Monday, June 9, 2008

Bias on bias

Why am I not a professional pundit? Because I refuse to participate in the oppression:
Hillary Clinton's loss has renewed critiques that American political media is slanted, sexist and dominated by men. . . .
[T]he elite opinion media continues to employ, groom and promote a commentator corps that is disproportionately white and male. . . .
The most traditional location to reach the political establishment, the Washington Post opinion section, is brazenly male-dominated. Seventeen of the 19 columnists are men; only three of the columnists are racial minorities. Guest op-eds could present more voices, but they rarely do. This year, only 12 percent of the Post's guest pieces came from women, according to a May count by ombudsman Deborah Howell. At the New York Times, eight of the ten weekly columnists are men; one is black.
See? If I were to become a commentator or columnist, I would only be contributing to the "brazenly male-dominated" environment. To ensure that women and minorities have equal opportunities in punditry, I therefore choose instead to share my opinions in the obscurity of the blogosphere which is ... oh, yeah, wait, the blogosphere is also "brazenly male-dominated," isn't it?

Hmm, could it be that white males "dominate" the world of opinion journalism because of their greater interest in the field? I mean, here in the blogosphere, where people opine for free, most of those who opine are white males -- as are most of their readers.

UPDATE: Fellow white male James Joyner:
Oddly, despite being male and having written about politics for many years, I have hardly ever been contacted by a newspaper and asked to write an op-ed; none of the biggies have done so. Are politically minded women blinded by their gender to the existence of The Washington Post? Too shy to pitch and submit like the rest of us?
Yeah. It's kind of funny that after 22 years in journalism, I'm still not getting any phone calls from editors begging me to write for them. It's always the other way around and, sometimes, my begging is answered with a "no." I'm being victimized!

1 comment:

  1. It's sexist that a woman didn't win the Presidency. But it's not sexist to only vote for her because she's a woman. Go figure. Repeal the 19th, please!

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