> 00:08:13.415 Now, I'm sure a male reporter in Kabul can find women to interview. 00:08:13.835 --> 00:08:17.607 Not so sure about rural, traditional areas, 00:08:17.631 --> 00:08:20.310 where I'm guessing women can't talk to strange men. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:20.858 --> 00:08:24.443 It's important to keep talking about this, in light of Lara Logan. 00:08:24.881 --> 00:08:27.033 She was the CBS News correspondent 00:08:27.057 --> 00:08:29.970 who was brutally sexually assaulted in Egypt's Tahrir Square, 00:08:29.994 --> 00:08:31.760 right after this photo was taken. 00:08:32.133 --> 00:08:34.902 Almost immediately, pundits weighed in, 00:08:34.926 --> 00:08:38.165 blaming her and saying things like, 00:08:38.189 --> 00:08:41.589 "You know, maybe women shouldn't be sent to cover those stories." 00:08:41.613 --> 00:08:44.850 I never heard anyone say this about Anderson Cooper and his crew, 00:08:44.874 --> 00:08:47.482 who were attacked covering the same story. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:48.387 --> 00:08:50.438 One way to get more women into leadership 00:08:50.462 --> 00:08:52.239 is to have other women mentor them. 00:08:52.640 --> 00:08:56.233 One of my board members is an editor at a major global media company, 00:08:56.257 --> 00:08:58.893 but she never thought about this as a career path, 00:08:58.917 --> 00:09:01.425 until she met female role models at JAWS. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:02.425 --> 00:09:04.925 But this is not just a job for super-journalists 00:09:04.949 --> 00:09:06.128 or my organization. 00:09:06.152 --> 00:09:08.782 You all have a stake in a strong, vibrant media. 00:09:09.743 --> 00:09:11.076 Analyze your news. 00:09:11.474 --> 00:09:14.031 And speak up when there are gaps missing in coverage, 00:09:14.055 --> 00:09:16.006 like people at The New York Times did. 00:09:16.030 --> 00:09:19.037 Suggest female sources to reporters and editors. 00:09:19.410 --> 00:09:22.899 Remember -- a complete picture of reality may depend upon it. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:25.195 And I'll leave you with a video clip 00:09:25.219 --> 00:09:28.749 that I first saw in [1987] when I was a student in London. 00:09:29.137 --> 00:09:30.709 It's for The Guardian newspaper. 00:09:30.733 --> 00:09:34.082 It's actually long before I ever thought about becoming a journalist, 00:09:34.106 --> 00:09:37.288 but I was very interested in how we learn to perceive our world. 00:09:38.823 --> 00:09:43.156 Narrator: An event seen from one point of view gives one impression. 00:09:48.579 --> 00:09:50.331 Seen from another point of view, 00:09:50.355 --> 00:09:52.720 it gives quite a different impression. 00:09:54.982 --> 00:09:57.360 But it's only when you get the whole picture, 00:09:57.384 --> 00:10:00.050 you can fully understand what's going on. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:03.809 --> 00:10:05.801 [The Guardian] NOTE Paragraph 00:10:05.825 --> 00:10:07.747 Megan Kamerick: I think you'll all agree 00:10:07.771 --> 00:10:10.531 that we'd be better off if we all had the whole picture.