Joe Biden is about to make his own vice presidential pick, and since it’s going to be a woman and quite likely a Black woman, we have to expect the worst from the media coverage. A group of women leaders is trying to head that off with a letter calling on news organizations to do better, and to think through this historic moment in the same way they learned from the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing protests.
During the Black Lives Matter protests, “the times and the experience made you, the most powerful people in media, stop and think about your role in perpetuating inequality and the opportunity you had to promote equality and simple justice with your reporting of the news.” Now, “[a] woman VP candidate, and possibly a Black or Brown woman candidate, requires the same kind of internal consideration about systemic inequality as you undertook earlier this year. Anything less than full engagement in this thoughtful oversight would be a huge step backwards for the progress you have pledged to make to expand diversity of thought and opportunity in your newsrooms and in your coverage.”
The letter is entitled “We have her back” and is signed by Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women’s Law Center, NARAL’s Ilyse Hogue, Alexis McGill Johnson and Melanie Newman of Planned Parenthood, Debra Ness of the National Partnership for Women and Families, Supermajority’s Cecile Richards, Stephanie Shriock and Christina Reynolds of Emily’s List, Tina Tchen of Time’s Up, Jess Morales Rocketto, Valerie Jarrett, and Hilary Rosen.
They get specific, and the problematic kinds of coverage they point to will be familiar to anyone who regularly follows political news:
- Reporting on a woman’s ambition as though the very nature of seeking political office, or any higher job for that matter is not a mission of ambition
- Relationships with partners, staff, colleagues and donors are characterized differently if the woman is not seen as subservient or supportive
- Reporting on whether a woman is liked (a subjective metric at best) as though it is news when the “likeability” of men is never considered a legitimate news story.
- Reporting, even as asides in a story, on a woman’s looks, weight, tone of voice,attractiveness and hair is sexist news coverage unless the same analysis is applied to every candidate
- Reporting on questions of electability of women is, in itself, a perpetuation of a stereotype about the ability of women to lead
- Reporting on doubts women may not be qualified leaders even when they have experience equal to or exceeding male leaders
- Reporting on the heritage of Black women or women of color perpetuates a misunderstanding about who is legitimately American
- Reporting on and using pictures of a woman’s, particularly black women, show of anger at injustice or any other kind of passion in communication perpetuates racist tropes that suggest unfairly that women are too emotional or irrational in their leadership or worse “hate America”
“We are here to help you with this challenge,” they write. But also: “we will be watching you.” And if you look at that top bullet point and think about recent media coverage of the vice presidential possibilities, it’s immediately apparent how the media has already failed on this one with the “Is Kamala Harris too ambitious?” reporting.
That was all fairly inside baseball reporting, though. Voters will start to really pay attention when a name is announced, and it’s not too late to do better with that. As they say: We have her back, and we will be watching.