PAGE TITLE
BUSINESS
SPORTS
ARTS

RACE


7

10

5

9

GENDER


128


113

125

82

TITLE


83

85

68

65


This assignment was eye-opening for me! In today’s society we are taught that great strides have been taken to make everyone equal; even though large obstacles have been overcome there are still many areas that are not equal! Once I looked closely to the wording of the stories in the news I noticed that there are large differences that I overlook everyday.
In this assignment I counted the words his/he and her/she as gender references and (Mr. Miss Mrs. Ms.) as title references. These two categories were the most surprising and shocking to me. In some of the stories I wanted to stop reading because all of the references were male oriented and, as a women, were belittling. In one particular article I was very brought back. There was reference to Melanie Griffith and the only title that was associated with her were the words the actress. The sentencing was even demeaning her career. I also was surprised by a reference to a Nicole Clemens. The article said that she ran an International Creative Management’s literary department. I don’t believe that the article gave her a proper title. In the same article Mark Pedowitz was referred to as the President of ABC studios. My question is why didn’t the author refer to him as the person who runs ABC studios? In one article from Tuesday, Oct. 21st I found that not one woman was mentioned throughout the entire article. The article was about business and the economy and all references and quotes were from men. They were all executives and high authority figures. I was amazed that the author did not use one woman’s thought or position. These articles were found on the front page of the paper and really set the stage for the rest of my findings in other sections of the paper.
In the business sections I found that the majority of the articles centered on men. Even some of the article titles’ had male references. I found that even many of the authors were men. About 75% of the titles that were mentioned in these articles were that of men. Men really conquered this section. One of the stories mentioned the global investment back Lehman Brothers which immediately turns the reader to believe that the bank is run by all men. One article referred to Gordon V. Smith who is a Maryland homebuilder. The article mentioned his wife only once. There was no reference to what she did, it only mentioned her first name, and she wasn’t even given the “Mrs.” title. This really made me think that men today still see women as inferior and even almost like an accessory.
In the Art section of the paper I found that women dominated. Almost all the quotes from this page were from women and a lot of the writers were women as well. I believe that this is an extension of the views of women. More and more women are being recognized as strong, and intelligent, and as leaders but there is still the stereotype that women belong more in the artsy world. I think that this also shows that women have not infiltrated all areas of the career world.
In the sports section I found that men again were mentioned more. I think this is mainly true because the focus is on baseball and football which are men sports. Honestly I am okay with this because I wouldn’t want to see a woman out on the football field getting creamed by the larger men. I also found that the word “he” wasn’t used as much as in the business section. I think this is an obvious observation because the sports section focuses on teams. The articles liked to talk about the team as a whole and the word “they” was used much more often then in other sections of the paper.
Overall this assignment made me realize that there is still a long way to go if people want to be viewed as equal. I found that race wasn’t used as often and I think that, especially, in recent years the race of a person has been more taboo and used less when describing or identifying people. However, I did see that there was absolutely no mention of a white person being “white”. There are still a lot of areas that the News needs to work on in portraying a sense of equality.