Women in Media

The 4th Estate, an American research group, released a study about media which shows that in the reports on issues concerning women, such as abortion or birth control, men tend to be quoted five times more than women. 

In the stories about abortion written in the national newspapers, such as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, about 81% quotes come from men, but only 12% from women and 7% from organizations. 

When concerning the stories about birth control, men had 75% of the quotes, whereas women had 19% and organizations 6%. 

As for the women’s rights topics, women got about 31% of the quotes, men 52% and organizations 17%. 

Men are also dominant when it comes to the elections, economy and foreign policy. When considering broadcasting, men had about 80% of quotes during the election shows on national television. 

Another study, so called The OpEd Project, demonstrates that the majority of opinion columns are written by men as well.

The whole article can be found here. 

And here is info about a four week study of nine national British newspapers, carried out by an organization called Women in Journalism: it showed that 78% of articles on the front pages have men authors and about 84% of those quoted or mentioned are men. Only 16% belonged to women, who were mostly victims or celebrities. 

As far as photographs are concerned – if there was a photo of a powerful woman, e.g. a politician, it was not a flattering one. 

Harriet Hartman, the deputy leader of the Labour party, says that media should be unbiased, and she asks a question how British journalism can be objective, when most of the reports about men in parliament are written by men. 

There have been issues concerning how BBC treats women – how ageism and sexism is reflected on TV screens. There is also a problem with the shortage of women in broadcasting, especially news. 

As a woman, I find this situation very unsatisfying. I think women should be represented in media more.

A "Who's Who" of American conservatives

Talking Points Memo has a slideshow with pictures of America's leading conservatives. If you follow American politics, you will see the names of these people a lot (or, sometimes, will be reading their work). Since this is a slideshow, you need to click the little buttons along the top to move from picture to picture. It's a bit unfortunate for our purposes that the captions explain what these individuals are doing now -- basically, fighting each other over the future of the Republican Party -- and not the backgrounds that made them famous: for instance, it's not mentioned that Karl Rove, who is at the center of that fight, was the chief political strategist to President George W. Bush. Still, if you like "putting face to names," this is helpful.

Strange Laws

Although laws are often exaggerated or misinterpreted we can come across countless exceptionally weird ones that are still in effect.  Their peculiarity often lies in violation of common sense especially from today’s perspective. Here is a few of them you can purportedly encounter in the States but a large number of similar and rather bizarre laws provided with an interesting commentary can be found here.

In Youngstown, Ohio, you may not run out of gas.

In Nevada, sex without a condom is considered illegal.

In Everett, Washington, it is illegal to display a hypnotized or allegedly hypnotized person in a store window.

In Arizona, there is a possible 25 years in prison for cutting down a cactus.

Facebook sued

It seems that Facebook has some problems with being sued now. Apparently, the "Like" button which we all know so well had been patented some five years before there was even a mention of a Facebook - in 1998. There was a site called Surfbook which was the first to use this button and according to Rembrandt Social Media which acts for the widow of the "inventor" of this button, Facebook is now using it for free and without any consent from their side.

The State of the Union address

Early in every year the US president gives a "State of the Union" address to the Congress. This is a formal occasion and usually a long speech setting out what the president thinks needs to be done; basically, he's asking for Congress' cooperation with his agenda for the nation. President Obama gave this speech yesterday evening. Key points are summarized here, along with links to a full transcript and a video of the address. Andrew Sullivan, one of the bloggers included in your Google Reader "bundle," rounds up various reactions from other commentators here, and Talking Points Memo, another of your bundled sources, sent a reporter to watch the speech along with some "undocumented" (also called "illegal") immigrants, who were particularly interested in what Obama would say about the immigration issue since it could affect them directly. It's useful to be aware of this speech because it's one view of what the key issues in America currently are -- not the only view, of course, but for obvious reasons an influential one.

Gay Marriage

Maybe some of you noticed that on 5/2 MPs approved same-sex marriage in England and Wales. However, the battle is far from over.

"The White South's Last Defeat"

Very important to understanding American culture and politics: the role of the South. Michael Lind discusses where this stands since since the election.

"20 words we owe to William Shakespeare"

A surprising list of words that appear in English for the first time in Shakespeare's plays. "Manager"? Really? I would never have guessed.  /:-|

British Conservatives and the EU

David Cameron recently gave a major speech on Europe, promising a referendum on Britiain's membership in the European Union. This was widely seen as a bold move. Andrew Rawnsley, a political analyst for the Observer newspaper, says it will prove "disastrous" and backfire, splitting Cameron's Conservative ("Tory") Party and making it harder for Cameron and the Tories to win re-election in 2015. British Conservatives have been divided over the EU for at least 30 years now; it was those divisions that prompted Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's colleagues to force her resignation in 1990.

Barack Obama's second inaugural

President Obama was sworn in for a second term in late January and delivered the traditional inaugural address. It can be read at that link, or seen on video here.

There has been plenty of commentary on the speech and what it means for American politics in the next several years. One point of disagreement among commentators is whether the speech represents a manifesto for a renewed "liberalism" or not. In The New Republic magazine (generally liberal, but with a diverse group of writers), Alan Brinkley suggests that it does. But writing in the same magazine, Michael Kazin takes a different view, pointing out various "festering failures of politics and policy" that Obama seems to recognize but isn't really promising to do much about.

Both those writers are liberals and probably Obama supporters themselves. Conservatives, Republicans and opponents of Obama, of course, disagree even more sharply with the president and for different reasons.