At the beginning of each year, most of us consider changes we would like to make in our personal lives. I decided to bypass the usual weight and fitness resolutions and focus on institutions I’d like to change. The list is long, but I have prioritized mass-market advertisements because they are pervasive and have the power to shape viewers’ attitudes toward much more than the products they are promoting.

I hope after reading this piece, you will join me in a campaign to improve advertisers’ practices.

My particular concern relates to advertisements that objectify women. If a woman is objectified, she is made less than human. Once she is less than human, violence towards her becomes more acceptable.

The hallmarks of objectification include: (1) interchangeability; (2) reduction to appearance; (3) being an instrument for someone else’s purpose; (4) inertness or passivity; and (5) capacity to being violated or lacking bodily integrity.

Many current advertisements meet most, if not all, of these criteria. Consider this promotion:

Because we do not see the woman’s face, she is fully interchangeable with another well-portioned model. She has been reduced to her appearance with her body used as a display platform, an instrument. Her pose is a passive and vulnerable one.

The advertisements below take objectification further by dismembering the models in addition to containing the other characteristics described above.

A woman who is objectified becomes something and ceases to be someone. She has no autonomy, much less inherent value. She is a thing to be used, abused, and discarded as a man chooses.

If that seems extreme, consider advertisements that portray violence against women or the death of women, showing just their corpses.

Advertisements depicting violence against women are harmful for several reasons. One is that they may be seen as mocking the serious consequences of violence. Another is the possibility that the scenes will inspire a copycat to re-enact them. Most damaging is their message that violence against women is acceptable.

Andrea Dworkin stated that “pornography functions to perpetuate male supremacy and crimes of violence because it conditions, trains, educates, and inspires men to despise women, to use women, to hurt women.” I believe advertisements depicting violence against women have the same effects.

This conclusion is supported by recent research on mirror neurons, those switches in our brains that operate virtually outside our consciousness to cause us to mimic others’ behaviors that we witness. (Yawning is an example.) Clever marketers play on mirror neurons to incent us to engage in the behavior they desire. One would have to study the psychology of the ad executives who envision portrayals of violence against women to know if they intend to engage mirror neurons to that end. But regardless of their motive, that may be the effect of their hateful creations.

Using the power of our pocketbooks and social media, we have the ability to discourage the publication of advertisements that objectify women or depict violence against women. Don’t buy products that are promoted in these ads. Don’t buy magazines that publish them.

Use Twitter to register your revulsion. Post a photo or a description of the ad on Twitter with the hashtag #NotBuyingIt and include the actual Twitter handle of the seller of the product or the name of the publication.

Feel the power of Margaret Mead’s words: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Let’s do it!

This piece, Killer Advertising, was first published at Role/Reboot and has been republished with permission.

Kate McGuinness is a lawyer who spent 17 years at Biglaw before becoming the general counsel of a Fortune 500 corporation. After leaving that position, she studied creative writing and is the author of a legal suspense novel Terminal Ambition, which will be published early in 2012. She is an advocate for women and tweets as @womnsrightswrter.

*** ***

Robert Greenblatt
Chairman, NBC Entertainment
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Re: Women's Media Center says “YOU CANT LIE TO WOMEN!”

Dear Mr. Greenblatt,

“That NBC’s Playboy Club TV series set a record for fast failure proves that you can’t lie to women about what was good for us in the past and what wasn’t. AMC’s Mad Men tries to tell the truth, but NBC’s Playboy Club was history according to Hefner.” - Gloria Steinem, co-founder of the Women's Media Center.

As the Women’s Media Center and Gloria Steinem predicted, Playboy Club was canceled because today’s audiences want to be told the truth: “I expect that ‘Playboy Club’ will be a net minus… It’s just not telling the truth about the era.”

Executive Producer Chad Hodge told TV reporters that the program was "all about empowering these women to be whatever they want to be.” Lead actress Amber Heard said “It's about women who were being independent…It was their chance to live their own life, to do whatever they wanted on their own terms."

While only three episodes aired, the show’s relentless sloganeering of the benefits of Playboy for women was condescending. Characters repeatedly delivered carefully crafted talking points like “the Playboy Club empowers women” and “a Playboy Bunny is focused on what she wants, not what men want.” And then there was the appalling depiction of Gloria Steinem’s real life under-cover expose, “I was a Playboy Bunny”, re-imagined to make the “fictional reporter” into a conniving schemer who printed lies and failed to see the Playboy Club’s benefit for women. To suggest that the exploitation of women that actually occurred at the real Playboy Clubs was in any way related to women’s empowerment is not factual and, indeed, insulting.

Women represent 51% of the population and 86% of purchasing power. If you want them in the NBC audience, you can’t rewrite history.

Today’s audiences, male and female, want complex, truthful characters that have depth, sophistication and historical accuracy. The fact that NBC’s Playboy Club did not accurately portray the plight of women and minorities greatly contributed to its downfall. Who did you think was watching on Monday night opposite Monday Night Football?

The Women's Media Center is a network of journalists and media experts. We have valuable resources that are available to you and your executives to help you better understand contemporary television audiences. In the future, we hope you will call on us, and our network of experts for assistance when making programming decisions.

Sincerely,

Julie Burton
President, Women’s Media Center

Julie Burton, president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center said today:

“Is it too much to ask the Daily Caller to feature women leaders, rather than to objectify women as ornaments?  How about:  Here are the top 10 women leaders speaking at Occupy Wall Street?"

In terms of netiquette, stealing another person’s photos is bad form Fores, but in terms of sexism this ranks at the top of the Women’s Media Center’s lists.

The cancellation of Charlie’s Angels as well as The Playboy Club should prove to network executives that it’s not enough to have “hot women on TV doing stuff.” You need good writing. You need a good story. Those males ages 18-35 whom advertisers are looking for (ignoring women as well as anyone outside of that narrow age range) can look at hot women anywhere. And a show that was a remake of a show whose only selling point 35 years ago was called “jiggle TV” didn’t really have a rich, literary history from which to create strong, interesting characters.

This should start hitting TV executives on their Neanderthal-slow-to-evolve-heads that for network television to survive its standards for writing need to go UP not DOWN. Back in 1976 when the first Charlie’s Angels premiered it was also hit with bad reviews, but the show survived. Why? How about the fact that there were only three networks, very limited cable shows and no online pornography? If you were a teenage boy or a young man, let’s say your “access” to “jiggle” was limited.

Not to glorify a slower age, but the number of screens for entertainment was also pretty much limited to the TV.  Computer games did experience some growth in this period, (as in going from zero to some) but the seminal Apple IIe wouldn’t be released until 1983, nor the Commodore 64 until 1982.  So in 1976 for most young men, the only thing competing for their free time besides television was…real life.

Does the Women’s Media Center even need to list the number of other screens besides network television anyone might be looking at in 2011 on Thursday at 8 pm? If the only appeal of a show is the good looking women why would anyone want to waste their time when there’s so much better TV out there, even on network, let alone cable (or via Netflix or Hulu or DVDs). If audiences can watch shows like Mad Men, or Project Runway or even a show with real nudity like True Blood, why would they need to watch a show that was called “offensive to every actor and writer currently out of work.”

For networks to be able to compete they should be raising their game, not trying to narrowcast like it’s 1976 to a male population that doesn’t need network TV to get their “jiggle” anymore.  Maybe the continued trends of fast cancellations of bad 70s and 80s throwbacks will remind Hollywood to respect women viewers like it's the 21st century...even if the shows are set in the 20th.

In response to the news of the show’s cancellation, Steinem today said:

"That the Playboy Club TV series set a record for fast failure proves that you can't lie to women about what was good for us in the past and what wasn't.  Mad Men tried to tell the truth, but the Playboy Club was history according to Hefner."

NBC had come under fire from both progressive feminist groups and conservative morality groups for its celebration of the Hugh Hefner brand. If the show had been a hit, NBC likely would have ignored any cultural or social criticism in favor of advertisers’ dollars, but after dismal ratings for the pilot episode, and successive episodes with even less viewers, they pulled out. (Although the show will remain in production till October 10 and there is potential for it to reemerge on cable).

What probably doomed the TV show even more than the conservative groups is the real question of who the audience for such a show could have even been? It certainly wasn’t a show that would have appealed to most women who likely understood that despite the show’s über-text that PLAYBOY CLUB IS GOOD FOR WOMEN – this was a bill of goods. (During the only three episodes the show’s relentless sloganeering of the benefits of Playboy for women sometimes seemed more reminiscent of kids’ TV shows like Power Rangers than a sophisticated adult drama. Characters repeatedly told each carefully crafted talking points like “the Playboy Club empowers women” and “a Playboy Bunny is focuses on what she wants, not what men want.”). Clearly the show had some kind of ironclad agreement between the producers, Hugh Hefner, and Playboy Enterprises that the neither the company nor Hef would ever be shown in an unflattering light. This is great for marketing but terrible for drama, especially with a message that is about 40 years out of date.

While Hef is now making noise that the show should have been on cable (where it would have had more license to show skin and sex) what both NBC and the Playboy Club producers failed to get is that what makes Mad Men work isn’t just that it’s set in the 1960s and it’s on cable. Mad Men’s show is all about the subtext; “nothing is as perfect as it seems,” not the situation for women, nor for people of color, not even for the Alpha men who’s marriages fail because they aren’t equal partnerships. Meanwhile the Playboy Club was all about the text: “there’s NOTHING seedy or shady about women living in their employer’s house and working in the Playboy Club.” Apparently most of the Bunnies lived in the Playboy Mansion, danced half-naked only with other women, had lots of parties, but were never pressured into having sex with Hef, his friends or anyone else. This version turned the Playboy Mansion into an anodyne sorority house with an off-screen father-figure. Did anyone swallow this version of history?

But we’d be remiss if we failed to mention that the last aired episode was the “Gloria Steinem” plot.

In a way, Gloria Steinem’s 1963 expose on her experience as a Playboy Bunny has cast a harsh pallor over the entire series. It was usually the first item mentioned when a TV critic wanted to compare the show’s treatment of Bunnies to Steinem’s experience.

So how did the show deal with this titular incident in Playboy history? It recast events to make the reporter into conniving schemer who printed lies and failed to see the glory of the Playboy Club’s benefit for women.

For those who didn’t see the episode (and it seems almost no one did): The episode titled “An Act of Simple Duplicity” featured a Bunny named Doris, who after only a few days turns out to have been a reporter for the Chicago Daily News.  (Apparently “Doris” was terminally incompetent about her secret identity. She felt the need to meet with her editor, while in costume, right outside the club. She also carried a press badge in her purse. That might have seemed suspicious.)

While Doris certainly could have written about the Playboy Club’s gynecological exams for waitresses, what it felt like to work in 3-inch heels, or how well the Bunnies were actually treated by management, issues the actual Gloria Steinem article explored, the character in the show instead sneaks into the manager’s office, steals a bunch of HR files, and writes a story with the headline “Bloody Bunny: A Murder Tail.” (Yes, a real headline would use such puns.)

While the lead Bunny, played by Amber Heard, is worried the article is about to expose that she accidentally killed a mob boss – something that happened in the pilot -- it turns out another Bunny had a secret. Apparently many years ago she and her husband robbed stores and one time while driving away they ran over an old man. She got off lightly, but they locked up her husband, who she is now petrified will find out where she lives.

In the episode The Daily News promises that the following day the paper will reveal the name of the Bunny murderer (though it actually sounds more like a case of manslaughter). But no worries, Eddie Cibrian’s character, Nick Dalton, visits Doris at the paper. Despite the fact she says she has her facts down cold, Dalton says “murder is a specific legal term.” And the next scene is…Dalton meeting with all the Bunnies at the club saying the so-called murder was “sensational accident” and the paper has promised to print a “retraction and apology.” Really? Cause I think running an old man down while escaping from a robbery could be charged as murder or at least manslaughter. More importantly was NOTHING in Doris’s article accurate? Because even in 1961 papers pretty rarely issued retractions and apologies.

But let’s share the show’s moral lesson of Doris’s reporting when she returns to the club one last time to bring back her Bunny costume. Confronted by Carol Lynne the Bunny Mother, they share this piece of dialogue.

Carol Lynne: These are wonderful girls from all walks of life trying to go somewhere better. We give these girls a chance and I don’t know why you would want to destroy that.

Doris: I came here to find a big story. I thought this was the kind of place where terrible illicit things happened.

Carol: And instead you found a group of hard-working girls just trying to make a life for themselves – why don’t you write about that?

Doris: Because that kind of story doesn’t sell newspapers.

Carol: Maybe not but at least it’s the truth.

Moral of the story: reporters are ambitious, conniving people and they lie all the time just to sell papers. Also there was nothing newsworthy going on at the Playboy Club except “hard working girls.”

Goodbye Playboy Club. Thank god no one watched 'ya .

The Census Bureau’s latest figures on poverty show that U.S. women are hit hardest in every category, but somehow the major media omitted that in their reports. Leslie Bennetts reveals what was missed.

When the U.S. Census Bureau released the latest poverty statistics this week, the news was predictably bleak—or at least the news that people were given. But there was a little something the major media omitted from their coverage.

That minor detail? Half the population.

The larger half.

And when it comes to the latest economic data on women, the news is even worse than most people seem to realize. But you couldn’t learn that by reading The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, neither of which even mentioned women in their front-page stories about the rise in the poverty rate, which has soared to its highest level since 1993.

When it comes to discovering what that means for the majority of the American population, one had to look elsewhere. For the news the big guys didn’t see fit to print, we can thank the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that focuses on women’s economic security and legal rights.

When the NWLC crunched the latest numbers from the Census Bureau, the results showed that record numbers of women are living in poverty. And in news that should surprise no one, the findings reveal that millions of those women do not have health insurance.

The poverty rate among women rose to 14.5 percent last year, up from 13.9 percent in 2009—the highest rate in 17 years. The “extreme poverty rate” among women was the highest ever recorded, climbing to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009.

“Extreme poverty” means that your income is below half of the federal poverty line—and by 2010, more than 7.5 million women had fallen into that dire category.

What all those statistics add up to is that more than 17 million women were living in poverty last year, compared with 12.6 million men. As usual, things were worse for older women; twice as many women over 65 were living in poverty, compared with men.

And those numbers just represented the population-wide average. For Hispanic and black women, the poverty rate increased even faster and rose higher—to 25 percent for Hispanic women and to 25.6 percent for black women.

As usual, single mothers are having the hardest time of all. More than 40 percent of women who head families are now living in poverty. With more than half of poor children living in female-headed families in 2010, the child poverty rate jumped to 22 percent.

The trends are equally alarming when it comes to health insurance. Nearly one in five women is now living without health insurance. The percentage of women aged 18 to 64 who don’t have health insurance increased from 19.2 percent in 2009 to 19.7 percent in 2010—the highest rate recorded in more than a decade.

“More than 19 million women younger than 65 were without health care coverage in 2010,” the NWLC reported.

Private insurance isn’t coming to the rescue. The percentage of women covered by employer-sponsored health insurance declined to 60.6 percent in 2010, down from 61.7 percent in 2009—a decrease that affected more than 600,000 women.

Government assistance is also going down; the percentage of women covered by Medicaid declined to 11.5 percent from 11.7 percent the previous year.

The news on women’s earnings was just as dismal. “Women working full-time year-round continued to be paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts,” reported the NWLC.

“The wage gap, which has been stuck at 77 cents for the last three years, has been virtually stagnant over the last decade and means an average of more than $10,000 in lost wages for women each year,” said Fatima Goss Graves, NWLC’s vice president of education and employment. “Nearly 40 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners today. In these difficult times, no family can afford women’s salaries to be discounted.”

And what about everyone else, from the politicians to the pundits? If government leaders are going to deal with the enormous amount of deprivation and suffering out there, they have to start focusing on women and children.

Because as usual, they’re suffering more than anyone else.

And as usual, most of the powers that be aren’t paying attention.

So why are the mainstream media ignoring them?

But this is not to say that women are completely underrepresented. Chilean women head the six most prominent journalism schools and have made huge strides in the world or newspapers, magazines and television. The changing political and social world of Chile means a changing in the influence of women.

Politically, there has been a large effort to close around 100 coffee shops where women serve coffee in bikinis. As Santiago congresswoman Maria Antonieta Saa said, "On the surface, they’re selling coffee, but really they’re selling women’s bodies.” Further points where made that if a coffee shop, which can be seen as a family-friendly location, has it's waitresses dressing in barely anything, then what standard is that setting for other stores to follow in? It clearly shows the male dominated society of Chile. Yet more than 50% of Chile’s population is made up of women and this number is increasing.

There have been very few studies on the portrayal of women in Chilean advertising and no official studies on how females are represented in media. This limits the amount of solid information available but also implies that the larger culture not see it important to be aware of how its women are represented. If it has not done any investigation on how to improve the depiction of women through media then no real advancements can be made.

In the world of advertising, Chilean women are usually depicted as mothers or housewives where household products are usually marketed towards them. Men on the other hand are targeted for cars, technology, sports and the like. Research has been done to show that gender-defining roles within Chile were criticized as harshly as the sexualization of women in advertising. It is interesting that in both these forms of manipulating the women via advertising she is made into an object. Yet when it is to fit into societal norms it is more accepted than when a woman's body is changed to fit a physical standard.

Through television and movies, "content was showing progress in projecting an image of women in accordance with reality." Although Chile has insisted improvements in its depiction of women in daytime TV, many are not convinced and feel soap operas show women as "completely alienated beings, which creates false expectations and distorted value scales." The shows are also said to not emphasize so much the gender-defined roles of society, only to help define behavioral norms that develop character interaction.

The stubbornness of the country so recognize problems of objectification in its media limits capacity for change. The negative ways in which women are depicted in media is a worldwide problem. If a country will not address, research, and solve the problems in its media's depiction of women, positive attitudes of citizens and positive representations are not possible.

Ms Steinem states: "This ad against Janice Hahn by supporters of Craig Huey not only wins the sweepstakes for obscenity, woman-hating and racism, but also for urging murder. It ends with a rifle, the sound of shots, and the words, Keep her out of Congress. Wasn't one Arizona enough? Yelling Fire! in a crowded theater isn't covered by freedom of speech, and neither is this ad. Republicans behind it should be condemned by their party, and TV executives who accepted it should by fired.”

The Women’s Media Center harshly condemns this ad, and such tactics that use race and gender baiting to disparage entire communities.

Throughout the campaign, Hahn’s opponents have ruthlessly attacked her; yet this video takes the attacks to their most extreme (and the WMC is not going to help get any more traffic by posting it).  The ad was created by the radical conservative organization RightTurn USA.  The video depicts an underwear-clad, pole-dancing women; Janice Hahn’s face is poorly superimposed over the dancer’s, who gyrates as black men stuff dollar bills into her clothing, call her misogynist obscenities, and wave guns in the air.  The men, the video explains, are “hard core gang members” whom they claim Hahn “coddled” in her time as a Los Angeles councilwoman.  The video’s description reads, “Janice Hahn Hearts Gangsters.”  At the end of the video, the narrator disguises a threat as a call to action, urging, “Let’s keep her out of Congress, homies” as a shotgun blinks on the screen.  The video explicitly criminalizes African American men and demeans and objectifies women.

The Women’s Media Center joins our co-founder, Gloria Steinem, in calling for the Republicans behind it to be condemned by their party, and TV executives who accepted it to be fired.

The article focused on how Callista Gingrich was the sole cause of the fallout. Not only is this inaccurate (as several other new stories covered how it appears several aspects led to the breakup), but the article paints Callista Gingrich as the reason behind every decision that caused the rift with Newt Gingrich being the poor soul caught in between.

While this is certainly an original approach to the news story, it is not fair to portray his wife as the problem in the campaign fallout. As far as the statements that have been released in regards to the incident, none point fingers at Callista Gingrich. Smells like sexism to us!

Stories of assault, adultery, and sexual misconduct from high profile male politicians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn have garnered much media attention in the past weeks. In each of these stories, the women involved bore the brunt of media coverage on the wrongdoings of male leaders.

Since the story on Anthony Weiner’s photo tweets broke last week, media immediately began delving into the identity and other personal details of the women allegedly involved.

And already since Rep. Weiner’s admission yesterday, some harmful media coverage has turned to the women. Last night on MSNBC, Chris Matthews said of Rep. Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin: “Maybe she’s partly responsible.”

Placing blame on women, and outing lurid details of women involved in this issue hurts those women because it places them in a negative spotlight they do not deserve, just as excessive prying into Rep. Weiner’s personal life is also unproductive.  As the Women’s Media Center urges media to cover the latest news about Rep. Weiner story in a fair and unbiased fashion, we ask you to be our eyes and ears. If you spot sexist coverage of the Weiner story, tell us on Facebook, Twitter, or report it on our website.

Even more importantly, media should focus their scrutiny and concern on our current cultural and political climate, and delve into why certain high powered male leaders use their positions of power to access women sexually — instead of obsessing on harmful, irrelevant personal details of the women and leaders involved. Media has the power to lead the conversation on these issues in a responsible manner.  And we’re here to remind them of their power and responsibility!

Thanks for all you do,

The Women’s Media Center

Condemning Sexist Remarks by TV Host Ed Schultz, Women’s Media Center Thanks MSNBC for Swift Suspension

Schultz Apology on Tonight’s 10 pm Show also Praised by Group

New York: Earlier today the Women's Media Center called on MSNBC to rebuke TV host Ed Schultz for calling conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut" on his Tuesday radio program.  And this evening, WMC President Julie Burton praised MSNBC for suspending Schultz from his TV program and this evening, announced that the network and host Ed Schultz have agreed to meet with her organization to discuss how to make sure his inappropriate and degrading language will not be used again.

Schultz's apology and promise to never use that language again was heartfelt, and praised by the group. Women’s Media Center President, Julie Burton, commended MSNBC's management and Ed Schultz for acknowledging the inappropriate and sexist language and for taking swift public action to apologize.  She said, “When you demean one woman, you demean all women.  Anti-women slurs and epithets are beyond inappropriate - they harm women.”

"Laura Ingraham is no friend to women, and while we disagree with many of her views, the type of language Ed Schultz used, whether accidentally or on purpose, has the effect of legitimizing sexism and undermines the credibility of all women. Two wrongs don't make a right."

In praising MSNBC and Schultz for their quick action in response to the group’s online protests, Burton said she was pleased with the message it sends:  “Such vile attacks that perpetuate inequality in newsrooms and in politics will not be tolerated.  We look forward to working with MSNBC's leadership to discuss how commentators may critique women leaders based on their political views and comments, not their gender."

She also noted that, unlike some chronic offenders, “Ed Schultz has long been a friend and supporter of women’s issues and an opponent of sexism in the society.  That’s another reason why we expected him to make an apology for his slip – and to do it on the air.  We have to expect high standards from media people on the left and on the right of the political spectrum."

In a media climate where Talkers Magazine’s “Heavy Hundred” list of the top talk radio hosts only included 12 women with their own programs, (plus two women co-hosts), such comments dissuade women from entering into political talk radio careers. Thus, such comments widen gender disparities in media even further and contrubute to a climate where half of America's voices and priorities are not heard.

MSNBC has reprimanded several male commentators and anchors who have espoused some moderately sexist to severely misogynist views over the years, from Chris Matthews' derogatory coverage of Hilary Clinton's presidential race, to David Shuster's suspension by the network for comments about Chelsea Clinton being "pimped out" by the Clinton campaign.

Yana Walton, VP of Communications for the Women's Media Center, said "MSNBC's decision to place the issue of media sexism front and center was commendable, and today they set the example for other networks who are often guilty of media sexism yet aren't even beginning to address the problem. We will be especially vigilant as coverage gears up of women candidates in the 2012 elections, and are happy to have partnered with Change.org on this issue."

Then, that same year, David Shuster was suspended by the network for comments about Chelsea Clinton being "pimped out" by the Clinton campaign, using a prostitution metaphor.

Yet, the networks' "progressive" male anchors and commentators aren't learning their lessons. Just yesterday, Ed Schulz called incindiary right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham, a "right-wing slut" and a "talk slut" on the air.

While conservative bloggers and watchdog organizations are highlighting Schultz's remark,  the Women's Media Center also calls on MSNBC to suspend Schultz for his comments, since they not only attack Ingraham, but all women. Ms. Ingraham is no friend to the Women's Media Center, but a sexist and misogynist attack based on her gender and not her political views or comments is harmful to women in media, politics, and beyond.

Ingraham provides enough fodder for progressive criticism that such base attacks have no place in coverage. As a new generation of women enter media and politics, such comments dissuade women from exposing themselves to vile attacks, and perpetuate inequality in newsrooms and in congress.

Join us in telling MSNBC that Schultz's comments are just as worthy of suspension as Shuster's, and to send a message to their on-air personalities that sexism is harmful and unacceptable! Click here to tell send a letter to MSNBC's leadership: http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-msnbc-to-suspend-ed-schultz-for-calling-extremist-host-a-right-wing-slut

"One high-powered lawyer, who was amont those trying to reach her to offer to rep her, said 'She could make $6 million, maybe more, just by shutting her mouth."

As heinous as the NY Post’s piece was, they’re not the only ones who are guilty of harmful coverage. The Daily Beast ran this commentary by Bernard-Henri Levy in which he questioned the alleged victim's legitimacy:

"I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a 'cleaning brigade' of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet."

If that wasn’t bad enough, The American Spectator published this despicable piece by Ben Stein yesterday, in which he ranted:

"The prosecutors say that Mr. Strauss-Kahn 'forced' the complainant to have oral and other sex with him. How? Did he have a gun? Did he have a knife? He's a short fat old man. They were in a hotel with people passing by the room constantly, if it's anything like the many hotels I am in. How did he intimidate her in that situation? And if he was so intimidating, why did she immediately feel un-intimidated enough to alert the authorities as to her story?

People accuse other people of crimes all of the time. What do we know about the complainant besides that she is a hotel maid? I love and admire hotel maids. They have incredibly hard jobs and they do them uncomplainingly. I am sure she is a fine woman. On the other hand, I have had hotel maids that were complete lunatics, stealing airline tickets from me, stealing money from me, throwing away important papers, stealing medications from me. How do we know that this woman's word was good enough to put Mr. Strauss-Kahn straight into a horrific jail?"

After all this media coverage, all women (and men) may have more to worry about than the possibility that an international leader is guilty of sexual assault. This type of coverage reinforces the power structures that legitimize sexism and rape, and works directly against the elimination of sexual violence in our culture. In a country where a woman is sexually assaulted every two minutes, such pieces do real harm.

Tell the NY Post, the Daily Beast, and the American Spectator that media have a responsibility to work towards the elimination of rape culture and sexism--not to legitimize it! Send a letter by clicking here.

The wage gap was recently recalculated by the United States Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing that women still earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. Then why did the Wall Street Journal choose to run this anti-fair pay Op Ed by Carrie Lukas against fair pay for equal work on their Editorial Page, without at least running a balanced opinion piece along side by anyone on the National Committee on Pay Equity  - ON EQUAL PAY DAY!?

Here's what you can do to demand balanced coverage:

1. Submit a Letter to the Editor demanding that fair and balanced opinion pieces on equal pay for women to Tim Lemmer  at: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com

2. Email Editorial Page Editors (sample email to cute & paste below) to demand they run fair and balanced opinion pieces on equal pay for women:

paul.gigot@wsj.com, robert.pollock@wsj.com, henninger@wsj.com, bret.stephens@wsj.com

Dear Editors,

Despite the fact that today is Equal Pay Day, the WSJ chose to run a very unbalanced OpEd on fair pay in our country that didn't even address today's reintroduction of the Paycheck Fairness Act in the Senate, nor new data from the United States Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that women still earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. Further, as CNN & Fortune report, none of the current top 20 paid CEOs are women.

I'm writing to demand balanced opinion coverage of the wage gap in our country. It is only fair and balanced to cover both sides of this issue on Equal Pay Day by running a balanced OpEd in order to adhere to the high journalistic standards WSJ attempts to embody. There are several members of the National Coalition for Pay Equity to choose from.

Sincerely, Your Name

3. Call the Editorial Page Editor demanding fair and balanced opinion pieces on equal pay for women at:  212.416.2255.

Thanks for all you to do ensure media is held accountable to standards of fairness and equity. Yours in Action, The Women's Media Center To support our continued work on this issue, donate to the Women’s Media Center here.

Women do bring up new perspectives on issues and alternate solutions to such crises, but this isn't about men vs. women. It’s about the ability of diverse leadership to solve a human rights crisis.

When media cover this story as a gender battle, the larger story of a democratic struggle is lost, and it's simply unproductive. Media Matters has called out CNN contributor Erik Erickson for blaming women in the Obama administration for our recent actions towards Libya, claiming Obama "manufactured" this human rights crisis, and Jezebel shows just how prevalent these types of conversations have been.

Holding to this sexist framework isn't helping Libya's democracy, and it's certainly not helping ours.

This past Sunday, Super Bowl advertisers shelled out $3 million per 30 second spot to feature their best in show commercials consisting of characteristically strong sexist, racist, and white centered themes. An informal content analysis done in-house showed that out of the 49 product advertisements shown during Super Bowl XLV (not including NFL spots, television promotions, and movie trailers) women were included in 68%. Not a bad showing until you consider that women had speaking roles in only 17 commercials and were most often portrayed as accessories and background scenery. Additionally, while men were counted as 149 characters, there were only 53 females shown.

Surely this difference must correlate to Super Bowl viewership?

Not true, according to last year’s Nielsen report on minority demographics. There were 106.5 million viewers in 2010’s game, 45% of them female.  While the official report for this year’s game is not yet out, preliminary reports state that Super Bowl XLV had 111 million viewers. Since the total number of females watching the game has grown 17% in the last 5 years, we can assume that at least 45% of viewers this past Sunday were women.

Of course women weren’t the only ones wrongly and under-represented. White men outnumbered black men by more than six to one and white women outnumbered black women by 35%. One of the few (three to be exact) commercials that featured black characters caused quite a stir with its promotion of negative stereotypes. Pepsi’s “Love Hurts” commercial perpetuates the angry black woman myth by showing a black woman continually batter her husband when she catches him cheating on his diet.

Blacks didn’t even come in second to whites in commercial involvement. Animals did. 15% of characters counted in the analysis were of the animal variety, only 9% were black. This is better than the non-existence of other minority groups: five Asians, one Latino, and one Indian were counted for a total of eight; a number nearly half that of the mythological creatures shown (aliens, dragons, trolls, and the like) and certainly less than the personified inanimate objects such as talking cars.

In an interview on Screen Rant, Josh Rogers, Creative Director at Imagination, said about Super Bowl advertising: “The Super Bowl is the time and place for big new brand ideas–not for selling direct.  It’s like the opportunity to set the record straight, take a chance, set a new course.” If this is an advertiser’s moment to shine and set a new course, one has to wonder – where does that leave women and minorities in their plans for the future? Adding to this thought, President and Chief Creative Officer at The Geppetto Group, Chris McKee revealed, “We misread and misrepresented what’s going on in America today more than in any Super Bowl in history.”

Let’s hope that next year advertisers think to include a better representation of our culture.

Politico tackles Sunday talk shows’ gender disparity—and a big media FAIL to us all.

Politico’s got a good roundup today of the lack of women on the Sunday talk-show circuit, based on new data from American University showing that women lawmakers made up just 13.4 percent of congressional appearances this year.

Thus far this year, the five major Sunday shows—including NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “Fox News Sunday,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union”—have had 148 appearances by congressional lawmakers. Of those, 128 were men and 20 were women.
Ouch.

....

SOURCES OVERALL: If you think the problem is limited to these pubs, think again: a recent report from the Global Media Monitoring Project found that worldwide, women make up only 24 percent of the people “interviewed, heard, seen or read about in mainstream broadcast and print news.” A 2005 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism revealed that only 30 percent of news stories included even a single female source. (Ed's Note: For the record, SheSource--a database of 500-plus women experts on virtually every topic, maintained by the Women's Media Center--is a great resource for combating this reality. Check it out.)

Full story at http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/06/14/if-it-s-sunday-it-s-more-men-in-dark-suits.html