Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Rush Limbaugh Says Too Many Female Journalists Lead To The 'Chickification' Of The News

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh thinks Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is getting "sympathetic" treatment from the media because most of the journalists covering her are women.

During his syndicated radio show on Tuesday, Limbaugh referenced a Politico article titled "The Women In The Van," which profiles the largely female press corps covering Clinton's presidential campaign.

The host references the image at the top of the Politico piece and quickly estimates it shows 22 women -- it actually shows 18 -- who are covering the campaign. The picture doesn't include several male members of the Clinton press corps.

"There's not a guy in this picture," Limbaugh said before beginning to opine on the "chickification" of the news. "If you wonder why the Hillary news coverage is, you simply have to look at that picture."

"The chickification of the news is made up of many facets, but one of the facets is that men really can't be fair to women," he said. "Not that they try to be unfair, but they just can't fully relate. It takes a woman to understand a woman. It takes a woman to get deep with another woman. It takes a woman to understand. And so, that's the press gaggle that follows Hillary Clinton around."

Limbaugh's claim that women are somehow becoming the dominant force in the news business is entirely inaccurate. The Women's Media Center analyzed news content produced last year between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, and found that men generated about 62 percent of the news.

Women in the media still face an uphill battle for equal representation in newsrooms, especially in those of the nation's top newspapers. The report notes that women accounted for 32 percent of bylines in The New York Times, and about 40 percent of those in The Washington Post.

And a 2014 study examining 10 U.S. newspapers found that of 22 columnists, only six were female.

Limbaugh, want to rethink your "chickification of the news" theory?

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Judah Robinson

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