Are women changing photojournalism?

Sherry Ricchiardi explored gender’s effect on the profession of photojournalism in a piece for the American Journalism Review in 1998.

Some of the photo editors and experts she spoke with seemed willing to concede gender differences in the imagery produced by male and female photojournalists. Joe Elbert, then assistant managing editor for photography at The Washington Post told her, “We’re starting to get more – and different – interpretations of subject matter as more women come into the profession. There is a different approach because of gender” (p. 28). Ricchiardi also found photo experts who argued, “Women’s coverage illustrates an instinct to delve beneath the surface of a story and add a deeper human dimension to photos” (p. 29).

Other journalists were not willing to make gender distinctions. Jim McNay, former president of the National Press Photographers Association said, “It is the quality of work, not gender, that makes the greatest difference” in photographs (p. 30). Photo historian C. Zoe Smith told Ricchiardi that the most successful photojournalists, regardless of sex, “tend to be tenacious, obsessed with the profession and willing to take risks. ‘They live and breathe photography. They sacrifice what we would consider a normal life for the job’” (p. 31).

You can judge if you see difference in the photographs that won Picture of the Year. The top two prizes in Newspaper photography went to men and the third and fourth prizes went to women. What do you notice?

References

Ricchiardi, S. (1998). Getting the picture. American Journalism Review, 27-32.

Where are the women in political news?

Perhaps it is not surprising that studies have found women underrepresented as sources in stories about politics. This may be changing with Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, but past campaigns don’t bode well for female candidates and their female supporters. Studies show that even when women are running for office it is more often men who are talking about their campaigns in the media. One significant consequence of under representing female sources in political coverage is that women readers may be “less likely to follow campaign news” (Freedman & Fico, 2005, p. 269). 

Here are two studies which looked at female sources in political coverage:

Freedman and Fico (2005) examined 176 articles on races for governor and they determined that the sources, both expert and non-expert, were “overwhelmingly male” (p. 265). When female experts were cited, they received less space. Male experts averaged two paragraphs, but female experts’ comments averaged less than half a paragraph. Male nonexperts were also more likely to be quoted in the first five paragraphs of a story than female nonexperts. “In two thirds of stories citing women nonexperts, their assertions first appeared below paragraph 10” (p. 267).  

Zeldes and Fico (2005) conducted a content analysis  of 333 campaign stories from the 2000 presidential election which aired on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC.  They found “men were overrepresented as reporters and sources on network news” (p.  382) and that male sources were given longer soundbites than women. 

References 

Freedman, E., & Fico, F. (2005). Male and female sources in newspaper coverage of male and female candidates in open races for governor in 2002. Mass Communication & Society, 8(3), 257-272. 

Zeldes, G. A., & Fico, F. (2005). Race and gender: An analysis of sources and reporters in the networks’ coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign. Mass Communication & Society, 8(4), 373-385.

Facts about women in media management

According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 2006 census, 38 percent of journalists working in daily newspapers are women; 65 percent of all supervisors are men. 

A 2002 study by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism and the American Press Institute found only one in five of the nation’s top female newspaper editors said they definitely wanted to move up in the news industry; 45 percent said they were looking to change newsrooms or leave the business entirely. 

The Poynter Institute found women are leaving newsrooms prematurely. As of 2002, more than half (54 percent) of women in newsrooms had fewer than five years experience. They also found that compared to the U.S. civilian work force in 2000, journalists are considerably less likely to be women (33 percent vs. 46.5 percent) and even less likely than the overall U.S. managerial and professional work force in 2000, which included 49.8 percent women. 

In 2007, the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association reported that women are 40 percent of the TV workforce and make up a quarter of TV news directors. They also reported that one in five of the nation’s top TV stations has a female news director. 

Women are fairing the least well in radio according to MIW Radio Group. Ninety percent of radio program directors are men and 85 percent of radio station general managers are men.

This research was originally complied by the McCormick Tribune New Media Women Entrepreneurs. 

Gaining sources in a war zone

When interviewed, most female reporters reject drawing gender distinctions in how they and their male colleagues report on war. Both male and female war correspondents write compelling features on non-combatants and both write stories that focus on the tactical maneuvers of soldiers. Despite these similarities, female war correspondents have developed their own tactics to gain sources and argue that in war zones, a place where it might seem their gender could be a distinct disadvantage, they have found advantages in access to sources.

Anne Garrels (2003), a veteran war correspondent who recently reported for National Public Radio (NPR) from Baghdad, said in her memoir, “I have only benefited from my sex reporting from overseas, especially, ironically, in societies where women are sequestered. Whether in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, I can walk both sides of the street, talking the talk with male officials while visiting the women’s inner sanctums, which are often off-limits to foreign males” (p. 31).

Female journalists say that they are often approached and trusted by women, wanting to tell their stories.

Betsy Aaron of CBS said she was approached by an Afghan woman while she was among the Mujahedin. The woman told her, “We women of the world must stick together since we know what’s right-but no one listens to us” (Flander, 1990, p. 40).

In Iraq, Andrea Bruce Woodall, a photojournalist for The Washington Post, found women and their husbands tended to allow her to shoot scenes of domestic life her male colleagues could not access because the men did not mind if she was alone with their wives (Lens on Iraq, 2005).

In recent war zones female correspondents have worn the local dress to enhance their ability to travel inconspicuously through country with the local women. Some women refuse or struggle with the decision to cover themselves in the modest, sometimes restrictive, clothing required in traditional societies, but most find the choice to do so is beneficial.

Jackie Spinner of The Washington Post said, “As a female reporter in Iraq, I did feel like I could disguise myself better than some of my male colleagues. In a scarf and abaya, with the right shoes, purse and even makeup, I could blend in fairly well. Whenever someone said to me, ‘Wow, you really look Iraqi,’ I took that as a compliment, and it made me feel more secure” (Gibbons, 2005, ¶17).

Anna Badkhen, a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, decided to wear a burqa to get an “eyewitness perspective of Kabul” (Katovsky & Carlson, 2003, p. 11). She described her struggles with the garment. “I learned that the burqa is the most uncomfortable piece of clothing known to womankind…The mesh, I discovered, was at the level of my eyebrows rather than my eyes, so I couldn’t seen anything directly in front of me that wasn’t level with my head or higher…Since I couldn’t see my feet, I slipped in the mud. The tail of my burqa got caught on the door handle as I was trying to climb into the back seat of our car” (Katovsky & Carlson, 2003, p. 11).

Deborah Amos, who also covered the Middle East for NPR, chose to regularly wear a chardor, a garment which hides everything but a woman’s eyes (Flander, 1990). She said that dressing like the local women in the country she was covering helped her gain access. “In Iran, my male counterparts go about dressed as Westerners, and they stand out. In a chador, I can go anywhere. I don’t look like an American reporter. I look like an Iranian. I can talk to women, and they can talk to me” (Flander, 1990, p. 40).

References

Flander, J. (1990). Women war correspondents: On the fields of macho. Washington Journalism Review, 38-41.

Garrels, A. (2003). Naked in Baghdad. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Gibbons, S. (2002). Women, war and war correspondence: Veterans show us lessons to be learned. Media Report to Women, 4-5.

Katovsky, B., & Carlson, T. (2003). Embedded. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press.

Lens on Iraq. (2005, February 9). News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Transcript retrieved, March 6, 2008, from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june05/lensoniraq_02-09.html

Very brief history of women war correspondents

Women, and particularly American women, have reported on all of the wars of the last 200 years. During World War II, 125 women were accredited as war correspondents. By the Vietnam War combat reporting by women was increasingly common. Access to the Vietnam War was unprecedented; “If one possessed a visa and a plane ticket, one could go” (Beasley & Gibbons, 1993, p. 223). The US military granted accreditation to 467 female war correspondents, including 267 American women (Beasley & Gibbons, 1993). Taking on a wide range of assignments throughout Vietnam, women proved they belonged as war reporters and many women have followed in their footsteps. A Brookings Institution report found, “Before 1970, only 6 percent of foreign correspondents were women. By 1992, that number had soared to more than 33 percent” (as cited in Dietrich, 2002, p. 12). In recent conflicts, women have taken more dangerous assignments. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, between 1996 and 2005, 19 female journalists were killed on the job (CPJ, 2005). 

References

Beasley, M. H., & Gibbons, S. J. (1993). Taking their place: A documentary history of women and journalism. Washington, D.C.: The American University Press.

Committee to Protect Journalists. (2005). Journalists killed. Retrieved March 6, 2008, from http://cpj.org/deadly/index.html   

Dietrich, H. (2002). Women in war zones. Quill Magazine, 90(8), 12-15.

Is there byline bias?

Some good news for female reporters and columnists. Several scholars have examined the credibility of newspaper journalists and found that audiences do not assign credibility based on byline gender.

Burkhart and Sigelman (1990) looked at the effect of gendered bylines on evaluations of the credibility of hard news stories. In the first manipulation, which used a sample of 90 journalism students, they found readers did not judge the articles differently if they were written by a man or a woman. The results hinted that articles with the gender-neutral use of only the author’s initials were seen as less credible, but this pattern just missed statistical significance.

In a second test, in which they specifically examined byline recall, and used a sample of 87 non-journalism students, they found that the articles attributed to Mary A. Cummings were favored slightly over the articles by Mark A. Cummings.

Andsager (1990) presented 164 students at Kansas State University with two syndicated political columns, one with the byline Patricia Sullivan and the second with the byline Michael Henry. She found, “readers overall perceived no significant difference in credibility according to byline sex” (p. 488). However, when subjects were divided by sex, males, who were only 60 of the respondents, were more likely to rate a column with no byline as more credible than a female byline.

A second study of political columnists by Andsager and Mastin (2003) manipulated gender by changing the photograph next to the column. The large sample of students from two universities on opposite sides of the country ascribed the greatest credibility to the female columnists, but overall they found no statistically “significant differences in credibility” (p. 68).

In a similar study, White and Andsager (1991) had 305 Midwestern university student read four different columns, one with a clearly male byline, one with a clearly female byline, one with a gender neutral byline (Pat Sullivan) and one without a byline. They found “no perceived difference in the levels of credibility between the female and male writers, regardless of reader gender” (p. 718). They also found that credibility was not impacted even when a female columnist wrote about the draft, a topic considered stereotypically masculine, or when a male columnist wrote about abortion, a topic considered feminine.

Taken together, these studies offer convincing evidence that newspaper readers do not assign credibility based on the gender of an article’s author.

References

Andsager, J. L. (1990). Perceptions of credibility of male and female syndicated political columnists. Journalism Quarterly, 67(3), 485-491.

Andsager, J. L., & Mastin, T. (2003). Racial and regional differences in reader’s evaluations of political columnists by race and sex. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 80(1), 57-72.

Burkhart, F. N., & Sigelman, C. K. (1990). Byline bias? Effects of gender on news article evaluations. Journalism Quarterly, 67(3), 492-500.

White, H. A., & Andsager, J. L. (1991). Newspaper column readers’ gender bias: Perceived interest and credibility. Journalism Quarterly, 68(4), 709-718.

Honoring a deserving journalist

Journalist, poet, playwright and artist S. Renee Mitchell received an award in 2006 from Women’s eNews for her years of advocacy work around domestic violence.