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Male Journalists: What Responsibility Do They Have for Others’ Sexism?
Two interesting stories from across the pond caught my eye regarding male journalism and their responsibility for combating the sexism of others this week.
First from Israel during Vice President Mike Pence’s visit there. The Washington Post reported:
The Western Wall — the outer wall of the raised esplanade that is called the Temple Mount by Jews and al-Haram al-Sharif by Muslims — is currently under the authority of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Western Wall Heritage Foundation. According to custom, the plaza is divided by gender, with men praying on one side of a barrier and women on the other.
For Pence’s visit to the wall, the foundation set up two platforms side by side straddling the barrier. As Pence prayed on the men’s side, however, it was difficult for some of the female journalists to see above the cameras and microphones held by their male colleagues.
Speaking from the perspective of someone who has prayed in Orthodox synagogues for years: The situation at the Wall was completely inexplicable, and the offending party was the Israeli officials, not the White House. Despite the fact that the fence was called the #PenceFence, women were forced to stand on the other side of a barrier and behind their male colleagues because the Israeli rabbis in charge of the Wall demanded it; and the Pence team was merely respecting their hosts.
The Post went on to quote,
Another journalist, Ariane Ménage from i24news, tweeted: “When it’s a bit hard to do your job / women journalists forced to stand behind the men at the separation fence at the western wall for Mike Pence’s visit #PenceInIsrael#PenceFence.”
To which I wonder: Who forced the male journalists into the pool to use the advantage? What prevented them from telling both the White House and Israeli team “By putting us on either side of this partition, we would be blocking the view and the ability of our female colleagues to do their job. Can you please place us opposite the wall so that we can both have the same unobstructed view?” Is chivalry dead?Given the fact that the plaza was emptied of all except Vice President Pence and his wife Karen, it is inexplicable that there was even a partition at all. Orthodox Judaism mandates the separation between men and women during Jewish prayer; but the members of the press were not praying, they were reporting on a visit of non-Jewish officials to the site. There is no reason why the partition needed to be there, and even less of one for the male journalists on the trip to stay silent while their female colleagues were impeded from doing their jobs.
The second story comes from the BBC is also making news this week, with the New York Times reporting,
The BBC said on Friday that it was reducing the salaries of several of its most prominent male journalists following Carrie Gracie’s decision this month to leave her position as the British broadcaster’s China editor to protest unequal pay between men and women at the organization.
“The BBC has agreed to pay cuts with a number of leading BBC News presenters, and others have agreed in principle,” the organization said Friday, although it was unclear how much they had agreed to reduce their salaries. The BBC said that an independent audit into equal pay will be published next week.
Why is it that the male journalists at the BBC are responsible for making up the gap when they were in no way responsible for creating it? Wouldn’t it make more sense for executives at BBC — i.e., the ones who set salaries for talent — to take the cut instead. The BBC’s male journalists don’t exist in a bubble: they are husbands and fathers with families to provide for.
Despite how advanced they portray themselves to be, we’ve learned with the #MeToo movement just how many knuckledraggers exist in the media. How many other industries could get away with the pay gaps and rape buttons like we now know exist on the “Today” show? As the movement moves to make the workplace more friendly for women, we’ve seen both a missed opportunity and an overshot attempt at equalizing the playing field for the fairer sex.
Published in Journalism
Is competition dead? Since when is one news organization responsible for making sure other news organizations get to do their job? The Western Wall is not exactly an unknown venue. So why didn’t somebody suggest a pool report?
As for the BBC, it is, after all, a government operation and Parliament has decreed that taxpayers have a right to know where the money is going. But being non-commercial management has a hard time quantifying anyone’s worth. They can only go by what their commercial competitors will pay.
Basically, yes it is. Maybe not completely. In private, in some people’s social lives, it may be just barely hanging on, but you’re talking about a professional setting. These people are competing with one another, are they not? I can see a case for objecting to the setup as discrimination under other circumstances, but in this case there’s a religious/cultural aspect that would make me feel it’s not appropriate for me (as an outsider) to object. The second story reinforces my belief that these people, even when working at the same organization, are competing with one another. I don’t see how chivalry can exist between the sexes if they’re to engage in fair competition.
It looks like we had much the same reaction. (I think we commented almost at the same time.)
Anyway, I think chivalry and competition are like crying and baseball.
Yes. If women are equal to men in all ways, then chivalry cannot stand. It would be an insult to women. In no way should a man in the business world treat a woman any differently than he would a man.
The set-up you’re describing, Bethany, is odd, especially if only VP and Mrs. Pence were praying. My guess is that the local rabbis weren’t prepared and didn’t give a lot of thought to what they were setting up. After all, the press is not a priority, and the security of the Pences was. The journalists would have tons of opportunities to get pictures, I’m sure. Why do they feel compelled to get a shot in front of the Kotel?
This isssue is a rare one, and it’s not likely to come up very often.
I can’t get excited about it.
So what was the job of the media in this instance? To watch a public figure pray? It’s a reflection of how far gender equity in the work place has come that we’re really discussing this.
Sure it would have been chivalrous (can I use that word in this context?) for the male journalists to not have involved themselves. And if they hadn’t, what would they have missed?
I pick my battles in life, and though I’m not female, I still think that I wouldn’t bother fighting this one if I were.
I understand that a professional woman would find this irritating, but no more than that.
When Mark Wahlberg was castigated for getting paid well for movie reshoots that Michelle Williams did for scale, I brought up these same questions to a movie group on Facebook. The standard it sets is that all workers are now hostage to the worst negotiator among them, and who profits? Not women. They get paid just as little as before. The winner is evil Big Business, who can virtue signal while cutting salary costs.
Regardless, everyone supported Wahlberg giving up his difference in pay as “the right thing to do” and praised Williams for her lack of greed.
If anyone ever needed proof that socialism was equal suffering for all, this is it.
The Beeb’s male contingent is likely paying a price for the privilege of being British. They’d have pretty nice sex discrimination suits if they were in the colonies.
“The Beeb” is a government entity. I’d be surprised if private companies in Britain don’t have similar or even more stringent rules on racial and gender discrimination that the United States does.
On the other hand, government entities in the United States have the same immunities “The Beeb” would have in Britain.
I don’t know the situation over there, but the government isn’t immune from sex discrimination suits here.
I like that you use the word “chivalry,” though it isn’t the right word in the context.
“Chivalry” is incompatible with egalitarian feminism — with the idea that men and women are, and should be treated as, equally strong, capable, vulnerable, independent, etc. Within that egalitarian perspective, there is no consideration that women should receive special treatment relative to men, and so a social obligation on the part of men to be particularly courteous to women is anathema.
In fact, the proper egalitarian response to what occurred at the Western Wall would be to object to the idea that people are being singled out and treated differently based on something trivial — in this case, their sex. That isn’t chivalry: we’d hope that, if the situation were reversed, or if it were a matter of racial discrimination, the same objections would be raised.
But, since you brought it up, I want to put in a plug for chivalry. Since I am not an egalitarian feminist, I can wholeheartedly endorse the idea that man should be particularly courteous to women, crediting women with greater vulnerability, sensitivity, taste, gentleness, kindness, thoughtfulness, style, decorum, etc. (whether or not any particular woman actually exhibits those qualities), and treating them accordingly.
Regarding the BBC story, what I find interesting about it is that, of the two practical ways of quelling the objection about sexual pay discrimination, they chose the one that is both more economically convenient and more problematic for women. After all, how many women are going to press for more pay — that is, adopt a more forceful, more typically masculine style of negotiation — knowing that a consequence may be that their male coworkers will consider the women ultimately responsible for the men’s own decrease in income? It wouldn’t surprise me if the result of this is that women became even less interested in rocking the pay boat.
(There is a third way of dealing with allegations of sexual pay discrimination, but it isn’t as practical as simply caving in to complaints. One could make a cogent argument that the market is actually working, and that women are either less valuable, or are making other choices and trade-offs that involve accepting less income in exchange for other things. However, it’s possible that that isn’t the case, and women are simply less aggressive in negotiating pay packages.)
Why was there more than one journalist and photographer at the wall? Competition? For what? How many papers was a unique shot of the event or a unique question politely ignored going to sell? Can’t the industry just die already?
This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite political cartoons from about a quarter-century ago. A female sports reporter, I think from Boston, complained that she should be allowed inside NFL locker rooms to conduct interviews just like the male sports reporters.
A political cartoonist’s response was to depict a large, cigar-chomping reporter with a look of lust in his eyes busting through a door with a sign above which read Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders Locker Room and stating, “I’m here for the interview!”
If I was a male athlete, I would not wish to be surrounded by reporters when I am half-naked, but men are not allowed to say no to this option for some reason. It seems to me that a feminist would not properly understand this problem unless the situation is properly reversed as in this example.
…
I remember that I used to listen to Dr. Laura Schlessinger on the radio many years ago. Wikipedia states that, “Schlessinger sometimes used Jewish law and examples to advise her callers about their moral dilemmas. … In July 2003, Schlessinger announced on her show that she was no longer an Orthodox Jew, but that she was still Jewish.” I think a caller stated that her son was upset about having to be naked for gym class showers. She’s the only person I know who found nudity for teenagers in such a situation to be rather barbaric. However, she’s a woman. Men and boys do not normally get the opportunity to complain about such things.
…
Last month there was a story about how a female comedian was sued for discrimination after turning away male ticketholders to her women’s-only comedy show. This example also doesn’t seem to work when it is reversed.
There is much about the confluence of Israeli politics and religion that is inexplicable and hard to defend. But it is equally hard to get worked up over such a fleeting moment.
As for the BBC – I love to see liberals on their own petards. Indeed, I would quite enjoy it if some “Asian” practitioners of the “Religion of Peace” shared some of that peave with their biggest defender in the western media world. That probably makes me a bad person.
It’s good to be a man.
It’s good to be a man.
I disagree. Their nation, their rules.
That’s the first problem. Why is anyone’s prayer at the holy sites a press event? It seems the Pences themselves should be uncomfortable with prayer as photo op. Ridiculous.
I’m also a pay-gap skeptic. Show me the money (and training, and years on the job, and professionalism, and self-advocacy…)
Whiny feminists make me embarrassed for my sex.
Yes, and that’s actually my quibble with the second example in the O/P. It’s entirely possible that there’s no sexism involved, so the premise that “others” (i.e., executives) are at fault may not be true. Pay disparities are not ipso facto proof of sexism, and we seem to have lost sight of that.
Some government isn’t. It’s probably easy to sue a state or city/county in federal court over the issue. When it comes to their own staffs, members of Congress are immune.
And I was being, at least partly, tongue in cheek. In a progressive oriented forum, this would have been a pretty good troll, and I would have broken out the popcorn.
Good for you.
I considered bringing up the locker room debate earlier in this thread, but decided it wasn’t as analagous as it should be to this issue.
There have been major sports teams that have banned all reporters from locker rooms, and then backtracked. They want their athletes to talk to the press for their own PR reasons, and banning reporters from the locker rooms made it too easy for athletes to avoid them.
Personally, one should be able to dress and undress in private, at least outside the team.
Do politicians, or other public figures, allow reporters in their dressing rooms? There’s probably exceptions, but as a rule, no.
Fine by me.
Same here. I’m in favor of the former.
Perhaps it was there to keep the non-praying female attendees from straying into the male prayer area.
Nontheless, this raises a side issue: would their be as many (or any) female complaints if the partition was set up for an Islamic ceremony?