Women in all careers are striving to gain
equality in
the work force
today, and female television news anchors
are definitely
part of the fight. The road to
television
news anchoring is
a rocky one, where only a few women
survive and many
fail. Where progress was once thought
to have been
made, there aren't many females getting ahead
in the world of
television news. Today, there is a very
slow, if any,
gain in the numbers of women who succeed.
There are many questions surrounding the subject
of
women in
television news, and I will attempt to answer
relevant ones in
this paper. How have the women that
actually make it
to the top and succeed as anchorwomen,
done it? What does it take to make it? Why do those few
endure it/enjoy
it? Why has it been and still is
difficult for
women? What are the expectations of
women
in the field, as
opposed to the expectations of men?
I am interested in this topic because I once
aspired
to become a
television broadcaster. I still have
inspiration in
me, but not quite as much due to the
negative and
discouraging aspects I have heard about in
classes and in
the media. I am not sure that I could be
happy in a career
such as this, and I know there are great
difficulties in
"making it" in this profession.
I have
read about the
incredible ambition of successful females
in television
news, and it seems like it takes a special
kind of passion
to want to keep up in the business.
I kept my questions in mind when gathering
research
material. While focusing on the key questions, I was
able
to find
information that led me to form answers to them.
Christine Craft's
biography told of her individual
experience of
being fired on the basis of her looks and
her age. I realized from reading her story that she
had a
"nose for
news", a passion for telling it to the world,
and a unique
spark that made her a good journalist, yet
those qualities
weren't enough in her case. She took
that
passion and
spark, filed a sexual discrimination case and
won.
Hard News: Women in Broadcast Journalism had a
few
chapters that
were relevant to today, and I could draw on
some information
for my paper. However, much of the
information was
historical and not helpful to answering my
questions.
Battling for News concentrated mainly on print
journalism. There was material about the first women in
broadcasting in
the 1950's and how they were hired and
fired.
Television News Anchors had very helpful
information,
in that there
were individual stories from anchorwomen
telling of their
experiences. This provided stories about
the women who
have succeeded within the field--why and
how. There was a round table discussion conducted
by The
New Mother Jones
magazine with television newswomen Linda
Ellerbee, Marion
Goldin, Ann Rubenstein, and Meredith
Vieira. This
provided first-hand opinions about what these
women see going
on in the business.
Women in Television News was published in 1976,
and
thus, much of the
information was outdated. However, I
was able to use
some quotes from newswomen about what they
believe one must
do to "make it" in broadcast journalism.
I also found some
interesting quotes from a former vice
president of ABC
News regarding women in the industry.
Waiting for Prime Time had valuable information
about
Marlene Sander's
experience and opinions of other
anchorwomen and
men. It covered possibilities for the
future of women
in broadcasting.
Pamela Creedon's two books were helpful in that
they
discussed topics
of sexual discrimination in broadcast
journalism and
included a chapter by Marlene Sanders,
titled "The
Face of the Network News is Male."
Here she
attempted to
tackle some problems women in television news
face: what the
problems are, why they exist, and a bit
about what needs
to be done to cure these problems.
Liesbet van Zoonen's book included a chapter
titled
"Media
Production and the Encoding of Gender." It showed
how society views
women in the media. The expectations of
female
anchorwomen in part stems from the overall view of
women on
television--whether it be in a movie, music
video, or soap
opera. This was relevant to my paper in
answering the
question of why there are certain
expectations of
women in television news.
The textbook, Gender, Race and Class in Media
had a
few chapters
relevant to my paper. Larry Gross wrote
a
chapter titled,
"Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities
and Mass
Media." He discussed various
stereotypes in our
society that lead
to stereotypes in all areas of our
lives.
I found some of my sources from Oasis, and also
used
a couple of
magazine articles that were relevant to the
subject. I focused on the questions that I wanted to
answer and drew
points from the material that were
relevant and
provided substantial evidence to answer my
questions. I found that opinions and thoughts of women
who had been
through the business were most helpful.
There was one big limitation I faced if I
wanted to
prove that women
in television news were discriminated
upon based on sex
and age. Women have been fired from
their anchor
positions, and it has seemed that the reasons
were because of
looks or aging. But this is hard to
prove. In August, Carol Schrader, a woman
anchor from
KETV-TV in Omaha,
Nebraska was asked to leave. She said
that it was
because of her age, although her bosses didn't
say that was the
reason, stating that she wasn't doing her
job. She was replace by a young, blond woman. Also, when
Marlene Sanders
was asked to leave ABC, instead of saying
point-blank that
she was too old, her boss told her she
had outgrown the
profession. Lynn Sherr of ABC News was
also fired, and
she believed it was because of her
appearance, as no
one told her why she lost her job. It
isn't a proven
fact that every case of a woman getting
fired from their
professions were fired because of their
age.
The number of women news anchors is
scarce. Only a
few succeed, and
the reason for this is because what is
expected of them
is much greater than what is expected of
men. Women must work twice as hard, be twice as
beautiful, and go
above and beyond their abilities. The
television
broadcasting business is dominated by males,
and, in turn,
males have the majority of the power.
Positive steps
have been taken by women, but they are
still far from
being equal in the field. Advances are
not
being made
quickly.
Some men in the world of television news say
that
women do have a
tougher time. Larry King had this to
say:
I know that if I were "Loretta" King
instead of
"Larry" King I would be nowhere near
where I am
today. I
would not have had a national radio
talk show in 1978, a national cable show of my
own, and a national column if I had started out
being the "wrong" gender (Craft 1988,
p. 6).
Al Ittleson, former vice-president of ABC News,
says
that physical
appearance is important for both male and
female
broadcasters, but emphasizes the importance of a
woman
broadcaster's looks:
Women are supposed to be beautiful. People
anticipate what a woman is supposed to look
like, so when they come to television-I haven't
seen an unattractive woman on television yet...
In fact, they're hired, I would say, probably
more because of the way they look and their
image
than because of their background. A man with a
very strong journalism background and a man who
has broken stories...can get away with a little
bit of homeliness. Men aren't supposed to be
attractive.
Women have a tougher time (Gelfman
1976, p. 53).
Our society pins importance upon women's
looks.
They are required
to retain qualities of femininity, yet
must also be
professional. van Zoonen explains the
different
expectations of men and women in journalism,
saying, "one
must assume 'femininity' as a feature of
female
journalists and 'masculinity' as a different
characteristic of
male journalists" (van Zoonen 1994, p.
63). The images that are instilled in society are
carried over into
all aspects of life, and are prevalent
in television
news.
Just as our society is dominated by white,
middle and
upper-middle
class males, it is so in most professions.
The men are the
bosses in television news, and this has
made it difficult
for women to gain prestige. The men
place expectations
upon the women, and punish them if they
aren't exactly
what they want.
One good example of a case where a woman
news anchor
was fired on the
basis of her looks is Christine Craft.
Craft was
discriminated against because of her sex,
appearance, and
age. She was fired from KMBC in Kansas
City and told,
"You don't hide your intelligence to make
guys look
smarter" (Craft 1988, p. 66). Along
with this,
she was fired
because she was "too old, too unattractive,
and not
sufficiently deferential to men" (Craft 1988, p.
66). Because her boss directly told her these
things, she
felt she had been
sexually discriminated against. She won
two court cases,
winning a total of $600,000 in damages.
Craft's case opened the eyes of many
anchorwomen, as
well as others in
the media and elsewhere. Here is a
talented,
competent broadcast journalist who was unfairly
treated and took
a stand. She comments on her experience,
"The men
could be balding, jowly, bespectacled, even fat
and encased in
double-knit, yet the women had to be
flawless. Moreover, there was the expectation that I
should pretend
not to know certain facts just because I
was a woman"
(Craft 1988, p. 10).
What is disturbing about Craft's case is
that it is
so blatantly
obvious that she lost her job on the basis of
being a woman,
being too old, and not being pretty enough.
At the time, out
of all the anchors in the country who
were over 40, men
made up ninety-seven percent of that,
with three
percent being women who did not look their age.
Marlene Sanders
writes that what is seen in Craft's case
is "that
wrinkles are 'seasoning' in a man but
'disqualification'
in a woman," and that while this may
not be sexual
discrimination, "it is a sad statement about
how women are
viewed in our society" (Sanders and Rock
1988, p. 148).
The
world of television news is an unstable one,
where women take
chances, not knowing if or how long they
can thrive in the
business. Marlene Sanders puts it
plainly,
"The message is clear; we can all be replaced.
There are no
guarantees of longevity, and no obvious
destination where
news professionals can translate their
experience and
knowledge into new and satisfying careers"
(Sanders and Rock
1988, p. 205).
Before she took the job at KMBC in Kansas City,
Craft
was working at a
smaller station in Santa Barbara, where
she had a
positive experience. She says, "I
was content
to be in a place
where the emphasis was on getting the
stories and
getting them right. Only once did management
mention my
appearance, and that was to tell me to pull my
hair back a
bit" (Craft 1988, p. 28).
Craft was attracted to the Kansas City station
in a
larger
market. However, she made clear before
taking the
job that first
and foremost she did not want to change her
appearance. They promised her it wouldn't happen, yet
within the first
week they had a beauty consultant piling
the make-up onto
her face.
Sexual discrimination is evident in television
news.
KMBC practically
begged Christine Craft to come to their
station.
"Women are rewarded more than men for changing
news shops often
or for moving to larger markets more
because of their
gender than because of their journalistic
qualifications"
(Creedon: Smith, Fredin, Ferguson Nardone
1993, p. 174).
During the first trial, a former news producer
at
KMBC, Sherry
Chastain, testified, saying that her bosses
"instructed
her to monitor the appearance of female
anchors and
reporters, but never males...the male
counterpart was
bald with a bad toupee and thick glasses,
yet nothing was
ever mentioned about monitoring his
appearance"
(Craft 1988, p. 118).
Diane
Sawyer says that equal pay for equal work is a
more serious
issue than aging on the air. The reason
this
is such a difficult
challenge is because the number of
women on a news
staff, as well as their ages can be easily
established. However, salaries tend to be confidential,
and the dollar
value of experience and other
qualifications
are hard to determine. Therefore, while
it
is possible that
aging may not be a major issue for women
broadcasters ten
years from now, equal pay for equal work
will most likely
linger on (Hosley and Yamada 1987, p.
152-154).
Some of the blame for all anchorwomen's
problems were
voiced by cynical
male television executives in the
1980's. Jon Katz, former executive director of CBS
Morning News,
tells of another executive who had a way of
deciding which
women to interview for anchor positions.
He would look at
their tapes in the VCR for eight seconds
and he would ask
himself, "Do I want to fuck them?"
This
was his basis in
deciding who to hire (Katz 1995, p. 158).
Catherine Crier experienced tinges of sexism at
CNN.
A former lawyer
and judge, she was criticized for being
just another
pretty face entering the field of
broadcasting. She had no previous experience in
journalism, yet
her political experience provided the
skills and
knowledge necessary to succeed. She
says,
"Journalists
couched their reaction in terms of experience
and background,
but those same journalists have failed to
voice similar
criticisms of Pierre Salinger of Bill
Moyers, two men
who jumped from politics into broadcast
news"
(Fensch: McHargue 1993, p. 182). Crier
says that
the gains of
women in television news is being made very
slowly, and that
"it is still a frustration for most
women"
(Fensch: McHargue 1993, p. 184).
Jane Pauley is an exception to the negativity
women
broadcasters
often receive. The public loves her.
"It is
precisely because
Pauley is so down-to-earth and
easy-going that
Americans loved waking up with her"
(Fensch: Holloway
1993, p. 249). She possesses the
feminine quality
that is appealing to the mass audience.
She was replaced
by Deborah Norville, a younger, blonder
woman on the
Today show, and viewers were upset to see her
go. Now she is a success on NBC Nightly News.
There are certain qualities a woman needs to
have in
order to be able
to survive in television news. Ann
Rubenstein of NBC
Nightly News says, "You must really
decide for
yourself what you're going to do and not do.
And what price
you are willing to pay for whatever they're
offering"
(Fensch: Orenstein 1993, p. 128).
Hard work and undying ambition are
important
qualities of
anchorwomen. Mary Alice Williams, of CNN
and
NBC, gave it her
all the first day she went to work for
NBC,
"appearing on camera, as an anchor of the evening
news breaks, and
by the end of her first three weeks she
had anchored
every network news show" (Fensch: White 1993,
p. 289).
A passion for telling the news is important,
and is
one reason why
the successful women stay in the field.
Diane Sawyer
explains,
"I really love what you learn every day in
the
business.
I love the breathtaking way we walk
into people's lives and ask them anything we
want and then leave. For a moment you have
available to you the whole universe of a
person's
life-the pain and the suffering and the joy and
the struggle.
You can learn from it and take
it with you and then come back the next day
with somebody else. That's what I like to do"
(Fensch: Zoglin 1993, p. 278).
Sawyer's never-ending ambition carried her from
news
correspondent to
network star. While working for CBS
Morning News and
covering the negotiations to free Iran
hostages, she
"would sleep all night on two secretarial
chairs so I could
get up at 4 a.m., stalk the halls and
see what I could
get" (Fensch: Zoglin 1993, p. 284).
The will to endure any obstacles and believe in
themselves keeps
the few successful anchorwomen going.
Sally Quinn, CBS
anchorwoman says
You've got to have self-confidence. If I didn't
have an enormous amount of self-confidence, I
would have been destroyed by this whole
experience...You can't learn to be a perfect
anchorwoman in one day, and I knew that I
wasn't
going to be perfect and that people were just
going to crucify me because I wasn't
perfect"
(Gelfman 1976,
p. 75).
Michael Gartner, NBC News president, explains
what is
important in
television news anchoring. "You have to have
a special
combination of person to be the focal point of a
successful
show. You have to be a good journalist,
and
you have to be
able to deliver the message-which a print
person doesn't
have to do-in person, in somebody's house"
(Fensch: Zoglin
1993, p. 281).
Barbara Walters is an exception to the rule
that
older women do
not succeed in television news. She is a
successful
television newswoman who is well over the age
of 40. Even she had to take the hard road to make it
to
the top, starting
out as a secretary at a small
advertising
agency, working in public relations and then
in public affairs
for CBS. Walters recognizes the tough
times women in
television news face. She says
You have to work harder. It's been said before,
but it's
true. You are taken less seriously and
you are very often scorned by your own
co-workers
...it's a tougher job for a woman because a
woman
has to be awfully good. She really does. A man
can be much more excused" (Gelfman 1976,
p. 88).
Women are not rising to the top quickly in
television
news, although
there is slow improvement, and anchormen
say they are fine
with the idea of women at the top.
Walter Cronkite
says of a woman anchor in the future,
"Fine, why
not? I think it likely...I think by the
time
the next change
comes, the next generation of anchor
people, I would
think that the barrier would be down and
that women would
have as good a chance as men" (Sanders
and Rock 1988, p.
198).
Yet there are still roadblocks standing in the
way of
women striving to
make it to the top. They begin at
low-level jobs,
such as researchers and logistics persons
and hope to take
the right paths to get to the top of the
ladder. Sanders writes, "For years there were
few women
above the level
of researcher. While that has changed,
the amount of
frustration for those who do not move ahead
has driven many
people out of the business altogether"
(Sanders and Rock
1988, p. 198-199).
Lesley Stahl of CBS News points out that
anchorwomen
are most often
workaholics, with a never-ending drive to
do their
job. She says
It's one reason we do succeed in this
business.
We just give it everything...Maybe it's because
our kind
of personalities are attracted to this
industry, compulsive, deadline-oriented people
who keep
pushing ourselves to see how much work
we can do.
We love work...It's not just a symptom
in the early stage, it goes on" (Sanders
and Rock
1988, p. 81).
Society's expectations of female news anchors
is very
much like that of
any woman in a powerful and successful
career. While the women must portray a glamorous, yet
friendly image,
expectations of men in the business are
not near as
high. Jon Katz says in his article
The men who anchor today look, dress, and act
almost precisely the same way they did 50 years
ago.
They only have to reflect a single trait
to succeed-gravitas. They wouldn't dream of
being intimate, glamorous, or coy. Nor would
anyone expect that of them" (Katz 1995, p.
162).
Katz goes on to say that men who make it in the
business usually
never fail. He says of anchormen,
"Old
anchors never
fade away. And they can't be killed by
mortal
means" (Katz 1995, p. 164).
Sadly, forward movements aren't apparent today
by
women in
television news. Forty years ago, a
female
gaining the
anchor position on the evening news was a leap
forward. Today "it feels more like a step backward,
an
attempt to stuff
accomplished, contemporary women into an
ill-fitting
straightjacket" (Katz 1995, p. 164).
It is apparent that women news anchors face
many more
struggles than
men in the field. It takes a unique
individual to
fight through those struggles and strive for
what they want
most: to relay news throughout the world.
Equality with men
is far from being reached, but a few
females have
stood their ground and hopefully made a
difference for
others that follow. If people open their
eyes and realize
there are plenty of women who are just
as, if not more,
competent than men at holding an anchor
position, women
could gain respect within the field. For
now, the few
women who find success and are willing to
endure the
hardships that come along will likely survive
in the business,
at least until age hinders their physical
appearance.
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