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CNN's Carol Costello discusses gender gap during talk in Akron
By Rich Heldenfels
Published on Tuesday, Mar 04, 2008
Looking at the place of women in television news — and in our culture at large — CNN reporter Carol Costello asked, more than once, ''Are we giving in to sexism?''
The Canton native, who grew up in Minerva and graduated from Kent State, posed the question during a talk to the Akron Press Club on Monday in the University of Akron's Martin Center. While she stopped short of a definitive answer, she offered a lot of evidence for a ''yes.''
Of course, this is not the easiest of times for television news in general. Like all news organizations, it has big competition, even from corporate companions, on the Internet. Costello said CNN's Web site gets more viewers than the cable TV network. And news operations want to feed the audience's appetite for entertainment and gossip, even if that means taking time away from other stories.
Sad for local news
Asked after her speech if news was veering more toward cat-in-a-tree stories at the expense of, say, international news, Costello said ''I see it especially in local news. Local news makes me sad, because that's where I learned my stuff (starting with a stint at WAKR radio and old WAKC-TV). . . .
''I can't speak for all of CNN, I can only speak to the show I work on, The Situation Room,'' she said. ''After we did a lot on Anna Nicole Smith, we felt dirty. We did. We had a meeting and a discussion about that, and we told ourselves . . . we were never going to do that again. And we haven't. We do news. Even when it's not the great, interesting, political time, we do the news.''
Still, the women on the news face issues of their own, which brought Costello to the sexism question and three issues it involved: image, ''the mommy track'' and competition.
Regarding image, she recalled recently seeing a man and woman anchoring the news. The man was in a dark suit. The woman, Costello said, ''was wearing, I swear to you, a skirt so short she did not dare uncross her legs. . . .
''I found myself unable to pay attention to what she was talking about because I was completely mesmerized by her skirt,'' said Costello. She wondered if the woman had been told by her boss to wear the skirt, or if she was simply giving in to sexism.
''Our culture seems to be saying sex is power,'' she said. Even older women, she said, have been called ''cougars,'' on the prowl for younger men. ''Desperate housewives'' still have to be sexy.
Shows like What Not To Wear and How To Look Good Naked suggest that looks are more important than serious accomplishment. The New York Times, Costello noted, reported on ''brides (who) now want to show their curves . . . so they can be more vamp than virgin at their weddings.''
In news, a flamboyant sexiness doesn't work in the long run, she said. ''What does it get you, really?'' she said after the speech. ''It gets you attention in bars.''
Raising children
As for the mommy track, she discussed how some women curtail their professional ambitions to raise children — suggesting that women who do not take that course are somehow lacking. She recalled the quoted declaration in 2006 by former presidential candidate John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, that ''I think I am more joyful than (Hillary Clinton) is'' because she had raised a family while Clinton pursued a career.
Edwards later said she had been misquoted and apologized to Clinton. But, Costello said, the comment ''did come from somewhere inside her.''
Then there is the issue of competition among women, an unwillingness to support each other. When Don Imus crudely described the Rutgers women's basketball team, African-Americans in particular protested to such a degree that Imus was fired. But when Imus had earlier made nasty on-air comments about a female colleague, Costello said, the reaction was tepid and Imus kept his job.
Similarly, she said in her own career, male managers in local and national TV can make sexist comments and suggestions to women broadcasters and see nothing wrong with it — while treading far more carefully about racial comments. And women may be encouraging such behavior when they don't complain.
''I don't think a male manager would fire you if you said, 'That's inappropriate,' '' she said in answer to an audience question following her speech.
Asked after the speech about the way CNN treats women, and its seeming to hire young, attractive women for big jobs, Costello said, ''I'm not sure that's true. Campbell Brown certainly isn't young. She's 40. . . . CNN hired me at 40. I'm not saying CNN is perfect, because no place is. But I think CNN is better than most. I really do. We have a lot of older women on the air, and we have a lot of women who are not attractive in the traditional sense. . . . Even Christiane Amanpour, she doesn't even wear makeup. She doesn't care.''
Still, she wondered if this ''giving in to sexism'' was part of an environment where a woman could comfortably refer to Clinton as ''a bitch'' at a John McCain event — and McCain's immediate reaction was a chuckle.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. Contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
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