Joan Ganz Cooney | 09/18/2009 12:00 am
Joan Ganz Cooney: 'Viewers Want a Male Anchor'
In response to: First came Katie Couric, and now we have Diane Sawyer. Is gender bias in television journalism a thing of the past?
I believe it is pretty much a thing of the past. But not necessarily with the elderly public who watches the evening news. I think the viewers want a male anchor, but we’ll see if the magnificent Diane can overcome that prejudice.
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Hi Nancy, sorry about your brother in law. It is scary when you see otherwise normal people, acting like lunatics. I am a Democrat who believes in a 2 party system. Growing up, I knew more Republicans than any other party, and none of them spoke such vile things in public. This weekend, in Washington, the "Values Voters Summit", is being conducted by conservative Republicans and for their opening they a choir come in to sing a song written for the occasion. It is called "Why Should God Bless America". There is so much wrong with that, I can’t even begin to say how offensive that is to me. There is a seminar going on about how the Feminist Movement is ruining the country. I had to look at the calendar to make sure it was 2009. It all makes me sad and fear for the country. Sarah Palin even pulled out of appearing there. Mr. Huckaby is there and until now I had a lot of respect for him, but that’s gone. Again, If President Obama fails so does the country, and I don’t want to see that happen. Somehow, the hi-jacked Republican party wants him to fail and they are very open about that. THAT is very un-American. Sorry to go off, but, seeing those things going on in our capital is really demoralizing to me. Have a good one.
i guess i thought when i married his little brother back in 2003 that he was just being funny when he asked my then future husband why he was marrying a democrat. we were all on IM in different states at the time. my soon to be husband was here in reno, i was in salem, oregon and my then brother in law (yes, i married two brothers 19yrs apart) was in california. he said he didn’t know why, but love must have had something to do with it. i married him anyway. lol!
i had never really dealt with republicans and didn’t even know my brother in law since 1976 was a repub. i was really shocked. my husband listened to all the "nuts and bolts" on the radio. he loves hannity, rush and all those. but i never let it influence me. i didn’t divorce him a year and a half later over that, but because he was an asshole, that drank like a fish and thought he was god. lol!
i’m still friends with most of them except my second ex husband. he will not even look at me if he sees me on the street. lol! i could care less. his own family doesn’t know where he lives. but i’m glad i don’t have to deal with him anyway. cie la vie!
i had no problem speaking to my ex’s. they always have trouble speaking to me. my first husband told my daughter when she was in her early twenties (she will be 30 in march) that she looked so much like me that it was making him crazy to talk to her. she told him to can it or beat it. lol! he canned it. my second husband (his brother, yeah i ‘m strange, but i like it) is afraid that if he shows any affection to me, he will stop being stern and fall back in love with me. because if he does he will forget about all those things that bothered him about me and just accept me. but what he says is, "if give you what you want, you will fall back in love and i won’t be able to teach you a thing!" (yeah right, sucka!)
so now when he is riding his little bicycle on the street and i’m driving he will not look at me (i haven’t seen him at all since the day before thanksgiving) and if he does catch my eye he frowns or gives dirty looks. i like "so immature!" he is a porcupine and nothing i will ever do will make a difference to him. he is an alcoholic and thinks he is god. lol! i even have a shirt that says, "my husband and i divorced over religious reasons. he thinks he is god and i don’t!!!" and it is so true. i just got sick of his telling me that i had leave my adult kids, get a place of my own and be alone all the time.
my son is developmentally disabled and my daughter is bi-polar with social anxiety disorder. i also help raise my grandson 3 1/2 days a week. as sick as i am, they take care of me and i take care of them. one friend never could understand how i can still live with my kids. some think i just control them. hey, we coexist because we get along together just fine and like it that way. so it’s nobody’s business. i do what i want and we are happy that way. you won’t see me in a nursing home unless i need round the clock hospital care and then its "pull the plug" time.
If that was the case, wouldn’t there be more of a presence of women on the talking head (or what I like to call the "shouting head") shows?
http://www.punditmom.com/2009/09/katie-couric-and-diane-sawyer-are-no-ne…Just as a point of fact, what study shows that *older* American’s prefer male anchors? I don’t know if Diane Sawyer can succeed in increasing the ratings for ABC. If she doesn’t, I think it will be more about her content (or lack thereof) than her gender. Still, she does seem to be one of the most informed celebrities now appearing on network news shows and I was pretty amazed when ABC decided to replace her and her co-anchor (whose name escapes me) on the Sunday AM show with George Stephanopoulis.
Of course, whether older people prefer male or female anchors on news shows is only relevant if they comprise a large viewing block for news shows. I have heard but don’t have any independent data on this, that older people tend to watch the big 3 more than they do cable. But that the big 3 have lost younger viewers to cable shows.
As for the presence of women on the *shouting head* shows, you must not be watching Fox. They have women on all the time from both the left and the right. In fact, I think they have more women on as guests than they do men, and women routinely fill in for their stars. But I guess I just listen to what the person has to say and don’t really focus on whether they are male or female. Although, I must say I got a secret kick out of Dana Delaney from Desperate Housewives doing better on Celebrity Jeopardy than did Wolf Blitzer on Thursday night (he had to be given a free 1K so he could play on the final question because he was 4K in the hole at the end of Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy). Poor Wolf couldn’t even click in fast enough on world event questions and then when he did manage to click in fast enough, he answered the question wrong. I think the guy who won was a comedian but I’m not sure.