Abbady, Tal. “The Modern Newsroom is Stuck Behind the Gender and Color Line.”  NPR, May 1, 2017.                      https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/05/01/492982066/the-modern-newsroom-is-stuck-behind-the-gender-and-color-line

  • This editorial published by NPR provides statistics on both race and gender in the staffing of combined paper, online, and broadcast news organizations; according to the article, in total, only 37.7% of content published by major news organizations is credited to female employees. The editorial also includes first-hand interviews with male and female workers in the news industry. While it states that the percentage of females and minorities have increased over the past few years, the demographics in the field still do not meet the ethnic and gender demography of the rest of the US, thus demonstrating a persisting disparity in representation in news. While this article is not strictly about females and not strictly about TV news, this article is valuable in the research process as it provides both primary accounts from contemporary journalists and also shows the complexity of female representation as both a standalone issue and an issue intersecting other demographic problems in media.

 

Emeksiz, Gulcin I. “THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN ON TV NEWS.” International Journal of Arts & Sciences, vol. 6, no. 2, 2013, pp. 715-730. ProQuest, http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.prx.library.gatech.edu/docview/1496695623?accountid=11107.

  • This peer-reviewed essay discusses the limited roles which females are given on TV especially in the news. While women in entertainment are given traditional familial roles and act subservient to her husbands, the women in the newsroom are often barred from discussing and covering politic-heavy news stories. This article is valuable in the evidence it provides to demonstrate the limited representation of women on TV news; it is also valuable for providing a brief overview of women on TV since the 1980s, thus better situating the modern newsroom within the historical context of TV. However, despite these benefits, this article is limited in perspective as its intention of arguing to a specific point inherently bars an unbiased interpretation of all information of the current trends in TV news. Furthermore, though the article was published fairly recently in 2013, there has since been a considerable number of events which have occurred over the course of these five years that could not be accounted for in the article.

 

Engstrom, E., & Ferri, A. J. (1998). From barriers to challenges: Career perceptions of women TV news anchors. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 75(4), 789-802. Retrieved from http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/216926995?accountid=11107

  • This peer-reviewed essay provides data and first hand accounts from 128 local anchor women in the US with information ranging from age to salary to perceived barriers in their careers. The piece provides an insight into the common struggles of anchor women to balance their professional and family lives, their roles as both wives and newscasters, and their physical appearance when on air. This essay is valuable in my research process, as it not only provides data for analysis, but also provides a more personal and intimate understanding of the challenges faced by female news anchors and can help add a more in-depth understanding to the problem. However, the limited scope of the number of women studied in this paper is also a hindrance, as it would be difficult to extend any  conclusion made on the situations of 128 local anchors to the newsrooms and outlets in the rest of the country.

 

Joyce, Amy. “Is Journalism Really a Male-dominated Field? The Numbers say yes.” The Washington Post, May 20, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2014/05/20/is-journalism-really-a-male-dominated-field-the-numbers-say-yes/?utm_term=.cc1d6c5d6a2b

  • This data and chart-driven article from the Washington Post provides the numbers of men and women in various roles in journalism, such as supervisors, producers, and writers between 1999 and 2013. Though short, the article concludes that the ratio of men and women have remained the same over the years of data collection, with approximately two thirds of the industry occupied by male workers. One value to these statistics is that they are easy to read, comprehend, and interpret, thus facilitating the understanding of the current issues with gender representation in the news. While the statistics only cover newspapers, TV news outlets also utilize a similar structure of employment; thus, it is easy to conclude that TV newsrooms will mirror their paper counterparts. However, one limitation to this article is that there is no mention as to the methodology of the data collection, thus restricting the statistics to only apply to four job titles.

 

Price, Cindy J., and Shaun S. Wulff. “Does Sex make a Difference? Job Satisfaction of Television Network News Correspondents.” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 28, no. 2, 2005, pp. 207-234. ProQuest, http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.prx.library.gatech.edu/docview/198297768?accountid=11107.

  • This peer-reviewed paper discusses the disparities not only between the raw numbers of males versus females in national TV news stations, but also between information on experience, salaries, and job satisfaction. The essay concludes that the majority of women working in national television news were significantly younger, less experienced, and less paid than the males in the same field, thus contributing to lower overall job satisfaction. This paper is valuable because it assesses the balance of gender in news and extends this topic into other issues such as salaries, work experience, and network recognition. In addition, the article also draws a connection with the origins of women in the newsroom to women in the workforce since World War II. Furthermore, the paper provides an extended discussion of the methodology of data collection how conclusions were drawn from said data. However, the paper is limited to studying ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS only.

 

Yarrow, Allison. “What I Wish People Understood about Sexims and TV News.” Vox, December 18, 2017. https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/12/18/16781140/tv-news-sexism

  • This editorial on Vox goes in depth into how one female journalist struggled in her field. The writer describes in detail numerous situations in which she was sexually harassed by male colleagues and superiors; in addition, she discusses the objectification of female news anchors, with their physical beauty more important than the content of the news reports. Most importantly, the writer presents the issue of male-dominated supervisors with few women actually making decisions in upper-level administration positions. This article is extremely valuable in how it provides an eye-opening insight into the sexism systemic in national television. Although the personal experiences do provide an insight into the issues of the industry, these same experiences also limit how the article may be applied to other individuals’ situations in the news. Thus, while it is important to recognize the very real issue of sexism in news and its ramifications on gender equality, it is also important to understand the distinction between the issues of harassment and gender representation.