More of the Same
According to a study released today by Media Matters for America at least 77 percent of the 2,150 guests who appeared on the four major Sunday shows in 2005-06 were men; at least 82 percent were white. On Meet the Press and Face the Nation, there were nearly nine white guests for every guest of another race/ethnicity.
No wonder Katie Couric is floundering over at CBS News. Getting news from a woman is just not what we are used to.
Thank you Media Matters for pointing this out. And please come investigate pretty much every other part of society - see Pierre's post on the CEO's of Dallas from yesterday. And maybe, just maybe, there's a reason we have seen so many high profile women fall from grace - Carly Fiorina from HP, as an example. It's pretty hard to thrive in a world that is built by men for men. Let's support the Women's Media Center, who are trying to do something about the lack of diversity in media. As Jane Fonda, a Women's Media Center Board Member so rightly says, "When the media does not reflect the vibrant diversity of the people on this planet, both the quality of journalism and the quality of our democracy suffer." And she says further, "Because you can’t tell the whole story when you leave out half the population".
Gillian Parrillo
The Sacramento Executive
Comments
Couric is floundering at CBS because she's the wrong person for the job and because CBS alienated their core audience to try and win a new audience of people that don't watch the news. She'd be struggling even if we had a matriarchal society and female newscasters were the norm.
When she did the morning show, she visibly struggled during any hard news items. Her questions were inane and sometimes laughable.
Her performance on the evening news has been no better. Things like the 90-second "Free Speech" commentary pieces made for a confusing show, and the entire show seems to lack focus. The hard news is barely discussed, with special interest and context building regularly taking over.
Couric was brought in to appeal to the younger demographic, and the producers of the show decided that in order to reach this demographc, they need to break the format of the evening news. They're probably right. The younger demos don't watch network evening news. But what they've created is something that doesn't appeal to those who do watch the evening news and doesn't interest those who don't.
Posted by: Adam Kalsey | May 14, 2007 11:19 AM