Don’t Judge A Women’s Movement…

…by your television anchor.

The Washington Post says in a story from its Sunday paper yesterday that women now dominate TV newsrooms across the country, seemingly implying that this means women have more power in TV news.

“Women reached statistical parity with men on the anchor desk in the early 1990s, and their ranks have been climbing since. The number of female anchors reached a record high last year, accounting for 57 percent of the positions in a nationwide survey conducted by the Radio and Television News Directors Association,” according to the article by the Post’s Paul Farhi.

But does “statistical parity” equal statistical power in the field? Also, one source noted that the increased coverage of so-called “women’s issues” may be a contributing factor to this trend of more women in TV news.

Hmmm … I think if you asked women in the industry, they’d disagree that they’ve taken over TV news. With the exception of Katie Couric, aren’t most prime time news anchors, network and local, still men (and mostly white men)? And, as the article indicates, men still largely run the newsrooms.

Maybe not as big an advance as the Post wants us to think…

(Also: A sampling of this piece ran in Friday’s Express. Can you turn to the Express in order to get a sneak peak at articles in the Washington Post?)

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