Screen shot of Women's eNews' homepage.The news is no longer unbiased, factual news. It has become altered entertainment media created by those who own all the networks to entertain those just like them. Who exactly would that be? A small group of unfortunately narrow-minded men, who, through a series of media consolidations, are slowly taking hold of the news media empire and turning it into a monopoly. Where do women stand in this? They're there to feed the eyes of male viewers eager to get their daily dose of sexist and biased "news".
According to the National Organization for Women, females in the United States own a mere six percent of the nation's commercial broadcast television stations and own six percent of full-power broadcast radio stations. With women having such a small commanding presence in the major media outlets, the nation's public viewers and listeners aren't really hearing real news, rather, they are hearing what a few dictatorial men in power want the majority to hear, which is favorable to them. Meanwhile, women are left with little to inform them about real world issues that affect them either personally or as a collective whole.
As Carol Jenkins mentions in "Media Ownership: Impact on Minority Ownership and Localism", because of media consolidations in which men are holding the reins, "no matter how high a woman rises, ever more levels of power are erected above her." Despite the fact that major media networks are hiring women, generally to comply to the FCC's regulations, they are generally placed in minor positions that play no role in the media presented to the audience or the decision making, or they are given roles that are becoming less and less prominent in the media world. As Marlene Sanders states in Barbara Murray Eddings' "Women in Broadcasting (U.S.)", "Women are hired in few numbers in those jobs and so there are too few qualified for middle management and above" (3). Those given roles as anchors are often dressed provocatively and given very sexist fluff pieces while the men are given the hard pieces of news to cover. How can women break through a barrier of male chauvinism that has taken hold of all mainstream media?
The answer is to create more independent news media sources. Through magazine publications, blogs, and online newspapers run by women for women, females are slowly, but surely, breaking through the wall that male owned mainstream media outlets have constructed to keep them from rising up. Online publications like Women for Women report on news about issues women around the world face as well as the legislation and conditions affecting women here in the United States. One online news source constructed for women by women that covers news in a similar fashion to the famous Huffington Post is Women's eNews. The online publication covers news as any other major mainstream news media outlet would with categories such as world news, arts, politics, health and science etc. The catch is all of the news stories under such categories are about women or directly related to the female situation either in this nation or others around the world. In this publication, women are the central focus. Women's rights stories flood the front page of the website. The struggles that women are facing in places where equal rights are a foreign concept are also prominent stories. The publication also contains many profile pieces about women activists who are working on changing the condition of women both in media and in the law. Quite uniquely, the news site also contains a category of news stories targeted for lesbians and transgender women, also focusing on issues and legislation that directly affects them.
Women's eNews is, as their site explains, "a prize-winning nonprofit daily Internet-based news service supported by its readers, events, foundations and resale of its content. It is a definitive source of substantive news--unavailable anywhere else--covering issues of particular concern to women and their allies." The founder and editor in chief of the entire site is a female, Rita Henley Jensen. The site was launched in 2000 and claims to provide women and those supportive of women any news that they should be aware of. The site's pieces are generally written by freelance journalists. Originally sprouting from "a 1996 roundtable discussion conceived and funded by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation", as they state on their site, Women's eNews became completely independent in January of 2002.
Photo shot of Rita Henley Jensen.
The fact that there are websites that support women's news is encouraging and an improvement. But it also calls into question if it should be kept on the margins. If women's news is "separate" from the main news stations, there is room for it not to be taken seriously or that it would continue to be considered women's news only. Bringing the news from these websites to the main news stations would further break down the wall of patriarchy.
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