c. 1999 Religion News Service
(Frances Kissling is president of Catholics for a Free Choice, an independent group that supports reproductive rights for women.)
UNDATED _ Pope John Paul II is coming to the United States and thus it is time for newspapers to do some soul-searching. How will they cover the visit?
Will they follow past history and ignore women as sources of serious commentary? Or will they show they are truly committed to fairness and gender equity in news coverage by bucking precedent and giving women equal space? Will they focus on substance or fluff?
For those of us interested in seeing women included in the news media, few events rival the frustration and disappointment occasioned by news coverage of a papal visit.
The last time John Paul journeyed to the United States, in October 1995, Catholics for a Free Choice commissioned an independent, professional study to quantify and analyze news coverage of the event. We hoped that by sharing a quantification of the problem with reporters and editors, future coverage might be positively affected.
The survey examined 205 stories from 12 news organizations, including The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, several smaller dailies and three wire services. The analysis examined how the press covered the pope’s tour in general and determined the extent of the disparity between male and female points of view in coverage of specific substantive issues.
The study documented an overwhelming reliance on male voices _ a 64 percent male to 36 percent female imbalance. This disproportion was evident when looking at all the stories written in relation to the papal visit, including”soft”news and feature stories.
But it was starkly manifest in stories dealing with substantive matters that require the input of experts, analysts and commentators. In this class of stories, 79 percent of experts quoted were men.
It was as though women capable of providing informed commentary and thoughtful analysis do not exist, and this is not the case.
While the church is undeniably male dominated _ since women are locked out of positions that require ordination to the priesthood _ there are many women theologians, pastoral leaders, church employees and others who can ably comment from a range of perspectives and with diverse opinions from the most liberal to the most conservative and everywhere in between.
The study revealed scant attention to some of the most vital issues U.S. Catholics are dealing with. Substantive topics were the central focus of less than one-quarter of the stories examined. Many of these matters are, at their core, women’s stories, and if women were consulted, these strands would be discovered.
They include hot-button issues such as divorce, contraception, assisted reproduction, abortion, and even euthanasia, by which women _ society’s primary caregivers from birth to death _ are disproportionately affected. Substantive matters also include the future of the priesthood, in which the question of women’s ordination is central.
The news media have two important tasks: one, to reflect reality as it exists; and two, to examine that reality, its causes, implications, and appropriateness. In their coverage of Catholicism, the media do not adequately fulfill either responsibility.
Written mainly by men, about men, as if for men, most stories about Catholicism occasioned by a papal visit mirror the exclusively male hierarchy. This neglect of women’s voices makes it all the more likely the agenda set by church officials will go unchallenged.
In distributing the report of our survey widely throughout the news media, we hoped we would never again see a story about women’s ordination to the Catholic priesthood that failed to quote a single woman. We hoped that when the pope returned for a visit to an American city, fewer news reports would focus on his plane, his popemobile, his garments, and more would hone in on the issues at the heart of Catholicism in the United States today.
With the arrival of the Pope in St. Louis just days away, we’ll soon see.
DEA END KISSLING
