No subject

have branded feminism “a hair-raising emotional orgy
of hatred” led by “freaks… incapable of coming to
terms with their own natures as females” (Esquire,
1971), a “passing fad” (New York Times, 1972), and a
“lost cause” (Vogue, 1983), a “failure” (Newsweek,
1990) and a “dead” movement overrun by “a whole lot of
stylish fluff ” (Time, 1998). 

By the late 1990s news outlets from NBC to PBS
portrayed feminists as waging unjust “sex wars” and
heralding a “gender Armageddon.” And by the turn of
the millennium Men’s Health magazine reported that
“militant,” “hostile” young feminists are oppressing
men on college campuses by insisting on strong sexual
assault policies and women’s studies programs. 

Today, similar sentiments span outlets from the
liberal Atlantic Monthly to the conservative Fox News
Network. This antifeminist hostility can be felt in
coverage of topics editors narrowly define as “women’s
issues” (e.g., rape, abortion, child care), where
stereotypes are invoked and perpetuated. 

Take the ways in which sexual violence is
sensationalized and used to scare women into sexual
and social conformity. Victim-blaming is still
prevalent; “What responsibility, if any, did the women
have for what happened…?” asked Dateline NBC after
dozens of women were sexually assaulted in Central
Park in June 2000. 

Then there are the endless, frightening headlines
about attempted rapists on the loose. Since sexual
predators don’t just get bored mid-attack, behind
every story about an attempted rape is the reality
that some woman did something to get away. So, why no
triumphant headlines about women fighting back,
fending off their assailants? 

A similar framing problem persists in coverage of
abortion, media’s favorite hot-button “women’s issue.”
Consider how loath media have been to label shootings,
fire bombings, death threats and other
politically-motivated violence against abortion
providers as “terrorism.” 

Only after Sept. 11, when newscasters received letters
claiming to be laced with anthrax, did mainstream
media finally “discover” the story — reported over the
past decade in the women’s and alternative press —
that anti-abortion terrorists have subjected women’s
health advocates and clinics to a regular campaign of
anthrax threats and violent — even fatal — crime for
many frightening years (with more than 500 such
letters arriving pre-9/11). 

When issues fall outside journalists’ pink ghetto yet
implicitly affect women’s survival (e.g., global
trade, affairs of state, war), gender is rarely used
as a lens for analysis. 

For example, poll data following Sept. 11 showed women
to be more moderate than men in their views about war.
Yet corporate media presented a misleading picture of
a flag-waving populace united behind the Bush push for
military retaliation. Because women were nearly
invisible as sources, experts and pundits in news
debates, this notion went virtually unchallenged —
helping the administration drum up support for an
unending “war on terror.” 

Similarly, though women and children are 90 percent of
the world’s sweatshop workers, editors almost never
frame international economics as a “women’s issue.”
Instead, global trade stories are told from the
perspective of transnational corporations, not the
female workers who suffer labor and human rights
abuses daily in overseas and domestic sweatshops. This
pro-business bias protects the financial interests of
media advertisers, investors and parent companies,
while denying the public information that might make
us question our personal consumer decisions or
collectively challenge corporate exploitation. 

If it is clear that women have a serious stake in
media coverage, it is equally important to recognize
that biased content is the end result of a much larger
institutional problem — a media system structured in
favor of advertisers and owners rather than citizens
seeking information and entertainment; a system
motivated by profit, not the public interest. 

We are at a crucial moment for the media industry. The
deregulatory structure favored by big media and its
favorite lap-dog, Federal Communications Commission
Chair Michael Powell, would pave the way for the
tightest convergence of media power we have ever seen
in this country, threatening to subvert women’s and
public interest voices more thoroughly than ever. 

We have two choices: we can sit back and wait until
all our news is filtered through the lens of
MSNBC-NNBCBSABCFOXAOLWB, Inc. — or we can work for
progressive feminist media reform. 

Jennifer L. Pozner is founder of Women In Media & News
(WIMN), a women’s media monitoring, training and
outreach organization. This piece is adapted from “The
‘Big Lie’: False Feminist Death Syndrome, Profit, and
the Media,” in the forthcoming Catching A Wave:
Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century.


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