Sunday, December 02, 2012

How NPR Silences Women (Ann, Ava and C.I.)

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NPR is supposed to be public radio governed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which is supposed to be under a mandate to provide diversity.  Yet over and over, we have seen that NPR books men and ignores women.

We documented how only 18% of Terry Gross' 2010 guests on Fresh Air were women. Next,  we documented how over 66% of Diane Rehm's guests in were men.  We then went on to document that only 30% of Talk of the Nation's guests were women.

People are always 'puzzled' how this happens.  NPR friends insist it's an accident.

Really?

An accident can have a multitude of outcomes.

If these are accidents how come the outcomes is always the same: Men booked more often than women on NPR?

That's not accidental, that sound likes engineering.

Last week, NPR gave us two prominent examples of how they embrace and perpetuate sexism.


Friday on Tell Me More, Michel Martin hosted a segment entitled "Women Fire Back At Working Dads."  How many women did she bring on for that segment?

One. Listeners heard one woman speak.  How many men were heard in the "Women Fire Back At Working Dads" segment?  Two.

Women fire back?

Maybe off air.


Friday was the day NPR let all their women hatred flop out.

Political hack Don Gonyea should have been put out to pasture long ago.  If they're not grasping that, maybe they missed his All Things Considered report?


Supposedly, Gonyea was filing a report on Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

How did he do that?

By speaking to 'political scientist' Dante Scala (associate professor at University of New Hamsphire -- does not know Ayotte personally), Senator Lindsey Graham and New Hampshire Democratic Party's Peter Burling.

A woman was judged by three men.  Not surprisingly she was found not to be "uneasy during speeches" and she prompts "impatience and annoyance."

This is reporting?

On New Hampshire politics, Scala's not the only 'expert' identified by his university.  Professor -- not associate professor -- Ellen Fitzpatrick could have been called and all Don Gonyea would have needed to do was to check out the website.

Since she's one of only 20 women in the Senate (there are 100 Senators in the US Senate), he could have checked out the University's identified experts under "politics" under the subheading "feminism" and Gonyea would have had four women to pick from (Jennifer Borda, Marla Brettschneider, Melissa Deem and Svetlana Peshkova).

Why is a woman being judged by three men?

Did Don Gonyea feel his gender was underrepresented on NPR?

As All Things Considered producers and hosts listened to the insulting remarks from men (Scala and Burling were insulting), did it not trigger any alarms?  Did no one say, "Isn't this supposed report a little too negative.  We're saying nasty stuff about this woman and we've got nothing to back up these nasty claims with?  And doesn't it really just seem like we're allowing two men to beat up on a woman?"

No, that never entered their minds because All Things Are Never Considered at NPR.

Maybe if they could learn to police themselves, they wouldn't be wasting $1.5 million in tax dollars on another diversity initiative that's not going to mean a damn thing.  If they'd police their own, that $1.5 million could have gone to investigative reporting -- something NPR really doesn't do anymore.