Feminism Theory

The feminist movement has restructured the way faminly life is today. We no longer see the females playing the roles of nurturers and homemakers (as we discussed in class). It is because of feminism, that this push for equality among genders is now the only acceptable way of living. However, there is still controversy over the feminist theory. Even though women are in the workforce and hold very important positions in our society, feminists still believe there is discrimination. In one article, a study showed that more than half of sunday morning news shows did not include women, whether they be the host or guest. Refer to this article: http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/media/shesource.html
Do you think the statistics listed in this article are surprising?
After I read this article, I thought that the numbers were very surprising. I watch the news in the morning but never really noticed if women are equally on the shows as men. Perhaps this is because the study was done between 2004 and 2005. It stated that the news we recieve currently comes from male voices and perspectives, yet I tend to question this. Kelly Ripa? Nancy Grace? The ladies on the view? Aren't these all women who relay the current news messages to us too? This article makes you question whether or not males do dominate media or is it just feminist groups surveying only "SUNDAY NEWS" and not looking elsewhere? So now we see one article examining the media for not putting women more in the spot light. YET, today we have a female presidential candidate running. Hilary Clinton, the first female candidate to run for president, has a huge number of supporters (and may even win this race according to some sources). Whether this happens or not, Clinton, a female politician, is in the spotlight just as much as the other male candidates.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601626.html
This article talks about how women now may be voting for the right reasons with a female candidate running. It found that women vote on impulse or because of the information they get from their husbands/fathers. They rarely read political magazines for information. As stated, "Two million more men than women read either Time or Newsweek; more men listen to radio news and talk radio, read the paper and get news online. Only broadcast television news plays to more women than men, and a lot of that is TV news magazines and morning shows. Not only do fewer women read the newspaper, but almost half the women surveyed said they "sometimes do not follow international news because of excessive coverage of wars and violence."
Hilary Clinton is attracting more women and they seem to be interested in learning about her/politics. As stated in the article, "They saw her as "smart" and determined not to be just another first lady." Do you think this is a political decision or personal decision for women that are more interested in voting now?
This article raises many questions dealing with women and politics. What do you think this means?

Feminism in real world situations and in media

Feminism is a collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies largely motivated by or concerned with the liberation of women from subordination to men. (Wikipedia) Feminist from the past and today strive everyday for equal rights for women. In my opinion I think we have come a long way throughout the years… women can vote, women can play sports in college without a problem because of title nine… most of things that we discussed in class. We actually encounter “feminism” every single day… in the way women are portrayed in the media, in our social environments when people say that girls can’t do something better than a guy, sports, and driving. What I mean by driving is the stereotype that all female drivers are horrible drivers; men are better drivers. Think about a time when you were compared to males. I remember when I was younger, I used to ride dirt bikes and quads… and the other kids in the neighborhood, especially the boy, would tell me I couldn’t do a trick that they apparently could do. Another example, I know everyone has heard the statement “you throw like a boy!” Why is it that people compare good sporting skills like throwing a baseball really hard to something a boy can do. Just that statement shows how we stereotype the male species to be the more dominant one. If you take a brief look at the article “You Throw Like A Boy” by Victor Lana, you can understand that statement “you throw like a boy” more thoroughly. Some Thoughts on Sexism” Another example, why is that when men have many sexual relations with various amounts of women he is considered “the man!” Yet if a female has many sexual relations with many different men she is assumed to be a “slut” or “loose.” And if women dress provocatively they are considered to be dressed “whoreish.” If you look at the other article from Yahoo News about the lawsuit being brought by Gene Simmons’, from the rock band Kiss, ex-girlfriend claiming he defamed her name by explicitly showing her picture and referring to her as "wild" and "unchaste." In the article he also seems to view women as just sexual objects. Those are some things that we encounter everyday in our daily lives. In the media we can see these female portrayals, in music videos when women are half naked dancing around the men rapping for example or even on the cover of CDs. The female artist if you look at different covers, they are always placed very sexually and enticing. The article, “Dirrty Discourse: The politics of Gender Representation in Popular Music” by Lesley Robinson talks about Christina Aguilera’s “Dirty” Video. It is stated in the article, that “Within the discourse of Sheppard’s theory, a reading of Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty” video appears simple to naturalize the sexual objectification of women and subordinate femaleness to the dominance of the male gaze.” Going back to the statement I made before about how women are considered to be “sluts” if they have many sexual relations or dress in a certain manner, the article points out that there is a new “fearless feminism”, where women “embrace a feminism focused on individuality, independence and women’s ‘choice’ to engage in heterosexually attractive bodily displays.” It is a mix of sexy, strong, saucy, and strident women. If we want to dress like that we should be able to without being subjected to criticism. Do you think that women who dress like this or sleep with many people should be immediately called a “slut”, even though men can do it and it is seen as no big deal?
http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/33646908
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/03/08/224944.php

Feminism on College Campuses

A press release from FeministsForLife.org discusses an undercover investigation on the health center done by UCLA's campus newspaper The Advocate. The investigation found that pregnant students were encouraged by staff to get abortions because of the difficulties of being pregnant and raising a child while in college. The health center staff noted the limited amount of resources available on campus to assist pregnant students.

The investigation also found that the health center "had two medical providers of abortion on campus ready to assist, Health Services had no support for a woman who wanted to continue her pregnancy." In response students formed a pro-life group named Live Action and Feminists For Life (FFL) offered assitance upon hearing about the investigation.

FFL has opened similar programs on other college campuses. These programs offer housing, child care, insurance, communication and couseling to pregnant and parenting students.

The release can be found here: http://www.feministsforlife.org/news/PRcopUCLAprNewsire1-22-07.htm

Because of mass media coverage, it is often thought that feminist ideology for unplanned pregnancy is more focused on giving women support to terminate the pregnancy rather than to go through with it. Most stories I have seen about feminist groups seem to portray them as very liberal and quick to support abortion. Despite the fact that this program is offered at several college campuses, this is the first I have heard of it. Have you had the same experiences with feminist news coverage? What are your thoughts on FFL supporting pregnant students? Have you heard about this? If yes, how was the news story framed? If no, why do think this is so?

Feminism on College Campuses

A press release from FeministsForLife.org discusses an undercover investigation on the health center done by UCLA's campus newspaper The Advocate. The investigation found that pregnant students were encouraged by staff to get abortions because of the difficulties of being pregnant and raising a child while in college. The health center staff noted the limited amount of resources available on campus to assist pregnant students.

The investigation also found that the health center "had two medical providers of abortion on campus ready to assist, Health Services had no support for a woman who wanted to continue her pregnancy." In response students formed a pro-life group named Live Action and Feminists For Life (FFL) offered assitance upon hearing about the investigation.

FFL has opened similar programs on other college campuses. These programs offer housing, child care, insurance, communication and couseling to pregnant and parenting students.

The release can be found here: http://www.feministsforlife.org/news/PRcopUCLAprNewsire1-22-07.htm

Because of mass media coverage, it is often thought that feminist ideology for unplanned pregnancy is more focused on giving women support to terminate the pregnancy rather than to go through with it. Most stories I have seen about feminist groups seem to portray them as very liberal and quick to support abortion. Despite the fact that this program is offered at several college campuses, this is the first I have heard of it. Have you had the same experiences with feminist news coverage? What are your thoughts on FFL supporting pregnant students? Have you heard about this? If yes, how was the news story framed? If no, why do think this is so?

Ideology & Fox News Legitimacy- A debate over a debate

Recently, some democratic candidates have refused to appear on a presidential debate co-sponsored by Fox News. Here's some background...

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- A Nevada Democratic presidential debate that was to have been co-hosted by Fox News Network was canceled by organizers, in part because of a joke by Fox Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes about presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama.
You can read the whole article here...
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/10/debate.canceled/index.html

The argument Democrats have made is two fold. The "concrete" reason some have boycotted the debate was Ailes's joke about Barack Obama, purposely confusing him with Osama Bin Laden.

The second issue Democrats (both candidates and constituents) have with a Fox hosted presidential debate is whether or not Fox, because of its blatant Republican bias, is a legitimate news source. While the Fox News does reach millions of viewers, should Democrats legitimize the cable news channel despite its incessant Republican propaganda?

Fox news brought Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich on the "The Big Story with John Gibson" to discuss the matter. (Ironically, they brought a democratic candidate on the show to discuss having a presidential debate but then didn't ask him about his stand on any issues). Kucinich said that Democrats should debate on Fox News because so many people watch the channel. His qualification for legitimacy seems to be the number of people who watch Fox and not their reporting procedures.

Here's a quote from Kucinich: But what I am going to say is that FOX is a legitimate news agency that has the ability to reach out to millions of Americans, so why not get that message out? That is what I want to do, and all Democrats should be capable of doing it.

Read the transcript here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258803,00.html

According to McQuail, all news/media sources are going to hold some ideological bias- intended or not- because the reporting of news is a selective process. While Fox is repeatedly made the scapegoat of the news media for its obvious bias, some would argue that CNN has a liberal bias- and Republicans wouldn't be likely to boycott a debate on that network. So if all news media contains some inherent bias, what means more in terms of legitimacy- readership or journalistic practices?

As media professials and critics of the media, I imagine most of us would be inclined to say journalistic practices. However, Kucinich does make a few good point on why it might be beneficial for Democrats to debate on Fox. You can read them for yourself in the article but I think the following are especially noteworthy:
1.Anyone who wants to be president of the United States should have the capacity to speak to people of any particular ideology.
2.FOX is a good litmus test because if you can stand the scrutiny of FOX, with what you stand for, and all of the FOX News agencies that gather the information, their anchors can ask you questions, well that is part of what the test is of leadership.

Even though I agree with Kucinich on some of his points- that even though Fox has a conservative slant, the debate should be opened up to both parties despite ideology- it's Fox's semiology that strips them of their legitimacy in my opinion.

Notice some of the language Gibson uses to describe the democratic party:
-"Radical liberals wanted a pullout and they got it"
-"by radical leftist groups "
-"Dennis Kucinich is slamming his own party for boycotting the upcoming fair and balanced debate on the No. 1 cable news network." Umm...Kucinich doesn't slam his party, and I love that the debate is self proclaimed as fair and balanced. In one sentence Gibson tries to strip the Dems of credibility and reassign it to Fox.

What do you think? Is Fox a legitimate news source? Should democratic candidates be willing to debate there?

-Kim Pedersen

Madonna and the Media

http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article267.html

The article I found for this weeks topic discusses what Madonna, the pop icon, stands for and what she portrays to the public. It goes into detail about her name, her clothing, and her songs and what message they send out to consumers. I feel that a lot of pop icons "stand" for something or "symbolize" what "regular" people what to be. The whole pop world has many different aspects that have different meanings and messages that they are sending to the public.
What do you think? Does Madonna symbolize something? And what about the rest of media...does it send out certain messages that we consume daily and yet it really symbolizes something else? We consume daily media, yet are we really consuming messages with hidden symbols?

'Normal' People Advertisments

http://www.adweek.com/aw/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003550048

This is a link to an article I found on a Dove ad that was shown during the Academy Awards this year.
In sticking with advertising, I thought this article was a good way to talk about the readings we had to do for this week.

This article is a critique of the new Dove commercial and campaign. They, like many other companies this year have been opening up the advertising bracket to include normal people like you and me.

Doritos did it during the Super bowl as well as a car company. The companies are realizing that the public has not been happy with the commercials lately, so they thought they would leave it up to the public to create there own.

The ad was a big hit, as many of these ads are simply for the reason that generally ‘normal’ people create what normal people want. By giving one of us free reigns to create a national commercial, it most likely is going to be something much simpler than a team of marketing professionals would be able to come up with because we know what we want.

In McQuails reader this week, Chapter 27 titled “Meaning and Ideology” Judith Williamson says that “For even the ‘obvious’ function of advertising- ‘to sell things to us’- involves a meaning process. Advertisements must take into account not only the inherent qualities and attributes of the products they are trying to sell, but also the way in which they can make those properties mean something to us.”

So, the overall point of advertisements is for them to mean something to us. What better way to ensure they mean something to us, than to have ‘us’ create them?

I think that in the next few years or so you are going to see a lot more companies coming up with this idea of letting the ‘normal’ people create our own ads.

AP ban on Paris Hilton

In chapter 13 McQhail talks about the publics’ interest and states that “the rubric of public interest seems to belong to that genre of euphemisms that includes the public welfare, the common good, and the national interest. In part, the problem with the concept is its idealistic and pristine nature as demonstrated in Walter Lippmann’s comment that ‘the public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently,” (pg. 163). It is the job of media professionals to achieve this public interest which can cause conflict if the audience is not satisfied with what is being provided. Because of this conflict many argue that the job of journalists should not be considered a profession. Is this because the journalism standards have changed? There is the fact that there are other sources for audiences to use which will increase competition.
Recently the Associated Press chose not to mention the famous Paris Hilton in any of their stories for over a week and wanted to find out if this would be noticed or if it would make no effect on the interest of the audience. What is your opinion on whether the Associated Press (Or any Media Profession) conducts research in a way that is substantial to distribute a ‘story’? Do you feel Paris Hilton’s non-coverage was ‘newsworthy’ and do you feel it is the job of the Associated Press to conduct a non-coverage research on a woman who is famous for being famous? Is this of interest to us?
As opposed to this example of news provided by the Associated Press, there is an article about Hilary Clinton. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/02/america/NA-GEN-US-Clinton-Iran.php As you can see this story is presented with direct quotes and proves to show good research techniques. Why isn’t news such as this covered as widely as stories about Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole that are not going to affect our country?>
An economist Keith Brown found that media ownerships were providing “inconvenient facts,” but again we can come back to question, is this allowed as the freedom of the press? Or are these ‘Media Professionals’ meant to provide us with harder information that would be beneficial?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/02/ignoring.parishilton.ap/index.html
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/56008.html

Jen Copela

Media Professionals

Chapter 11 talks about all types of media professionals and the different struggles and sterotypes they face. I find it very interesting that that journalism is often questioned as a profession as stated on page 288. It is probably the only profession where it makes the journalist act in an irresponsible way in order to get the best story (Brodasson in McQuail, 288). However the most important section for me was when McQuail writes about online journalism. Nowadays almost all of our news as on the internet and at the tip of our fingers. This makes the online journalist more imporatant but at the same time they are usually held less accountable because of the freedom with the internet. Granted there are many high-profile news agencies that run online publications and hold their journalists to standards. But in this day of blogging and "rogue-reporting", it is impossible for the average person who posts something or "breaks a story" to be held accountable.
The following articles are an example of how the same story can be covered in slightly different ways. As Cohen writes in McQuail "an interesting feature of the critique of online journalism is the argument that it is on the whole even more 'market driven' and commerical than established newspaper journalism" (Cohen in McQuail 290). http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/03/04/us_forces_begin_sweep_of_sadr_city/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17450016/

Notice the difference between these two articles on the U.S. forces into Sadr City in Iraq. The story on MSNBC.com from the Associated Press mentions unrelated death in the second paragraph while the story from the Boston Globe (also from the AP) doesn't mention a U.S. death until many paragraphs down. Also, the Boston Globe story features a writer's name and provides accountablity while the other story just says AP.

Media Professionals

Chapter 11 focuses on media organizations and media professionalism. In this chapter, we learn about media organization’s main goals, their relations with society and the role media professionals in the working world. According McQuail, media professionalism is different from other occupations because of the unique way of the media world. A study of news work, done by Tuchman states that “professionalism has largely come to be defined according to the needs of the news organization itself.” The objectivity of the news is considered the main goal of almost all journalists.

There are some questions to whether or not journalism could be considered a profession due to the idea that “they behave very selectively with those they have to deal with and professionals should treat everyone equally.” Also, journalists deny any moral responsibility for inadvertent negative consequences of their reports. But isn’t it true that this reputation for journalists is also what makes them successful?

The text also states that even established media organizations may act in irresponsible ways including a “increased tolerance for unethical practices.” This can be seen in the scandal involving CNBC’s popular anchor Maria Bartiromo and Citigroup’s chief executive Todd Thomson. It is stated that Thomson and Bartiromo both attended business conferences in Asia. Thomson left his fellow coworkers to take commercial flights while he and the “Money Honey” took at $50,000 ride on Citigroup’s corporate jet. While the cost of the flight was extremely high and landed Thomson in hot water with the company’s CEO, it was the fact that the two traveled alone which questioned the journalistic ethics of Bartiromo.
CNBC claims that Bartiromo received permission to fly with Thomson and even paid Citigroup the commercial rates of flying a transpacific flight, which ranges from $3,000 to $4,000. CNBC also stated that the flight was “work related.”
Read more about this story… here is the link. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16840015/

Now a question to you all, it is obvious that Bartiromo acted in a unethical way throwing her professionalism out the window, however, do you feel that CNBC also acted unethical by allowing her to receive gifts from a source? In a situation like this, is the professionalism of the organization is just as important as the journalist who work for them?

-Katie Cocozza