|
Jewish World Review March 21, 2005 / 10 Adar II 5765
Debra J. Saunders
Female chauvinist digs
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Lucky me. No one can accuse me of being a token female
columnist, because I'm the only full-time columnist writing for the San Francisco Chronicle opinion page. (Editorial writer Ken Garcia writes a weekly column.)
Last month, when syndicated columnist Susan Estrich went public
with her feud with Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Editor Michael Kinsley
for not running enough columns by women and local writers, she put the
gender card back on the table.
Credit Estrich for getting the pack journalists to find a big
story in a phenomenon any rube can see. Stop the presses: Most opinion
writers are men.
It doesn't help Estrich that the Los Angeles Times is not the
worst offender. In the first nine weeks of 2005, the Times reported, 20
percent of its op-ed pieces were written by women, while just 17 percent
were at The New York Times and a mere 10 percent at The Washington Post.
Editor & Publisher, the news industry's trade magazine, looked at eight news
syndicates and found that 24 percent of their opinion writers are women.
It also doesn't help Estrich that she went ballistic on this
issue after the L.A. Times ran a piece written by a woman Charlotte Allen of the conservative Independent Women's Forum.
Estrich explained on the phone that she wants to promote both liberal and
conservative women, but "after you've been trying for years to get more
women voices heard, to find one of the few women voices saying where are the
women voices?" well, she found that "insulting."
Estrich may say she wants to promote diversity of opinion as
well as gender diversity, but I've been watching the diversity game for some
years. In journalism, diversity is a club the left uses to increase the
hiring of lefties. Feminists say they want more female
columnists when what they really want are only more liberal female columnists. Or, in their lingo, they want "authentic" women. So
when the left pushes for more diversity in a profession that is
overwhelmingly liberal already, it really is pushing for less diversity of
ideas.
Why are there fewer female opinion-page columnists than men?
It's funny: Opinion mavens who can chime in on everything from steroids
to farm policy suddenly can't quite figure it out. Kinsley told his paper
he can't explain it. New York Times Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins told
The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, "There are probably fewer women, in the
great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight
opinion stuff." (Note: If Harvard University President Larry Summers had
said what Collins said, feminist professors would be demanding one of his
body parts.)
In my career as a journalist, I've been on the receiving end of
subtle sexism. Can I prove it? No, it's subtle. My conservatism, not my
gender, has been the big issue. It is a two-edged sword, clearing the way at
times, barring the way at others. And I've had to pay a price at times for
not being conservative enough. I'm not complaining: It goes with the
territory.
When I speak in public, there are two questions people
invariably ask: One is, "Why is journalism so overwhelmingly liberal?"
Recently, a Bay Area journalism professor actually told me that
conservatives shouldn't be journalists because conservatives are less likely
to question the status quo.
I disagreed with his definition, but I responded that this
region is filled with liberals, so if you want reporters who will question
the status quo, you should push Bay Area media to hire more conservatives.
To this, he said nothing, and then left the room. There went his noble
reason for muzzling the opposition.
The other question I hear is: How do I survive at The San Francisco Chronicle? And that question has nothing to do with the fact that I am a woman. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
|