A Powerful Media Can Stop a War

By Jane Fonda, Women's Media Center. Posted January 18, 2007.

I want to share a story. I wonder how many know the name, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. How many know who she was?

Abeer was a 14-old-girl, living with her family about 50 miles south of Baghdad, trying to grow up as best she could in a country ravaged by violence and war.

Until March 12, 2006, when her life was cruelly cut short. On that night, five American soldiers, dressed all in black, allegedly burst into the home where Abeer lived with her family.

After spending the evening drinking whiskey mixed with energy drinks and playing cards, the soldiers must have decided to execute the crime they allegedly had been planning for weeks. According to the charges, the men took turns raping 14-year-old Abeer before shooting her. In the next room, her mother, her father, and her five-year-old sister were executed. When the men were done, they drenched the bodies in kerosene and set them on fire.

Then, the prosecutors say, they went back to base and grilled up some chicken wings for dinner. It was months before this crime came to light.

The cold-blooded murder of Abeer and her family is a tragedy. But it's almost as great a tragedy when her story, and all the other stories that are difficult to hear and difficult to accept, are buried in the back of the news pages -- quickly shuffled off the nightly news by politicians and their handlers desperate to change the subject. Or never told at all.

Like so many Americans, I have felt frustrated and betrayed by the state of the mainstream media in this country -- media whose priorities seem out of step with their responsibilities.

Media must be the defenders of democracy.

We need a media that strengthens democracy, not a media that strengthens the government. We need a media that enriches public discourse, not one that enriches corporations. There's a big difference.

When we talk about reforming the media, what we're really talking about is creating a media that is powerful, not a media that serves the interests of the powerful; a media that is so powerful that it can speak for the powerless, bear witness for those who are invisible in our world, and memorialize those who would be forgotten.

A truly powerful media is one that can stop a war, not start one.

As Bill Moyers said at this very conference last year, "the quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined." But when the media does not reflect the vibrant diversity of the people on this planet, both the quality of journalism and the quality of our democracy suffer.

At this National Conference on Media Reform, our shared goal of creating a truly progressive, democratic media -- vital, fair, investigative, and truth-telling -- is ultimately unreachable if we do not address the persistent, pervasive inequalities that exist in media. These inequalities exist even outside of mainstream media, even in the alternative and independent press.

The existence of independent media has been severely threatened. We've seen a new concentration of media ownership in conservative hands, and the erosion and elimination of federal regulations that promoted a diversity of viewpoints. This has weakened our country -- morally, physically, and spiritually.

The Free Press has done a great deal to show how people of color have increasingly been marginalized as media monopolies grow. It's shown how ownership of television and radio stations by people of color is at its lowest levels since the government began keeping track; how a scant 13 percent of newspapers in this nation employ people of color in the same percentage as their readership; and how issues affecting diverse communities have been underreported and ignored.

But the media environment that is overwhelmingly white is also overwhelmingly male. And a media that leaves women out is fundamentally, crucially flawed.

Why? Simply because you can't tell the whole story when you leave out half the population.

Health care. Social Security. Bankruptcy laws. Education. Minimum Wage. The War. All these things, and many more, affect women differently than they do men. All issues are "women's issues." Yet the absence of women in the media is glaring.

From the reporter's desk to the executive suite, women are missing. Just one-third of news items -- this includes print, broadcast, and Internet news -- cite a female source. During the coverage of the 2004 election, journalists were more than twice as likely to turn to a male source than to a woman. When you switch on the political talk shows on Sunday morning, only one in nine guests is a woman -- and women are more likely to be relegated to the back half of shows, when fewer people are watching.

Women's viewpoints are regarded as supplemental, not essential, to the story.

The op-ed pages are notoriously barren of female voices. Too often, there is an unspoken quota of one. If there is one woman op-ed writer, one Maureen Dowd or one Anne Applebaum, or if there is one person of color on staff reporting on issues important to minority communities, then the quota is filled.

One reason for this is that women usually aren't the ones calling the shots. Women news directors manage only a quarter of TV newsrooms and account for fewer than 10 percent of board members of the major media and communications companies. And, astonishingly, women only hold 3 percent of so-called "clout" titles -- positions with the power to determine budgets and make decisions.

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Jane Fonda is a board member and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. This commentary is adapted from a speech she delivered January 14 at the annual conference sponsored in Memphis by the Free Press, a national, nonpartisan organization that works to reform the media.

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