Tag Archives: journalism

Men dominate newspaper journalism in the UK

The link below will take you to the link to the study…

Men still dominate national newspaper journalism

The study found that 74% of news journalists on the nationals are men and that men also dominate political and business journalism. Somewhat less surprisingly, just 3% of sports journalists are women

Among other eye-opening findings are that The Independent had the lowest proportion of female staff. Just 25% of its editorial team are women. The Sun the Daily Telegraph were little different, with just 26% of female staff.

At the other end of the scale, the papers with the highest proportion of women journalists were The Observer and the Daily Mail, both with 36% of women, closely followed by the Daily Express with 35%.

Male journalists also people areas that researchers regard as “traditional subjects that women might have been expected to dominate”. So 49% of lifestyle reporters are men and 70% of arts reporters are also male.

More on women and journalism…

A few more interesting reads on women in journalism:

On reporters and rape: Three ideas worth rising about the cacophony

Lara Logan’s tragic sexual assault:  Apparently the fault of CBS news for sending a purty young thang out in public

If women never went anywhere where we risked being sexually assaulted, we’d never go anywhere, period. We certainly couldn’t go to work on foreign aid projects. Or to U.S. military academies. Not to college. Not on dates. Not to parties. Not to bars. Or on cruises. Not to work as models. Or security contractors. Except that even if we never went any of those places, we’d still be screwed (pun intended) because of course a high percentage of rapes happen in the home, committed by perpetrators whom the victims know. Putting the responsibility on women to prevent sexual assault by restricting their own behavior – or on their employers to limit it for them – won’t actually solve the problem, it will just reinforce gendered norms about what “good” women “should” do.

And, finally, the idea that Lara Logan was “more at risk” of sexual assault because she was attractive is laughable. I’d be interested to know what fuckability threshold women should stay below in order to be safe from rape. Could Logan have just added some thick glasses? What if she had spinach in her teeth? How about if she gained 20 pounds – then would she be safe from the mob of 200 people who apparently decided to subject her to a prolonged beating and repeated sexual assaults because her delicate beauty stirred their romantic longings? Give me a break. Rape is about power, not how cute the victim is.

I have two things to add:

1) Women can only reduce their chances of being assaulted, we cannot prevent rape – preventing rape involves preventing the behavior of rape.

2) It’s very sad the discussion of rape still has to focus on the women – her looks, her actions, what she wore… Why are her characteristics more important than the characteristics of the rapists? Why are they immune from scrutiny and accountabilty?

2011 Courage in Journalism award

Here’s some info on a Courage in Journalism award:

2011 Courage in Journalism

From the IWMF Web site:

It takes courage to report the news in many parts of the world. Each year, the International Women’s Media Foundation honors that courage and promotes the importance of a free press with its Courage in Journalism Awards, the only international awards that recognize the bravery of women journalists. Nominees risk political persecution, physical injury and death in their efforts to expose corruption and champion human rights.