Violent Music Lyrics Increase Aggressive
Thoughts and Feelings, Study Says

Songs with violent lyrics increase aggression related thoughts and emotions and this effect is directly related to the violence in the lyrics, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The findings, appearing in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, contradict popular notions of positive catharsis or venting effects of listening to angry, violent music on violent thoughts and feelings.

Employment Levels of Women, Minorities
In Broadcasting Mixed, RTNDA Study Shows

The latest figures from the 2003 RTNDA/Ball State University Annual Survey of women and minorities show that although the number of minorities working in local radio and television news rose slightly last year, the percentage of minorities dropped. At the same time, the number of women news directors and the percentage of women in the workforce have grown in television newsrooms.

According to the survey, minorities now comprise 18.1 percent of local television news staffs, down from 20.6 percent last year. In local radio, minorities hold 6.5 percent of the jobs, down from 8 percent. Because the overall number of employees is up this year, the number of minorities in TV newsrooms actually rose, but did not keep up percentage-wise. Bob Papper of Ball State University, who conducted the study for the Radio-Television News Directors Association, reports that the number of minorities working in local broadcast newsrooms rose by about 60 jobs overall.

Women are gradually increasing their representation in TV news management, holding a record 26.5 percent of the news director jobs; women hold 39.3 percent of all television news jobs

In radio, women hold 14.4 percent of the news director slots and constitute 24 percent of the workforce.

Popular Magazines' Focus on Women's Health:
Are They Giving an Accurate Portrayal?

Content analysis was used to examine the health-related messages in nine women's magazines, seven of which are marketed mainly to white women (e.g., Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, Ms., Self, Shape, Women's Day, and Working Woman) and two are marketed primarily to black women (e.g., Ebony and Essence). All coding was completed independently by two coders who were trained by the primary researcher. After coding several magazines not used in the study to create a list of 45 specific health topics, the coders practiced coding until they agreed over 90% of the time.

Overall, little commonality was found between the health-related information contained in the analyzed magazines and the leading causes of death and loss of health-related quality of life for women.

Wooing Women: Television's Stereotypical Treatment of Female Audiences

How stereotypical is current women's programming? By closely studying the women's channels Lifetime and WE: Women's Entertainment, one researcher attempted to find out. The analysis I conducted for both channels consisted of two parts.

First, the researcher looked at how many minutes Lifetime and WE spent on various programs and themes over three weeks. Second, she examined some of the messages that each channel produced through original programming.

An examination of scheduling was conducted for both channels during two weeks in October (October 7 through October 13 and October 21 through October 27) and one week in November (November 4 through November 10) 2002. All the programs that aired during this three-week period were included, with the exception of paid programming. With the help of program descriptions, episode summaries and schedule information, every program was placed in two categories

The first category was genre. The groups in this category included drama, comedy, talk, contest and documentary/reality. These labels cover the different genres available on entertainment television. Each program was also assigned a primary theme. The options here were romance, family, physical appearance, fashion/style, victimization and other (a non-stereotypical theme). These categories represent the main stereotypical themes that television executives use to attract a female audience.

Overall, Lifetime and WE used stereotypical approaches to target their audience a majority of the time. Lifetime devoted 76.3 percent of its three weeks of programming to stereotypical "women's themes." Meanwhile, 71.5 percent of WE's programs over a three-week period focused on stereotypical issues.

WE focused heavily on romance. The final total for programs featuring romantic themes was 53.9 percent. In other words, more than half of WE's programming revolved around romance of some kind (primarily heterosexual romance). Lifetime, in comparison, spent 17.3 percent of its time on romance. Furthermore, many of WE's program descriptions began with the romantic part of a program (in other words, featured it as the most important focus), using phrases like "romance blooms," "love blossoms," etc.

Lifetime's primary focus was victimization, which served as a theme for 35.6 percent of its programs. In contrast, WE focused on victimization for only 1.6 percent of its programs. Furthermore, many of Lifetime's original dramatic movies focused solely on victimization, with titles such as A Murderous Affair, With Harmful Intent and Stalking Back.

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