PUBLIC INFORMATION ON SOCIAL CHANCE:TV COVERACE OF WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE*William Adams, George Washington UniversitySuzanne Albin, New York Law School

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the thematic and visual content of tenyears of nightly television news coverage of women in the workforceand employment discrimination. The authors find that the totalamount of coverage is small, the visual context often undercutsthe usually anti-discriminatory text, and NBC provided the mostcoverage. The possible sources of these patterns are examined:the el i te newspaper agents, male domination of network news,decision-making, cultural definitions of event news, and con-sensus values and news controversy.

Women in the U.S. labor force rose by ten million between 1968and 1978. By 1978 over half of all adult American women were injobs outside the home.^ In increasing numbers women attended lawschools and medical schools. Women moved into occupations rangingfrom race-horse jockeys to FBI agents that had been the exclusivepreserves of men. Workinf̂ women fought and won many battlesagainst job discrimination in hiring, pay, and promotions. Whennegotiations failed, women sued. Landmark court decisions pro-vided new judicial remedies.

The far-reaching changes of the 1970s scarcely resolved thefairly pervasive problems associated with sex discrimination inemployment. Those changes nonetheless represent a social trans-formation of massive proportions. Some scholars have argued thatchanges in the number and status of women in the workforce becamethe single most profound development to accompany the women'smovement.

Research on such social changes repeatedly turns to the crucialelements of cultural stereotypes, expectations, socialization, androle models. From toys to textbooks to television, the portrayal ofsex roles molds the way society defines and confines the place ofwomen. This suggests the importance as well as intrinsic interestof studying how the struggle for job equality has been presented tothe American people by their chief sources of information.

In recent years, social scientists have begun to verify theextent to which news content influences the priorities and prefer-ences of the American people. Maxwell McCombs, Donald Shaw, andothers have examined the process of "agenda-setting." Theirfindings demonstrate that the salience of issues in public opinionusually follow from the priorities adopted by news media .̂

*An earlier version of this article was presented on a Women'sCaucus for Political Science panel at the American PoliticalScience Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C, September 1,1979.

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The exact relationship between newspapers and television inthe agenda-setting process is still being disentangled. Some evi-dence suggests that newspapers often initiate public issues at anearlier stage than does television. but that when those issues doobtain prominence on television, their salience is heightened, anadditional audience is reached, and a variation on the newspaperagenda is presented.-^ One study by Palmgreen and Clarke foundthat, for national topics, network news exerts an even strongeragenda-setting force than do newspapers.*^

Television, Americans tell pollsters, is their major source ofnews about national affairs. A solid majority say they rely ontelevision more than any other media. Television is consistentlychosen as the fairest, most believable, most credible, most reliedupon news source. A plurality of Americans even cite television asthe "most thorough" source of national news.^ Television attractsa massive, heterogeneous audience. No single newspaper or news-paper chain comes close to rivaling the daily exposure of anynetwork news show.

What were these Americans being told by television news aboutthe breakthroughs and struggles of women in the workforce? Thefirst section of this paper reports the results of a content analysisof ten years of network news coverage of sex discrimination inemployment. The findings explain both the priority and characterof coverage of this subject. The second section discusses thesefindings in light of the status of women in network television andother factors influencing the nature of coverage.

METHODOLOGY. A sample was not used. Every story on the sub-ject of women in the workforce and sex discrimination in employmentthat was broadcast on the early evening ABC, NBC, and CBS newsprograms between August 1968 and December 1978 was examined.Vanderbilt University's Television News Index and Abstracts wasused to find the relevant stories. In choosing which stories toselect, the decision-rule was to include stories that seemed mar-ginal. (Consequently, the findings might err in slightly over-estimating the amount of television coverage.)

Videotapes of the stories were then compiled by VanderbiltUniversity's Television News Archive. Content analysis was con-ducted on videotape playback machines at the television news studyfacilites in the Media Resources Department of the George Washing-ton University Library. 6 in addition to the content analysis oftelevision news, comparisons were made with the news agendaspresented in the New York Times and Washington Post during thissame period.

AGENDA. Over the lOi year period, a regular viewer of one of theearly evening network news programs would have encountered astory concerning working women and sex discrimination about onceevery 5 months. This rare story would likely be l i minutes in lengthand placed about two-thirds of the way through the newscast. Datapresented in Table 1 describe the overall agenda positions.

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TABLE 1

AGENDA FINDINGS BY NETWORK, 1968-1978

ABC CBS NBC

Number of sexdiscrimination inemployment stories 25 23 27

Total time(minutes: seconds) 32:30 24:10 55; 40

Average storylength (seconds) 78 63 124

Percent of storiesless than 1 minute 48% 60% 48%

Average positionof story (orderwithin averagetotal number ofstories) 8th of 15 11th of 18 11th of 17

A faithful viewer of CBS news, the most widely watched newsnetwork, would have seen a total of 24 minutes 10 seconds in all tenyears . (See Table 1.) Constant CBS viewers saw 23 stories, eachaveraging one minute in length. NBC's audience saw the most atten-tion given to news about women in the workforce. NBC spent 55minutes 40 seconds on the subject and broadcast 27 stories whichaveraged over two minutes in length. ABC fell between the CBSlow and NBC high. ABC ran 25 stories which averaged about oneand one-third minutes for a total of 32 minutes 30 seconds over tenyears .

The entry of ten million women into the labor force and thelitigation and controversy surrounding discrimination in their employ-ment were not deemed very newsworthy. Over this ten year period,all three networks added together devoted a grand total of 1 hour52 minutes 20 seconds to stories about women in the workforce andsex discrimination in employment. To put this in perspective, thisamount of attention barely exceeded the time given to Paris andinternational fashions in clothing (1 hour 39 minutes).

A year by year examination indicates a small flurry of coverageoccurred in 1970. (See Chart 1.) This reflects the 1970 "mediablitz" that Jo Freeman has noted. ' ' Time and Newsweek featuredthe women's movement on their covers. Selected movement leadersattained celebrity s ta tus . NOW membership soon tripled. The mediavogue continued for a year or so. Television's concern with sex dis-crimination in employment continued at very modest levels throughearly 1972 and then was ignored through much of 1973 and 1974.

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(The NBC peak in the last quarter of 1978 came from SegmentThree features about sex discrimination in jobs.)

Of the 74 stories that were reported, only 28 to 37 percentof them were picture stories. Most of the stories were not con-sidered important enough to warrant an in-depth report. Themajority were studio (or "tell") stories in which the anchor makesa brief ten to thirty second summary without filmed or tapedfootage.

All of these findings confirmed Judith Hennessee's judgmentthat the networks were "making only token headway in gettingtelevised the stories that reflect social changes being made bywomen. "^ The United States Commission on Civil Rights reportentitled Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities inTelevision had also concluded that women's issues are almosttotally ignored by network news. Although its study was basedon a very small sample of newscasts, it was correct in concludingthat discrimination was "among the issues that received the leastattention. "9

Television news obviously is quite constrained by limits oftime. Many issues and events compete for news time. It is equallyclear that the upheaval of women moving into the workforce andsex discrimination in employment was relegated to a "non-issue"for network television. Only 75 stories were run over a periodwhen the three networks together ran well over 120,000 stories.We shall return to this finding later in order to examine severalexplanations for this pattern.

DEPICTION. Despite the absence of anything resembling sustainedcoverage, a closer look at the content of the sporadic stories isinstructive. Almost two-thirds of the stories on sex discrimina-tion in employment concerned litigation. (See Table 2.) SupremeCourt stories (38.7 percent) and lower court stories (25.3 per-cent) provided the basis for most news coverage. Some of thesecourt cases were used as the news peg for a short human interestminute about the women involved. The major court stories covered,however briefly, were pregnancy disability benefits, married stew-ardesses, a discrimination suit over hiring a Georgia school athle-tic director, and a suit over job discrimination due to having pre-school children.

Twelve percent of the stories were about general non-judicialnews about the status and role of women in the workforce. In-cluded here were stories such as the 1970 women's sit-in demandingincreased employment and power for women at the Ladies HomeJournal, opening of First Women's Bank, and the Detroit FeministFederal Credit Union.

Nine percent of the stories were "First Women" stories. Theseincluded coverage given to Diane Crump, the first woman licensedjockey, and Jeanne Holm, highest ranking woman in the ArmedForces.

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TABLE 2

TYPES OF TELEVISION NEWS STORIESABOUT SEX DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT

AND WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE, 1968-1978*

NumberStory Category of Stories Percentage

Supreme Court 29 38.7

Lower Courts 19 25.3

General "Women in

the Workforce" 9 12.0

First Woman 7 g.O

Congress 5 7.0

Miscellaneous 6 8.0

*Total number of stories on all three networks, 1968-1978: over120,000.

Seven percent of the stories were about Congressionaldebate on policies concerning sex discrimination in employment.All of these stories were about Congressional attempts to over-turn the Supreme Court's refusal to require pregnancy benefitsas a part of employee health plans.

A final group of miscellaneous stories in some way related tothe sex discrimination in employment, but could not be assigned tothe previous categories. The "Other" category comprised 8 percentof the total coverage given to women in the workforce. Includedunder this rubric was a story about the assertion of Dr. EdgarBerman, Hubert Humphrey's physician, that women are not as fitfor the job of President as men (chiefly because of the dangers ofa menopausal President) . Also included here were stories aboutemployment guidelines for universities and several commentariesabout the role of women.

Ostensible Support versus Visuals. A second variable coded was aglobal, subjective assessment as to whether the net verbal mes-sage from the news story was positive, neutral, or negative towardthe promotion of job equality in the labor force. Such a highlyjudgmental variable is justifiably subject to a variety of criticisms.Nonetheless, our overall reactions were that the verbal messageswere overwhelmingly supportive or at least neutral toward jobequality. No stories gave predominant emphasis to the messagethat women did not merit job equality. ̂ ^̂

Stories about court litigation gave ample rebuttal time towomen's groups' responses to court decisions and the women'sgroups were given the last word.-^^ The "first woman" storiesusually took an upbeat tone that suggested the triumph of a trail-blazing individual.

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That almost all stories were supportive or neutral towardthese values is not too surprising. In fact, the equal pay forequal work and equal access to jobs became consensus values.After all, no organized interest was actually advocating publiclythat women should systematically be denied equal pay for equalwork. Relatively little time was given to a "man on the street"who said he did not think women should be jockeys or to somewomen at a factory who said they did not mind receiving lesspay and fewer promotions.

Consequently, anyone reading a transcript of these newsstories would be likely to conclude that while the networksdevoted little time to the subject, the stories that were broadcastwere quite supportive. That conclusion would need to be tempered,however, by a consideration of visual coverage. Adams has main-tained that analysis of television news should not overlook the"information" transmitted by the pictures.-^-^ That information maybe discrepant with the audio messages. In the stories that in-volved a close-up of the women involved in court cases, suchvisual-verbal discrepancies were not infrequent.

In a majority of the stories showing women who were victimsof sex discrimination in employment, the visual portrayal is thewoman performing domestic chores. Nora Satty, for example,sued the Nashville Gas Company when she was denied her senior-ity status because of having taken a maternity leave. Satty wona landmark Supreme Court decision and was reinstated with fullseniority and back pay. Viewers are shown film of Satty, preg-nant again, with her two children at her feet, doing chores aroundthe house. (ABC, 12-6-77)

With or without housework, viewers were often shown the"man behind the woman." In a CBS story (6-4-75) on the DetroitFeminist Federal Credit Union, Sharon Lovejoy explained that a"new network of feminist credit unions" was being built aroundthe nation so women could more easily obtain needed credit. Love-joy deplored the fact that "when it comes to getting credit, mostwomen still must have the help of a man." While viewers werehearing these comments they were shown a woman writing anapplication for credit, while her husband looked on with an amusedsmile.

The visual message thus reinforced traditional homemaker,wife, and mother images at the same time the verbal content wassupportive of equal work for equal pay.

A Single Reminder. One additional pattern that is difficult tomeasure with traditional content analysis methods was observed inthe course of watching the compiled videotapes. Many stories thatwere otherwise relatively straightforward and professionally doneincluded one question, or reporter's closer intended to be cute incontext of traditional sex stereotypes. For example, CBS coveredthe news of Jeanne Holm as the first woman general in the AirForce (8-3-71). Bob Schieffer tells the audience that Holm hasbeen "blazing new trails for women for twenty years." The storyreports her responsibilities and activities with the Air Force.

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Holm is shown talking quietly and firmly about her duties. And yet,the story ends on an entirely different note. Schieffer asks Holmabout her date life. "Can a general," he inquires, "go out with acolonel?" Holm smiles tolerantly and replies: "A general can go outwith anybody she wants to."

ERA Echoes. Another pattern observed in these stories was thefrequent mention of the Equal Rights Amendment as a panacea forany problems connected with sex discrimination in employment,even when the story itself had nothing directly to do with theproposed amendment. For example, both ABC and NBC ran storiesabout new legislation before Congress that would require employersto provide sick pay for pregnancy leaves (ABC, 12-8-76, 3-15-77;NBC, 12-15-76, 9-16-77). Typically, the stones end with asenator or representative telling a group of applauding women thatthe country needs ERA to insure the equal status of women. Inso-far as ERA is not the only women's issue and remedies other thanERA were available for these particular issues, the frequent super-ficial tie-in to ERA was curious.

The Woman (Reporterj's Touch. Every ABC story about women inthe workforce was introduced by Barbara Walters during her assign-ment to the anchor desk. Similarly, a disproportionate number ofthe reporters for these stories were women. ABC used 19 male and14 female correspondents, NBC used 6 male and 5 female, whileCBS had 7 male and 1 female. Men who covered the major networkbeats were rarely assigned to these stories. ABC and NBC in par-ticular sent a higher proportion of women reporters, although amajority were still male. Closer scrutiny suggests that the womenwere disproportionately given the feature or "soft" segments, withmen doing the 'hard" news reporting. On NBC, for example, CarlStern detailed a Supreme Court ruling (12-7-76), while in a follow-up story Carol Simpson talked to a group of women about theirreactions (12-15-76).

Content Summary. Network television coverage of women in theworkforce and sex discrimination in employment from the end of 1968through 1978 can be summarized in the following points:

1. Stories averaged U minutes and were placed about two-thirds of the way through the broadcast.

2. Stories were aired sporadically. The largest number ofstories were clustered around 1970 through 1972. Had storiesbeen spread evenly over the ten year period, a viewer would haveencountered only a single brief story about every 5 months.

3. NBC provided the most coverage (over 55 minutes) andCBS the least (24 minutes).

4. A majority (64 percent) of the stories were brief studiostories without the benefit of filmed or tape reports.

5. Almost all of the stories had verbal content that was posi-tive or neutral toward the goal of equal pay for equal work andpositive or neutral toward equal job opportunities for women.

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6. Women who had been victimized by sex discrimination wereoften shown in traditional homemaking contexts.

7. Other patterns in content included a single humorous allu-sion to traditional roles or mating games, a tie-in to ERA, and usingwomen reporters for feature stories.

SEGMENT THREE. Television news, it is often argued, must relyon fast-paced, superficial, dramatic stories using human interestangles and stereotypes. The medium, it is said, requires it. Twostories on NBC in the spring of 1978 respond to that argument asit relates to coverage of women in the workforce. Both storieswere presented in the Segment Three portion of the NBC NightlyNews program (4-10-78, 4-12-78).

The subject of the two-part story was protective discrimination—inequalities alleged to protect women. Edwin Newman was the cor-respondent, an example of feature stories not using women reporters.He detailed the problem of protective discrimination as it affects bothwomen and men. At issue was a prohibition against women workingin areas where dangerous substances might affect their reproductivesystems, while men were given the choice. These more hazardousjobs paid more. Many women had themselves sterilized rather thanface the prospect of losing either the job or the needed extra income.

Both company and worker points of view were presented inthese reports. Scientific viewpoints were provided by Dr. AndreaHricko, an expert in the field of reproductive hazards. Dr. VilmaHunt of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Dr. Eula Bingham,Assistant Secretary of Labor in charge of enforcing the OccupationalSafety and Health Act. All of these women said that the companyposition was not only unfair to women, but to men as well. If con-ditions were present that were hazardous to the health and repro-ductive systems of women, they were, in all probability, hazardousto men as well.

Newman and NBC provided a serious treatment of a complexand sensitive issue. Instead of a twenty-second studio story or aminute, thirty-second filmed story, the Segment Three stories wereover four minutes each. The personal, human interest dimension ofthe story was used but not to the exclusion of either scientificconsiderations or the mention of broader social issues. The solitarypun or put-down was resisted. A woman scientist and women offi-cials were given the opportunity to discuss the situation. Visualimages were consistent with the audio messages. Viewers were notshown women doing the dishes at home; these women were shown atthe factory, doing a rough job, and doing it well.

These two isolated stories stand in sharp contrast to the pre-ceding ten years of coverage. They demonstrate that televisiondoes have the capacity to cover such issues differently than it did.In that light, the sections that foUow examine several explanations asto why television news treated the subject as it did.

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CREATING CONTENT. Television coverage of sex discrimination inemployment may well have been the product of a variety of factors.The following four partial explanations are considered below;

(1) The elite newspaper agenda

(2) Male domination of network news decision-making

(3) Cultural definitions of event news

(4) Consensus values and news controversy

Studies into the process through which television news isselected and shaped have often noted the importance of the elitenewspapers in setting the agenda for television. Virtually everyaccount notes that network assignment editors read the New YorkTimes and the Washington Post at the beginning of each morning.Network assignment editors have never been alleged to set anagenda independent of the Post and the Times. While there arepeople at the networks who argue television news relies too much onthe elite press, their voices have never prevailed.

Network dependence on the Post and Times appears to takethree forms. Lead stories are likely to overlap almost entirely withfront-page high-priority Post and Times stories. Other storiesgiven continuing attention are likely to be those given some degreeof sustained coverage in the early pages of the Post and Times.News that is not "fit to print" however, is also rejected as not fitto broadcast.

This latter argument is especially important for the subject ofjob discrimination. If such news was relegated to only occasional,low-level coverage in the Post and Times, then television's coverageis more predictable. In that event, the low level of coverage wouldbe more characteristic of American journalism generally and notunique to television news. If, on the other hand, such news didmake the front pages of the Post and Times, unique news judgmentsat the networks played a larger role.

Using the yearly indexes for these newspapers, statistics werecompiled on the total number of stories about sex discrimination inemployment and women in the workforce, and the number of storiesin the first three pages. (See Charts 2 and 3.)

The New York Times ran 75 stories on this issue during theIO5 year period under examination. This is almost exactly the sameas the number of stories broadcast on all three television networks.Certainly a story in the Times is more detailed than one on tele-vision, given the old observation that an entire newscast transcriptwould not fill up three columns on the front page of the Times.Thus, while the "paper of record" had many times as much spacedevoted to the subject, it actually offered on a relative basis, muchless coverage than television did. To underscore that point and tomake a fairer comparison, over the entire period the New York Timesonly ran six stories on the subject in the front three pages. Eachnetwork, it was noted earlier, had run at least two dozen stories.

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The Washington Post gave the subject a hig'her priority. -̂̂The Post ran a total of 60 stories between 1971 and 1978, with 17 ofthem appearing in the first three pages.

Newspaper coverage parallels television's 1970-1972 "empha-sis," although the newspaper did run some stories during the 1973-75 period when the networks ignored the subject altogether. Thesurge of stories in the Post in 1977 was not duplicated by the net-works or by the Times.

While there are many topics that get newspaper coverage whilebeing rarely covered by television there are virtually no topics thatreceive television news attention that are non-issues in elite news-papers. Thus, the very low level of visibility in the Times and thePost offer partial explanation for the inattentiveness of television.

Male Domination of Network News Organizations. Data on the com-position of network news staffs are difficult to obtain. Local sta-tions must file reports with the Federal Communications Commissionthat detail such matters, but the networks do not. More informa-tion is available about the people in front of the camera than aboutthose in key decision-making positions behind the camera. As re-cently as 1975, of 187 network correspondents only 17 were women.̂ "̂In the spring of 1979, Gloria Emerson reported that ABC had 45 maleand 10 female correspondents, not including its three anchors andBarbara Walters. NBC, including its two anchors, had 59 men and11 women. CBS refused to provide such information, but was be-lieved to have a larger total number of correspondents than eitherABC or NBC and to employ 16 women correspondents.^^

Off camera, the relative number of women in professional posi-tions and their status appears to have been even lower. SeeingBarbara Walters on the air, viewers might assume she has womencounterparts working behind the scenes. That has not been thecase, however. As the Civil Rights Commission concluded; "womenhave been put in highly visible positions on the air, but withoutcomparable representation in decision-making positions. Thus, thosewho are on the air serve merely as window dressing.''^^

NBC was recently sued for systematically discriminating againstwomen. It was charged that the

unequal distribution of male and female workers throughout theCompany is the result of practices of recruitment, hiring,assignment, and promotion which NBC has developed over timeand which in the past have operated to exclude females fromthe exempt (...i.e., top jobs) applicant poll, to place femalesoverwhelmingly in clerical positions regardless of their quali-fications, and to withhold from them the opportunity to moveup offered to males.-'•^

NBC settled the suit out of court and paid two million dollars inclaims. This story was, by the way, insufficiently newsworthy tomake the "NBC Nightly News."

A few network people have told us the status of women haschanged considerably in the last two or three years. As of 1979,

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however, certain key decision-making posts continued to be maledominated. The executive producers of all three network eveningnews programs were male. The Washington executive producers onall three networks were male. The top New York and Washingtonassignment editors were male. The seven individuals sitting behindthe network anchor desks were males.

The suspicion that such a group would be less interested in atopic such as sex discrimination in employment is of course not proofthat more women in these posts would necessarily result in a differ-ent news agenda. That is the opinion, however, of Sylvia Chase.Telling of a production meeting when "some news stories of particu-lar interest to women were brought up," Chase says "they got shortshrift." The executives, she said, responded that "they would nevercover a story because of pressure, or because they felt a group ofpeople would be annoyed if they didn't . . . . ' ' Chase comes to the firmconclusion that women would make a difference in the news agenda:"If women were in decision-making positions, stories such as these(like sex discrimination) might be covered.''^^

Judith Hennessee has described network assignment desks ashaving a "ghetto mentality" with men making the day-to-day deci-sions about what stories to cover and who should cover them. Sheargues that the stories women wanted were rejected as notnewsworthy. ^^

Trends and Event Definitions of News. Cultural definitions of newshave tied front pages and television news to concrete, singularevents. The classic news story tells the who, what, when, wherefacts about a specific episode. In this version of news, there is nopremium on accounts of long-term trends or reflective discussionsof conditions in society that appear to be of less than crisisproportions.

This general approach to defining news offers another partialexplanation for the paucity of coverage of sex discrimination inemployment and women in the workforce. The ten million additionalwomen that took jobs outside the home did not all start work on thesame day, or hold a massive demonstration to immobilize a city, orattempt a coup d'etat. The problems they faced in hiring and paypromotion, however pervasive, were diffused and daily, not singularand explosive.

Suzanne Pingree and Robert Hawkins examined this factor andconcluded that

we probably can't blame all, or even very much of these biasesagainst women in the news on simple, conscious malevolence(male chauvinism) by male reporters and editors...

Part of the problem women and women's issues have had...is that much of what we would like to see reported is neverevent-news at all. The myriad forms of oppression of womendid not suddenly begin by Presidential decree lastThursday:...^o

The situation is exacerbated by the absence of women in positionsof authority. Actions and comments of people in power are deemed

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newsworthy, but Pingree and Hawkins note "women as potential newsmakers are placed in a very difficult position by this definition ofnews: Most women are denied the decision-making power that wouldmake their actions news, and without power and the consequentprominence, only their most obtrusive actions are newsworthy. "2iComing to the same conclusion, Molotch and Lester comment thatwomen "by virtue of their lack of power.. .must typically assemblethemselves in an inappropriate place at an inappropriate time inorder to be deemed 'newsworthy .'"22

Consensus Values and News Controversy. In addition to these threepartial explanations tor the low level of coverage given news aboutsex discrimination in employment on early-evening network televisionnews, the issue is plagued by an important irony. As noted earlier,no organized interest was openly defending unequal pay or unequalpromotions. Equal pay for equal work and equal access to jobsbecame consensus values among the articulate sector of the public.Debates thus focused not the principle itself but whether or not thefacts indicated the principle was actually violated in a particularsituation.

One favorite comment by people who wanted to distance them-selves from the women's movement, but wanted to demonstrate theirgood faith and reasonableness became: "Of course I agree with someof their goals--like equal job opportunities—but..." (PhyllisSchlafly, for example, has not publicly opposed this particularelement of sex equality.)

The absence of overt conflict over the fundamental principleshas the effect of reducing the attractiveness of the issue for thepurposes of television news. As Epstein noted a decade ago, tele-vision news gives a priority to dramatic conflicts and often relieson a "point-counter-point" portrayal. The Dialectic Model, as Ep-stein called it, is ideal for coverage of elections and issues such asabortion. In such cases, political actors divide neatly into twosides, debate is unambiguously joined, participants disagree onimmediate goals, and the dramatic, emotional conflict fits a classictelevision format for newscasts (as well as "Monday Night Football"and "All in the Family"). To the extent that the issues associatedwith sex discrimination in employment and the movement of womeninto the workforce were not amenable to this dialectical presenta-tion, they were less attractive subjects for television news.

CODA. In the absence of much news on the subject, public opinionIS divided as to whether sex discrimination in jobs is an ongoing factin American life.^^ When Gallup asked if "women have equal jobopportunities with men" in January 1977 responses split evenly.Forty-eight percent said women did have equal job opportunitieswhile forty-eight percent said women did not. When asked in 1976if a woman as able as a man would have as good a chance to becomea top company executive, a majority, fifty-seven percent, said "no."About forty percent said the woman would have an equal chance. ^^

Whatever the source of these opinions, it is unlikely they wereculled from television news. From 1968 through 1978, television'streatment was extremely limited and often non-existent. The fewstories that were aired were generally sympathetic to job equality,

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although visuals often reinforced sex stereotypes and providedsomewhat different messages than the spoken story. The limitedcoverage may be explained by the limited treatment found in elitenewspapers, male domination of network news decision-making,cultural definitions of event news, and the absence of certain kindsof political conflicts. NBC's Segment Three stories offered a sharpcontrast with the usual approach and demonstrated that superficial,stereotypical coverage was neither inevitable nor "inherent" intelevision news.

Numerous social and political Issues have intensified as aresult of the dramatic change in the number and roles of women inthe workforce. Those labor-force related issues--and some of theircorollary isues—are continuing ones that were not confined to thedecade of the Seventies. An estimated one million women will jointhe American labor force each year in the 1980s. If current patternscontinue those women will receive lower wages than men in similarjobs, will be more unemployed than men, will be disproportionatelysegregated into "women's work," and will be especially penalized bythe tax structure and social security. 25

In a recent Urban Institute volume that documents these andother relationships among employment, women and public policies,William Gorham calls the "revolutionary change" associated withworking women "at times dimly perceived," "a phenomenon not easilygrasped as a whole," and a "subtle revolution. "26 At least one keyreason this revolution has been so very subtle has been made clearby the findings presented in this article. The national news sourcethat Americans relied on the most was telling them very little.

NOTES

1. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States;1978 (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978).

2. Maxwell McCorabs and Donald L. Shaw, "The Agenda-SettingFunction of Mass Media," Pufilic Opinion Quarterly, 36 (Summer1972): 176-187; Donald L. Shaw and Maxwell McCombs, The Emergenceof American Political Issues: The Agenda-Setting Function ofthe Press (St. Paul, Minn.: West, 1977).

3. Shaw and McCombs, ibid., pp. 89-105.

4. Philip Palmgreen and Peter Clarke, "Agenda-Setting withLocal and National Issues," Communications Research, 4 (October1977): 435-452.

5. Roper Organization, "Changing Public Attitudes TowardTelevision and Other Mass Media, 1959-1977" (New York: TelevisionInformation Office, 1977).

6. For a detailed account of television news archive holdingsaccess, and policies, see Fay Schreibman, "Television News Archives;A Guide to Major Collections," in William Adams and Fay Schreibman,eds., Television Network News: Issues in Content Research (Wash-ington, D.C.I School of Public and International Affairs, GeorgeWashington University, 1978}, pp. 89-110.

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7. Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation (New York:David McKay, 1975), p. 148.

8. Judith Hennessee, "TV: Some News is Good News," MS(July, 1974): 28.

9. United States Commission on Civil Rights, Window Dressingon the Set: Women and Minorities in Television (Washington, D.C.:U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 50. See also. WindowDressing on the Set: An Update (Washington, D.C: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, 1979).

10. One commentary by Howard K. Smith (ABC, 8-25-70) was sopatronizing, however, that it almost belonged in a special cate-gory. Intercoder reliability for the global assessment variablewas .92, as calculated by the percent agreement between the twocoders (the authors); intercoder reliability for the story subjectvariable was .97.

11. For these "feminist point of view" reactions, the net-works went to women they identified, usually without explainingtheir exact title or role, as "leaders" in the women's movement.The favorite source was Susan Ross. Although certainly not theonly feminist attorney in the country, thanks to her book. TheRights of Women, Ross was the constant network authority onfeminist law.

12. William C. Adams, "Visual Analysis of Newscasts: Issuesin Social Science Research," in William Adams and Fay Schreibman,eds.. Television Network News: Issues in Content Research (Wash-ington, D.C: School of Public and International Affairs, GeorgeWashington University, 1978), pp. 155-173.

13. The Washington Post index goes back only through 1971.

14. Media Reports to Women, October 1, 1977, p. 7.

15. Gloria Emerson, "New Era for Women in TV News," Look(April 16, 1979): 11.

16. Plaintiff's arguments cited in Media Reports to Women,March 1, 1975, p. 1.

17.

18. Cited in Judith Hennessee, op. cit., p. 28.

19. Ibid.

20. Suzanne Pingree and Robert Hawkins, "News Definitions andTheir Effects on Women," in Laurily Keir Epstein, ed., Women andthe News (New York: Hastings House, 1978), p. 121.

21. Ibid., p. 122. ,

22. Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester, "Accidents, Scandals,and Routines: Resources for Insurgent Methodology," in GayeTuchman, ed., The TV Establishment: Programming for Power andPJ^ofit (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 57.

23. The findings reported here suggest the relevance to tele-vision news of Robert Maynard's conclusion regarding newspapercoverage of women's issues: "It is hard to say whether newspapercoverage of women's issues would be part of the solution, but it isalmost certain that ignoring these issues is part of the problem."Washington Post, July 19, 1973, p. 18.

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24. For polls on women in the labor force, see Connie de

Boer, "The Polls: Women at Work," Public Opinion Quarterly 41(1977): 268-277.

25. Ralph Smith, ed., The Subtle Revolution: Women at Work(Washington, D.C: Urban Institute, 1979).

26. Ibid., p. ix.

POLITICAL RISKS IN AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTAND FOOD POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EASTMarvin G. Weinbaum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes agricultural and food policies in theMiddle East. The author finds that they are inescapably political.He attributes them primarily to governmental decisional stylesthat are impatient with incremental solutions yet wedded to mini-mal risk strategies.

The major constraints on agricultural and food policies in theMiddle East, familiarly conceived as physical and technological, ordescribed in economic or social terms, are also inescapably politi-cal. Few programs to increase a^icultural production or assureadequate levels of food consumption take place without public sectormanagement. Throughout the region, as elsewhere in the ThirdWorld, national-level policy makers are indispensable as instigatorsand facilitators of change. Whatever the origins or ostensible objec-tives of policies, the important choices invariably pass before policyelites whose frames of reference include salient and sometimes deci-sive personal motives, ideologies and interest demands. Seemingtechnological decisions incorporate social values, institutional roles,and political judgments. Government policies supposedly dictatedby economic imperatives are often more accurately the price exactedby ascendant domestic interests. Agricultural and developmentstrategies apparently frustrated by societal attitudes and norms areno less encumbered by competing bureaucracies and the exigenciesof regime survival.

Inadequate resources, information and administrative skillsusually take the blame when public policy objectives fall short.Where sustained commitment and full implementation are absent, asis characteristic of many agricultural and food policies in the MiddleEast, the problem is also apt to be described in terms of politicalwill. Lack of conviction or poor leadership sometimes accounts forambivalence and hesitation. More often, the failure of policy makersto employ available resources, information and skills is conscious andpurposeful. A weak political will reflects policy makers' reluctanceto assume risks where political costs are more calculable than tangiblebenefits. Natural constraints make even the best intentioned effortsin the agricultural sector problematic. Limits imposed by economic

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