Sunday Morning Still Segregated, says Carol Jenkins in WashTimes
June 30, 2009
In a July 28 Washington Times article about Sunday morning political talk shows, WMC President Carol Jenkins took the networks to task for their continued exclusion of women and people of color:
"We always refer to Sunday morning as the most segregated hour of broadcasting still left on the air," said Carol Jenkins, president of the Women's Media Center, a New York-based advocacy group. "We ask the same question. Where are the women, where are the people of color on these shows?" When the search was on for a new "Meet the Press" host last year, the group organized a public effort to draft a female. "These programs do what we call 'stunting.' They will have all women guests, or all black guests, and the viewers will say, 'Oh, they've made progress.' But next Sunday, it's back to the same old thing," Ms. Jenkins said.The Times article went on to cite a 2007 Media Matters study that pointed out that, "men outnumber women by four to one on average and whites outnumber blacks by seven to one." The WMC will continue to urge networks to increase the number of women and people of color represented on their Sunday morning talk shows, so these programs reflect the diversity of the people who watch and are effected by them.
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