eNews: For Women by Women

According to Carol Jenkins, women are the “Invisible Majority” in the news media, especially women of color. She argues, women are 51 percent of the population, and with a statistic like that; it should roll over to ownership and power in all areas of our society. Nonetheless, the statistics of power and ownership in news media are shockingly disproportioned. Women only hold 3 percent of decision-making positions in broadcast Media companies.

Besides ownership statistics of media in general, we also discussed women and their roles in the news room. Even though women are becoming more and more more visible in the newsroom. The problem does not disappear, it only takes another form. Women are always assigned the less important stories to inform the public about. Furthermore, they are mostly visible when the program is not on during prime time for example, the hosts of Sunday morning shows are usually women, and the reason is because no one finds Sunday shows to be as important as those on weekday mornings. It is also important to note that even during the weekdays we can see the ratio between men and women differ between morning news and the serious 10 O’clock news at night.

What I find to be most shocking is how the government keeps setting rules for the media corporations to follow in order to include women in decision-making policy, and instead of it having a positive effect, it only distorts the reality of the situation even further. Many positions that were given to women were only positions given on paper, or as stated in Edding’s article, “Many women are given highly visible jobs, on camera, but not in the real decision making, producer and executive level hobs, continues” (Eddings 2). As a result many of the women who do get these titles of positions are disrespected by their male colleagues because they feel that these women only got their jobs to make the company look statistically good and they do not actually qualify for the positions.

The Free Press released the Article “Out of the Picture: Minority and Female TV station Ownership in the United States.” This article shows the relationship between TV stations and minorities, and TV stations and Women. One study showed that Time Warner is one of 264 stations that had a CEO which is a minority, Richard D. Parson. The same stations in her study also identified that there are only two Stations owned by women. Even though we see that two of these companies are controlled by women, it is still dominantly controlled by mainstream Ideology. To change the patterns in our mainstream media we must look to other sources that are successful and find what allows them the opportunity to grow.

“Covering women’s Issues-changing women’s lives” is the slogan for Women’s eNews organization. This organization is an online based website whose target audience is women. The good thing about this organization is that they have all kinds of articles that might be of interest to women across race, class, political, and religious views. This is an organization that is for women and by women, therefore does not appeal to men at all. The articles range from major epidemics, political reforms regarding women, murder and rape in the U.S. as well as other countries, for example, like the women of the Congo. I believe this kind of organization will continue to grow steadily. The reason I think this kind of organization will survive is because it doesn’t have a financial burden as great as other orginaztions might have because do not print their articles. It is only web based and they also advertise a lot on their website which should help raise money to cover some of their costs. What I like about their choice of articles is that it really makes me (as a male) look at it with disinterest. However mainstream media is designed for men however women are also loyal viewers because they have been exposed to it so much. Likewise, men exposed to media designed for women should encourage and become interesting to us men as well.

http://womensenews.org/