Overshadow

As the front pages of all major news outlets indicate, Japan and the Pacific were recently rocked by a mind-numbing display of Mother Nature's wrath in the form of an enormous earthquake and the ensuing tsunami. It's horrible to think of the suffering that's currently being experienced by thousands upon thousands of people as a result of this disaster. This story deserves immense coverage. However, it's interesting to me that the top story of the past few weeks is suddenly difficult to find on the New York Times front page. The uprising in Libya has certainly not ended, but its coverage has steeply declined in favor of coverage of the earthquake and tsunami.

I don't mean to sound like I don't think the tsunami is tragic or important. Of course, I know it is. I am just as horrified as anyone else by the eerie and devastating footage that's all over the internet. It's just interesting to me that the general population does not seem to be capable of comprehending two major news stories at once, or at least that's how the media are making it seem. It doesn't seem fair to the people fighting, protesting, dying in Libya that they should lose the attention of the world in favor of another disaster. I wish the media could continue to cover the Middle East crisis while simultaneously giving the recent weather terror the coverage it also deserves.

News outlets are showing us that the general public isn't capable of empathizing with two groups of people at once, and that makes me embarrassed. There isn't a specific quota of suffering that cannot be exceeded in the world. Just because a new group of people is suffering doesn't mean the Libyans aren't anymore. I know that this trend in coverage won't change any time soon, but I think we should be mindful that we don't just forget the plight of one group of people once another major story comes up.

Women in Journalism

Journalism seems as though it would be a relatively gender-neutral profession. It doesn't seem to have a gender-specific prototype like other jobs do. Nonetheless, a post by Editors Weblog indicates that 3/4 of U.K. news journalists are men, and only 1/3 of business/political journalists are women. The number of women in high editor positions is also low. And in the U.S., women make up 37% of traditional print journalists. It's hard to think of a source of this bias in the industry. While long ago female writers were not respected, that was at a time when women were discriminated from all sorts of industries. In today's society, though gender bias has not been completely abandoned, it's much less of an issue. Journalism doesn't seem to be a profession that would have a gender attached to it the way surgeons may be assumed to be male or receptionists or secretaries may be assumed to be female. Why would there be such a small proportion of women in the journalism industry? It doesn't seem like there is a shortage of women interested in journalism. Are companies being discriminatory in their hiring practices? For the sake of my future career, I sure hope not!

Meanwhile, Tina Brown, the new and first ever female editor of Newsweek, is launching a premiere issue that is geared heavily toward female readers. Hillary Clinton is featured on the cover for a story about Clinton's push to give women a more prominent stance in the world order. There are also two other stories about the power of women. It's interesting to me that the first ever female editor of such a prominent news magazine would release such a blatantly feminist-- or at least female-oriented-- issue for her very first endeavor. Of course, I've never been a pioneer in the journalism industry like Brown has, but I think if I were in her position, I would want to prove to the world that women can provide quality, unbiased news just as well as men can. Brown says she hopes to attract more female readers, but I think there are more subtle ways to accomplish that than by saturating the news magazine with an above average proportion of female-oriented content. I think Brown should have spread out the stories about women into upcoming issues because none of them seems to be particularly urgent.

It's interesting to see if women will hold more prominent roles in the journalism industry as time goes on. There's lots of room for innovation and new ideas in the industry; hopefully women will take advantage of new opportunities in order to make the numbers of men and women slightly more even. And, hopefully women will be wise with their new positions.