‘Sunday Morning Apartheid’: Few Blacks,
Fewer Black Women on Influential Talk Shows

A study by the National Urban League Policy Institute released in August has found that Sunday morning network and cable talk shows, a significant source of information, analysis and opinion on government, politics and social issues, consistently fail to include African Americans in their lineups, either as interview guests or analysts.

The study examined programming on This Week with George Stephanopoulos (ABC), Face the Nation (CBS), Late Edition (CNN), Fox News Sunday (FOX) and Meet the Press (NBC).

Among the findings:

• Fewer than 8% of the guests on those programs have been black

• More than 69% of the appearances by black guests on these programs have been by three people: U. S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Juan Williams, a senior correspondent for National Public Radio and an analyst for Fox News Sunday

• Of the 600-plus persons who appeared on the talk shows during the 18-month period studied, only three – Condoleezza Rice, Donna Brazile and Gwen Ifill – were black females.

For more, visit the National Urban League site at www.nul.org.

Women in the White House Press Corps:
Is the President Overlooking Them?

At a White House press briefing June 1, 2005, Press Secretary Scott McClellan had an exchange with a member of the press corps urging President Bush to take more questions from women reporters. MRTW published a transcript of the exchange. The opening comments follow:

Q Scott, at the press conference yesterday, approximately 25% of the journalists were women, and the President went to 2% of the journalists. And back in April, again, it was about 25 percent, and the President took only one question from a woman reporter. Can you explain this pattern?

McCLELLAN: That might be a reflection on the media. That's not -- I don't think that's a reflection on who the President calls on.

Women’s Review of Books to Resume
Publication; Hoffman Returns As Editor

Women’s Review of Books will be re-launched in January 2006 after suspending publication in 2004 after 22 years. Founded by the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), Women’s Review will return as a bimonthly tabloid.

The re-launch was made possible by a new partnership between WCW and Old City Publishing (OCP), a small publisher of journals and books in Philadelphia. Women’s Review editorial offices will continue to be located at WCW in Wellesley, MA, while advertising, subscription fulfillment, and production will move to OCP.

‘Degrading and Sexist’: Ad For
Advertising Industry Conference Bombs

A tabloid-sized ad that ran in the July 18 issue of Advertising Age, promoting Advertising Week, an industry conference to be held Sept. 26-30, has drawn heavy criticism from the advertising community for its exploitation of a woman’s body.

The ad, a closeup shot of a woman’s breasts straining against the fabric of a tight black bustier, apparently backfired as a number of industry leaders weighed in against using such an image to call attention to an event supposed to improve the image of the ad business. Beneath the photo of the woman’ chest was the tagline: “Advertising: We All Do It.”

Studies Confirm Continuing Imbalance in
Newspaper Representation of Women, Men

Two recently published analyses of newspaper coverage of women and men, one by a team of University of Missouri and University of Oklahoma researchers and another by the Minnesota Women’s Press showed a wide gap in representation of women in articles and photos.

The first study, conducted by Missouri faculty members Maria Len-Rios, Shelly Rodgers, and Esther Thorson, and by Oklahoma’s Doyle Yoon, analyzed content in a 200,000-circulation newspaper and a 475,000-circulation paper, both in the Midwest, during a 1998-1999 period. The study was published in the March 2005 issue of the Journal of Communication.

A more recent study by the Minnesota Women’s Press evaluated the newspapers in the Twin Cities, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. To gather data for the survey, MWP looked at issues of the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press on 10 randomly selected days between February 15 and March 15. Full results of the MWP analysis are at http://www.womenspress.com/newspaper/2005/2101news.html.

Research in Depth -- Media Coverage of Female Politicians in the 108th Congress: Has Anything Changed Since the ‘Year of the Woman’?

Research in Depth -- The Perfect Host: Indexical Images of the Female Body as Persuasive Strategy in House Beautiful

Plus News Briefs, People and Book Reviews

Media Report to Women has hard copies of back issues dating to its founding in 1972. Indispensable for research!