My last post, on women’s progress in newsrooms (far below the proportion of women in journalism programs, thinnest at the top, especially at newspapers), left me unsatisfied. I wanted to say so much more. I wanted to talk about the sometimes outrageous treatment of women journalists and women news sources by some male journalists and the lack of outrage this treatment receives. (Compare this with the outrage over expressions of racial stereotyping. Both are wrong, of course. But when was the last time society called out Chris Matthews for his piggishness? Check out the video linked above for some primo examples of lascivious oink.) I wanted to learn more about, and discuss, organizations that push for more accurate and comprehensive portrayals of women in news stories. And I wanted to continue the conversation about how journalism professors can help prepare students for the obstacles they, or people they care about, may face in the industry.

The Women’s Media Center video linked above and here does a fine job of illustrating the lingering obsession with looks and charm among male talking heads (seemingly everywhere) and female talking heads (largely on Fox, at least as portrayed in the video). Accomplished women, young and old, sources and journalists alike, are reduced to a tone of voice, a bit of cleavage, a hairstyle. It’s infuriating. What to do? Write letters, send emails or let the Women’s Media Center do the job for you by filling out this form when you see, hear or read reductive portrayals of women that disregard their full humanity – like this absurdity from New York City’s WCBS-TV, which I found on the media center’s terrific website.

Here are some of the other organizations that deal with sexism in the media, the advancement of women in the news industry, coverage of women overall and related issues:

• Women’s E-News is an online news service that features original national and international reporting on women and on issues of particular concern to women.

• WhoMakesTheNews.org is a branch of the World Association of Churches, a London-based group that defines its mission as working “to implement communication programmes and to support projects that lead to the empowerment of people, especially the dispossessed and marginalised, indigenous peoples, refugees, migrants, women, children and people with disabilities.” Beginning in 1995, through its Global Media Monitoring Project, Who Makes The News? has published a report every five years examining how the world’s media portray women. The 2010 report found that “only 24 percent of the people heard, read about or seen in the news are female, an increase of 7 percentage points from the first survey 15 years earlier.” Among the report’s fascinating highlights:

As persons interviewed or heard in the news, women remain lodged in the ‘ordinary’ people categories, in contrast to men who continue to predominate in the ‘expert’ categories.
Eighteen percent of female news subjects are portrayed as victims in comparison to 8 percent of male subjects. In contrast, women are now twice as likely to be portrayed as survivors than men.
Stories by female reporters contain more female news subjects than stories by male reporters.
Stories by female reporters are visibly more likely to challenge stereotypes than those filed by male reporters and are also less likely to reinforce stereotypes than those reported by men.

• The International Women’s Media Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., is a 4,000-strong network that works to strengthen women’s presence in the news media. It offers awards and fellowships, supports specialized reporting projects on HIV/AIDS and on women in Africa, and links to several blogs.

• Brooklyn-based Women in Media and News offers analysis, training and advocacy to promote the advancement of women journalists and “to increase women’s presence in the public debate.”

• Other groups include The Association for Women in Communications, the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press and the Alliance for Women in Media.

One thing that spurred my return to the topic of women in journalism was something a male colleague said. This is the same colleague who prompted my last post, on talking to our students about a (slightly hyped) study on the continued slow progress of women in newsrooms. He asked: “What would be the discussion? We should tell women jstudents that they face ‘a crisis’?”

I respect this man in many ways, yet I disagree with him more than I do with any of my other colleagues. After he read my last post, he argued against what he calls “identity politics” in journalism.

“I think special-interest groups in journalism raise vexing questions,” he wrote to me in an email. “As reporters, I think we should approach this identity business with great caution.  Objectivity is a tough enough trick to pull off as it is.”

There’s much to chew on in that comment, but this post is long enough. What are your thoughts, readers?

I leave you with some final goodies. This link to Mother Jones, on a study of women and bylines (MJ picked up on this study, actually), makes my blood boil. This thoughtful piece from Tom Watson at Forbes.com on the social-network response to “the spiteful media enterprise that is Rush Limbaugh” led me to the best line I’ve ever read on rape and the charge that “she asked for it”:

This hypothesis is rooted in the inaccurate stereotype that rape is an uncontrollable frenzy of lust that women provoke in men. That’s like imagining all theft as an uncontrolled frenzy of consumerism. Nobody doubts that thieves want what they steal, but we don’t assume that the sheer desirability of an unguarded car stereo pushes them over the edge. (emphasis added)