Nine months after her debut as the anchor of “CBS Evening News”, Katie Couric is still breaking barriers–in the wrong direction. Now that she has set two records for the smallest audiences ever, some people are busy flipping out the chromosome card.
“I’m afraid that Katie’s paying a price for being the first woman,” [Linda Mason, who was the first woman producer at the "CBS Evening News"], said…
Mason told The Associated Press that her opinion came from her gut, not from any particular research. She stressed that there were other factors in Couric’s slow start.
The opinion came from her gut? I’d bet my gut is just as strong as Mason’s, and it’s telling me that maybe Katie Couric just isn’t that good.
The pity party continues:
“It saddens me,” said Deborah Potter, a former CBS News reporter who is now executive director of the News Lab think tank. “I wish I could tell you I was surprised, but I guess I’m not. The people who do the hiring still look very much like the people who did the hiring 30 years ago. They still make decisions based on what they find appealing.”
So now people have this crazy idea involving selection of news anchors based on appeal. If they are actually doing this at CBS, they must be doing a pretty poor job. And if they are not doing it, they should probably start. The surest way to get ratings is to make the program appealing, and beyond content, that depends wholly on the appeal of the anchor.
The article continues with a discussion of how unfair it is that people would criticize Couric’s makeup or wardrobe.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, strikingly parallel drama is unfolding on a much more serious scale:
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – An Islamic group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they don’t wear strict Islamic dress, frightening reporters and signaling a further shift toward extremism in the Gaza Strip.
“We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation,” the statement [from Swords of Truth] said. The group also accused the women broadcasters of being “without any … shame or morals.”
In many parts of the Muslim world, conservative policies keep women out of TV anchor positions or dictate they wear headscarves on air.
This is oppression. Sometimes, it takes a dose of garbage like this to wake us up to what really constitutes sexism.
Couric lives in a nation where she has every bit of an opportunity to do her job well. People may be critical of what she wears, but none so much as to keep her from work under threats to cut her throat from vein to vein, much less to bar her from her job altogether.
Is equality about creating a fair shot for everyone, or is it about creating a fairy land where everyone feels spectacular even if their reporting apparently isn’t? Couric has had the chance many Muslim women lack because of fear and intimidation. You can talk about underlying societal mindset, but if Couric was that great, she would trump these attitudes. Feminism and equality cannot just mean allowing women to have the same successes as men; they need to be about swallowing failure with the same self-responsibility.
To her credit, Couric herself appears willing to do this, but the women around her are whining without cause. Potter and Mason seem to think that a man is more capable than a woman of failing on his or her own merits. Moreover, the incentive to hire a woman or a minority is severely diminished when any subsequent firing or failure will instantly be followed by such complaining and crying foul.
Most of all, it might be helpful to put things in perspective to examine if we are digging too deeply to create an injustice. Ratings, after all, are not life and death by beheading.
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I agree that Katie Couric is bad at her job, but let’s not for a second act like America is a place where women have full equal opportunity to succeed in any career field they choose. That’s not the case by any means. Women do have an uphill battle in many (not ALL) careers because sexism is and always has been engrained in the very fabric of society. Sure, women don’t get stoned to death on the street for showing their ankles or anything ridiculous like that, but women do endure a whole lot of unfair treatment.
I’m not about to get into another McAdams-style argument about the whole thing, but it’s safe to say that in many industries and in many other non-employment venues, the inferior treatment of women is so normal that most people (not even women) recognize that they’re being oppressed.
And how about Catholicism oppressing women in the name of “tradition” by not allowing women to hold positions of power within the religion. If you can’t find equality within your own religion, where can you find it?
Hmm, seems to me that the point of leadership shouldn’t be about “hold[ing] positions of power” but about helping to bring people to the truth. I think that the Catholic Church provides numerous opportunities for both men and women to do this. I even think that the structure of service in Catholicism provides more opportunities than other denominations… .
Re: Katie Couric – maybe mu socialist could transition from radio to broadcast to fill the position?
Awww Brian, I’m flattered… but I don’t read the newspaper often enough, have bad enough hair, or wear enough makeup to make it as a television journalist