Feminism and Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice

16 Mapping the Meanings of "Racism" and "Feminism" among Women Television Broadcast Journalists in Canada

Chapter 16 Mapping the Meanings of “Racism” and “Feminism” among Women Television Broadcast Journalists in Canada Minelle Mahtani More women in the [televisual] industry is not enough: there need to be more women with a politicized understanding of the ways in which women’s subordination is currently reproduced and with the will to change it.1 All I can say is that the sexism in the newsroom was manageable. The racism was not. —a woman journalist of color, 1999 Almost half the people employed by Canada’s biggest media corporation are women,2 and according to a recent UNESCO report on employment patterns in the media, women now make up the majority of journalism students on campuses.3 However, despite the increase in the representation of women, the everyday culture of Canadian newsrooms remain male controlled and male defined.4 This led me to question why the increased number of women working in the media has not effectively challenged racist and sexist ideologies in the newsroom. In this chapter I explore the political understandings of “feminism” and “antiracism” among women television news journalists to explore the impact of the North American women’s movement on working women’s perceptions of feminism and antiracism in the newsroom. Between 1994 and 1999 I worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation .5 I am identified as a “woman of color” in Canada. My father is 349 of South Asian descent from India and my mother is from Iran. They met in London, United Kingdom, and then immigrated in the 1960s to Toronto, Canada, where I was born. Broke after completing six months of my Ph.D. in London, I returned to Toronto and was offered a job as an editorial assistant—for all intents and purposes, a “go-for” who delivers newspapers and distributes the news script. Initially I saw the job as a way to solve my cash-flow woes and vowed to return to London as soon as possible to complete the degree. But I fell in love with the craft and was thrilled to be promoted to a weekend researcher position on the national weekend news program. After a year of organizing panels, conducting phone interviews, and shooting stories, I was hired as a researcher/associate producer on the flagship news and information program for the network , “The National”—the daily hourlong show providing a combination of news and current affairs to viewers across the country. As a researcher/producer working for the main network, my job included researching and developing story ideas, interviewing politicians and pundits , going out with the crew to tape stories, and then returning to the edit suite to put that night’s story together. An analysis of women broadcast journalists is important for women working outside broadcast television because television news journalism plays a powerful role in the representation and circulation of racial and gender ideologies. As Tator has noted, “the media holds up a mirror in which society can see itself reflected.”6 The media provides an instrument through which public understandings of feminism and antiracism are communicated. What Canadians think about visible minorities and women is in part influenced by the media to which Canadians are exposed . Thus it becomes crucial to examine the beliefs of the people who are responsible for creating the images of women and minorities that we see every night on the news. In particular, it is important to identify the ways in which bias and discrimination are woven into the policies and practices of media organizations. Paula Skidmore has argued that most studies on the gendered politics of the newsroom reveal no differences between the sexes within that site. However, she insists that there is much anecdotal evidence to the contrary from the women producing the news themselves.7 Missing from most studies of news and gender is an analysis of how journalists contemplate terms such as “feminism” and, in Canada, “antiracism”—which has taken on a particular political salience in Canada since the 1980s— 350 m i n e l l e m a h ta n i despite the fact that many have emphasized the importance of challenging racism and gender discrimination in the media. Toronto: The Canadian Context Canada is considered one of the most multicultural nations in the world, with 29.4 percent of Canada’s population identified as being of “British only” descent and 23.5 percent of the population identi...