That was the headline of the “Ombudsman” column on May 23rd. The article discussed reader reaction to sexist language in the newspaper, examples of which included:
- A review of a television interview with former President Bill Clinton in which The Post’s television critic said about the female journalist co-conducting the interview: “She looked as though she would have been much more comfortable in Clinton’s lap.” The critic later said that he was simply “talking about cozying up, nothing more sinister than that.” Hmm, wonder how often he uses that expression to signify cozying up when the interview involves two men?
- A review of an interview with Rielle Hunter (the mother of former Presidential candidate John Edward’s child) in which she was described as speaking “blondely.” To take a page from Saturday Night Live—“Blondely—Really? Really?!!”
- A description of former Vice Presidential candidate Sara Palin “sashaying” into a room. Let’s just imagine Vice President Joe Biden’s reaction to a reporter describing his entry into a room in that manner.
Ironically, Andrew Alexander’s Ombudsman column appeared the same day that The Post chose to run the following headline over an article by Robin Givhan, who writes about fashion:
“Elena Kagan’s artful plumage: D.C. frump”
I don’t know about you, but frankly I do not care how Elena Kagan dresses. My hope is that she has a brilliant legal mind, a compassionate heart, and the experience to know when and how to apply both during the challenging (and important) cases that come before the Supreme Court, should she be confirmed. And while I don’t like that we are focusing on her clothing, if we must do so, is it necessary to be so mean about it? I doubt that is how we would describe a man in similar circumstances.
All in all, it was an interesting juxtaposition of good intent (keeping his Ombudsman eye on The Post’s use of language to describe women) and bad headlines (well, in my mind, a bad storyline). What was even more interesting, however, were the statistics cited in Alexander’s column, which came from the report on The Post’s own newsroom study issued in 2008:
“. . . a content analysis of roughly 1,200 Post stories found that women were the focus of only 18 percent of them, although they comprised more than half the area’s population.”
“. . . men are quoted almost three times as often as women in the paper.”
The study recommended that The Post should “produce journalism that creates an expectation among female readers that the paper is being published with them in mind.” It does not appear that the editors of The Post learned much from that study.
Fast forward to 2010, when Alexander tapped Deborah Tannen, a Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University and best-selling author (You Just Don’t Understand, among others) for advice about how journalists can become more sensitive to gender-based language and images. Tannen suggested, “After you’ve written something, stop and ask yourself: Would I have put it this way for a man? If not, is it going to be damaging?”
Robin Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, echoed Tannen’s sentiment, offering The Post (and all those involved in journalistic endeavors) some good advice. “It’s the duty of important papers like The Post to set an example…to be a force for change,” she said. “Every choice you make in the area of gender, as in the areas of race and class, makes a difference.”
Cynthia
