(MintPress) – In 1991, when female law professor Anita Hill testified at the confirmation hearing of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas that she had been sexually harassed by him, she was largely criticized. Some senators and Thomas supporters even went so far as to question her truthfulness and mental health. After the hearing Thomas went on to receive a spot on the Supreme Court, but Hill became a pioneer in reporting instances of sexual harassment.
According to a George Mason University Analysis of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) documents, the amount of reported sexual harassment cases more than doubled in the five years after Hill’s testimony. Included in those who stepped forward were female journalists who, says University of Florida journalism professor Kim B. Walsh-Childers, “suffered in silence” for fear that reporting instances of sexual harassment would negatively affect their career.
Walsh-Childers, who along with two former University of Florida professors, wrote a report on Sexual Harassment at American newspapers in 1996, said, “Many women who were harassed would get a new job within the company or go take a job somewhere else. Many women had the sense it was just them [who were experiencing sexual harassment]” and believed their harassers were just “jerks” they would have to deal with on their beat or a “stupid” editor.
BBC’s Savile nightmare
Recently, the BBC found itself under investigation — accused of deliberately ignoring alleged instances of child abuse on its premises in the 1960s and 1970s by children’s television personality Jimmy Savile, and for allowing a culture where sexual harassment was routine.
Savile is now deceased, but throughout his career he was accused of being a pedophile and, as reported by CNN, Savile’s reputation as a sexual predator to teenagers was “known about, laughed off or suspected by many in the entertainment industry, but no one did anything.”
Veteran DJ Liz Kershaw told BBC Radio that when she worked for BBC’s Radio 1 pop music station in the 1980s, Savile’s interest in young girls was an “open secret” and said she had been “routinely groped” while she was live on air by a fellow presenter.
“I would be sitting in the studio with my headphones on, my back to the studio door, live on air, and couldn’t hear a thing except what was in my headphones, and then I’d find these wandering hands up my jumper fondling my breasts,” Kershaw explained. “When I complained to somebody they were incredulous and said, ‘Don’t you like it? Are you a lesbian?’”
MintPress requested an interview with the BBC to discuss the allegations against Savile as well as the harassment Kershaw faced. Our request was denied, but a BBC spokesperson issued the following statement to MintPress: “We have already made it clear we are horrified by recent allegations and have urged anyone with any information to contact both the BBC Investigation service and the police. We have clear policies to protect children and all our employees from any form of harassment. We have a BBC Whistleblowing policy and encourage employees who wish to remain anonymous to report information to an independent Whistleblowing line. In addition, Dinah Rose QC is assisting the BBC with a review of sexual harassment policy and to ensure anyone with a complaint is properly supported.”
Playing with the big boys
Because the news industry was largely a man’s world once upon a time, many female journalists didn’t report cases of sexual harassment for fear their beat would be taken away from them and given to a male co-worker. As a result, the workplace culture at many news organizations was dominated by typical male-behavior. Kershaw described the culture at BBC Radio 1 in the 1980s similar to “walking into a rugby club locker room,” adding that “it was very intimidating for a young woman.”
Unwanted sexual advances made toward female journalists are not typically given a lot of attention. Unfortunately, female journalists not only have to deal with “in-house” harassment, but as Walsh-Childers pointed out, many female journalists covering beats that are still in male-dominated worlds such as police, public safety, business and sports, also face harassment from their sources.
According to Walsh-Childers’ study, many female journalists harassed by sources felt powerless. While the women didn’t want to condone the behavior of their harassers, they depended on these sources for information.
One anonymous female journalist cited in the study said she was sexually harassed by a valuable source, so she opted to not report the incidents. “When I weighed the consequences of addressing this situation directly or simply trying to avoid him, I chose the latter. I decided it simply wasn’t worth it to make waves.”
When the topic of journalists being sexually harassed or assaulted does surface, like when CBS News chief foreign correspondent and “60 Minutes” reporter Lara Logan was sexually assaulted in Egypt during the 2011 revolution, the public often rules the attacks as oddities or hazards of the profession.
Especially when female journalists are attacked overseas, Walsh-Childers said the abuse is viewed as part of being a foreign correspondent since they’re “dealing with cultures very different from ours, where women are not expected to be involved in reporting on serious issues.”
But as Logan revealed details of her attack to fellow “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley, she mentioned the gratitude other female journalists had shared with Logan for her decision to come forward about her traumatic experience. Logan told Pelley, “One thing that I am extremely proud of that I didn’t intend is when my female colleagues stood up and said that I’d broken the silence on what all of us have experienced but never talk about.”
She continued on, saying, that “women never complain about incidents of sexual violence because you don’t want someone to say, ‘Well women shouldn’t be out there.’ But I think there are a lot of women who experience these kinds of things as journalists and they don’t want it to stop their job because they do it for the same reasons as me – they are committed to what they do. They are not adrenaline junkies you know, they’re not glory hounds, they do it because they believe in being journalists.”
It’s worth noting that male journalists are not exempt from facing sexual harassment. However, the amount of men who report instances of unwanted sexual advances are significantly less than women. Walsh-Childers told MintPress that she couldn’t name any instances of male journalists reporting sexual harassment, but says she has had multiple male students tell her they were sexually harassed by their supervisors.
Walsh-Childers also pointed out her male colleagues tread carefully when talking to female co-workers, for fear what they say may be taken out of context and viewed as sexual harassment. For example, Walsh-Childers said her male colleagues have expressed concern to her that they worry complimenting a female co-worker on her appearance or attire may be misconstrued as a sexual advance.
Mums the word
It may come as a surprise to some that despite the media calling the public’s attention to sexual abuse and harassment issues by Catholic priests, teachers and Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, the media has largely ignored reporting stories of sexual harassment or assault when it involves their own or another news organization.
When asked by CNN about the lack of coverage on sexual harassment and the recent accusations of abuse at the BBC, Peter Garsden, a leading child abuse lawyer, said, “It is typical in the history of cover-ups we have heard about over the years that this [BBC] secret has remained unpublished for so many years.”
Garsden, whose law firm has been contacted by at least one alleged victim of Savile’s, continued, saying, “Jimmy Savile was almost a worshipped individual. He enveloped himself in a cult of hero worship that made him untouchable, just as a priest might use his status to secure silence and stop these rumors going anywhere.”
Not only do female journalists, like other victims of abuse, sometimes decide to not confront or press charges against their abuser, but as Carolyn Weaver previously reported in the American Journalism Review, part of the reason harassment lawsuits by media organizations rarely become public knowledge is because, “news organizations confronted with allegations of sexual harassment in their own workplaces have tended to deny and discount them. And when faced with a harassment lawsuit, news outlets frequently propose confidential settlements that gag all parties involved.”
Walsh-Childers hypothesizes the reason we likely haven’t heard much about cases of sexual harassment by media organizations is because a journalist’s job is not to be a watchdog on the journalism industry.
“News media have historically been an important force that helped us to see racism when it was going on in other industries. [The media] have helped us to see all of those kinds of things without looking inward,” she said. “We are externally focused – watching government, big business and society.”
Biased coverage?
But not every journalist who has been sexually harassed agrees to keep mum. Take Lynne Carrier for example. She was an editorial writer at the San Diego Tribune, now known as the San Diego Union-Tribune, when she refused an extra $10,000 to her $201,000 settlement in the 1990s for refusing to remain silent about sexual harassment she experienced. “I told them I thought it was outrageous for a newspaper that makes its livelihood by public disclosure to have a confidential settlement,” she said.
It’s cases like Carrier’s that have inspired the formation of groups such as Take Back the News, whose goal was to confront “the misrepresentation and under-representation of sexual assault in mainstream media with the goal of improving both the quantity and quality of media coverage of sexual assault.”
When asked whether or not there was misrepresentation or underrepresentation of sexual assault in the mainstream media, Walsh-Childers said she believed there was “definitely underrepresentation” of sexual harassment and assault in the media. She explained that when she was working on her 1996 study she expected women to tell her they were harassed in the form of an off-color comment such as the female journalist ought to hike her skirt up. Instead, Walsh-Childers says she was “astonished” by the amount of women who were harassed by someone putting their hands on them.
“The women we talked to tended to say ‘I don’t want to raise this issue because I don’t want to be known as the office feminist’ … If you’re the person concentrating on ‘women’s issues’ then there is a concern that maybe that is all you can think about. Well then there are lots of other issues to be concerned about. Survival of the industry is more compelling than what’s happening to any individual journalist regardless of gender.”
Social media harassment
As our society advances and newsrooms become more gender neutral workplaces, one would assume the amount of sexual harassment would decrease. But with the heavy usage of social media websites, female journalists have found another outlet where they are mistreated and harassed more than their male counterparts.
Politico reporter Juana Summers told Poynter that because journalists are on social media networks, they are now more accessible to people, which is both good and bad.
“I’ve covered cops and courts, protests and now state and national government, but some of the most seedy and inappropriate stuff that’s been said to me, mostly race or gender based, has been said on my social networks.”
Columnist for London’s the Independent newspaper, Laurie Penny wrote a piece discussing how threats, insults and sexually related comments are things female journalists get used to on social media networks because of their frequency. Describing her morning routine, Penny said she checks her email, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and has to “sift through threats of violence, public speculations about my sexual preference and the odour and capacity of my genitals ….”
Penny wrote in her column that it was hard for her to admit she struggled to turn on her computer or leave her home, as she felt it was an “admission of weakness.” Thankfully, Penny had a change of heart and realized that silence “allows abusers to continue to abuse.”
Moral of the story
If our society is ever going to get to a place where we value the humanity in each and every person regardless of sex, race, religion or sexual orientation, we will have to respect one another. Bullying and belittling another person for sexual or non-sexual favors shouldn’t be tolerated or covered up by any industry, let alone one which prides itself on telling the truth about what goes on in other organizations.