Gender in the News!

I know I have a lot of explaining to do.. I shall later. A lot of big things happened in the past few weeks.. and soon my stay in NYC will end.

On another note: Just to keep yourself updated on a few things in the news, here are a few important links on women and families.

I firmly believe changing how women are perceived in the media and by society is not a feminist issue... it's a gender issue. Look at yourself... MEN: groping and rape culture, how this isn't just a feminist's problem -- society needs to look at itself too.

The number of stay-at-home dad's is increasing and articles mention how these father acknowledge how gender roles are changing. Most of these dad's are white and educated, which is not the norm for stay-at-home fathers.

Did you hear about the woman who organized a campaign in the UK to have Jane Austen put on the 10 pound note? Well, she was threatened with rape and murder by Twitter users. One of them, a 21-year-old male, was arrested this weekend.

Recently..

I haven't been writing because some really big stuff happened this week.. I will write shortly.

Breaking News on the Fourth of July

The sign for the Cyclone roller coaster! 

It's been a while since I've written anything, mainly because work has been really busy.

Not many people do this, but I worked on Fourth of July. Everyone at FOX keeps telling me that most people in the industry work on holidays. Those days are just normal news days in the grand scheme of things, so I decided to go to work.

I walked a little early, like usual. It was steaming hot outside. Right after I put my dinner in the small employee kitchen area, one of the assignment editors asked me if I wanted to go on an assignment. Of course, I said yes -- without knowing that I would be home at 1 a.m.

Yes. I could have either gone to a party with friends or go on an assignment. Both would end around the same time. I'll tell you, though, working on the holiday was worth it. Let me tell you everything that happened that day.

Joel Waldman, a reporter for FOX5, Joe the cameraman and I went to Coney Island to report on the Astro Tower -- ride an old ride that was going to be taken down because it was swaying. I ran between the 5 o'clock reporter and Joel, trying to find out information for Joel's story. Both of these reporters were doing the live shots at the top of their respective shows and Joel had to finish his story really
quickly.

There was a lot of mayhem because of the short amount of time before Joel's 6 o'clock live shot, which I will not get into since it is really confusing. All you need to know is that everything worked out, and then Joel was going to be doing a live shot again for the 10 o'clock news.

So, we had a few hours to kill. Joe, the cameraman and I walked around the amusement park and got hot dogs, watched the fireworks. It was fun, just killing time. When I got back from the bathroom, we had to leave. There was breaking news.

Joel during his live shot, via Twitter.

Two people died in a jet ski accident just down the road. At that point, a second truck and cameraman arrived (usually there are two cameramen for live shots in really busy areas because people act crazy when they see a reporter), so we all hopped in the trucks and went over.

It was amazing to see how quickly the crew reacted to the situation. Joel had to go on camera within minutes of getting there, and then need to find more information before going live again with an update. He Tweeted pictures and information while we were there, which he says is important to do.

Everything happened so fast, and then as if it was nothing we went back into the trucks to head to the station. It was a little before 11 p.m. and we were stuck in traffic. We only had to go down a few blocks, but it was bumper to bumper -- barely moving at times. Everyone from the amusement park was leaving because the fireworks were finished, and there wasn't a police officer at the intersection to direct traffic. Joe said it was the worst traffic he had ever been in.

I didn't mind though. It sucked but I was with people who I trust and hope that I can again in the future. It is sad when you realize that you love your job so much that you're willing to give up holidays. This is going to be my future in a couple of years. I know my friends and family aren't too happy about that, but I can't really avoid it until I'm more established and have good vacation days.

The environment isn't funny! Well, the news coverage kind of is..

This is exciting: I am published again! (I've been working on a lot of things, but I finally got to write another blog post). Today, I came into work and one of my co-workers suggested that I research this. I love when people ask me to research, especially on broadcast news programs.

You see, I see that the media doesn't always cover really important topics thoroughly. They may brush over it and have a voice over. I mean, the President gave a big speech about the environment last week -- that doesn't happen every day, that at least deserves a soundbite after the anchor talks about it for 15 to 25 seconds. (15 - 25 seconds is the usual length of a voice over during a nightly newscast).

Below is a quick preview of my new blog post for FAIR on President Obama's speech.

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Who would have thought the future of the environment was some kind of joke? It turns out comedians actually seem to care more about climate change than the people who produce real news programs do. 

Think Progress came out with an infographic yesterday (7/1/13) showing that the Sunday chat shows didn't so much as mention President Barack Obama's June 25 speech outlining a new climate change policy at Georgetown University. But a few late-night comedy shows and the Daily Show, a fake newscast on Comedy Central, found some time to cover the news. 

But let's give the networks a fair shake, shall we? A better comparison with a fake nightly news show is a real nightly newscast. So we looked at ABC, CBS and NBC's 30-minute nightly newscasts to see how they covered the president’s speech.

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Click here to read more!