Media Continues to Be Dominated by White Dudes, Says Depressing Report

The Women’s Media Center released their 2014 Status of Women in U.S. Media Report yesterday, and the findings are, disappointingly, pretty much what you’d expect. Over the past three years, women’s visibility in media has remained largely the same (i.e. disproportionately low), with women—particularly women of color—actually losing ground in some areas. Though the report cites Shonda Rhimes and Jill Abramson as heartening success stories, the overall data “suggest a troubling status quo and, in some places, a slipping back in time.” Just white dudes whitin’ around, as usual. Sigh.

Here are some highlights from the report (which you can download in full here):

– White men continued to dominate the ranks of Sunday morning news talk show guests, except on a single MSNBC show with a black female host.

– More than 150 print publications and websites covering sports—an arena whose editors are 90 percent white and 90 percent male—were slammed with an “F” in an Associated Press Sports Editors-commissioned study.

– Over a five-year period ending in 2012, the 500 top-grossing movies had 565 directors, 33 of whom were black and two of that 33 were black women.

– Women represent 28.8 percent of speaking characters in the top-grossing films in 2012.

– Only six percent of the top 100 films in 2012 hired a balanced cast of women and men.

– For production of the 250 top-grossing domestically made films of 2013, women accounted for 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors, slightly lower than the 2013 and 1998 figures.

– According to a two-month snapshot in 2013, men wrote 82 percent of all film reviews.

– Women snared 43 percent of speaking parts in prime-time TV, according to the latest study, up from 41 percent previously. Those women, however, tended to be much younger than their male acting counterparts.

Attention, anti-feminists and anti-anti-racists: this is what we are referring to when we discuss measurable inequality. This is why we are sooooooooooo bitchy. I know this is purely anecdotal (and at least partially due to my shitty searching skills), but right now I can’t even find a STOCK PHOTO of a black female journalist with which to illustrate this post. Cool story, bros. Tell me again about our post-racial society and how feminists want “special rights.”