First it was Diane Sawyer, hired away from her high-profile post as the only female correspondent ever assigned to CBS`s ”60 Minutes” for a shot, potentially, at an even higher profile at ABC. There she will be paired with Sam Donaldson in what network wags have dubbed ”Cheers II: The Sam and Diane Show.”
Then it was Connie Chung, leaving NBC after two months of intense negotiations and the chance to develop the new news magazine, ”Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” to CBS, where she will be sole anchor of ”West 57th Street.” Mary Alice Williams, one of Cable News Network`s brightest stars, jumped to NBC and the job Chung rejected.
Wealth, fame, power, success. As the cigarette ad says: ”You`ve come a long way, Baby.” Yet Sawyer, Chung and Williams are celebrity journalists-superstars in or on the threshold of a millionaire-anchor club heretofore dominated by males. For women in television`s rank and file, another epigram, written nearly 150 years ago by French author-journalist Alphonse Karr, is more applicable:
”The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Things have changed for women in television news since 1983, when Kansas City anchor Christine Craft-fired for being, in her words, ”too old, too unattractive and not deferential enough to men”-filed her landmark discrimination suit. But too much, perhaps, has remained the same, making network women restive, if not actually in open revolt.
” `Happy` would not describe all of us right now,” said Ann Rubenstein, an NBC correspondent based in New York.
”When my gentlemen friends start complaining about diminishing roles for white males, I find it hard to commiserate,” said Beverly Lumpkin, who covers the Justice Department in Washington as an ”off-air” reporter for ABC.
”I have noticed that Peter Jennnings tends to say, `Tim Wooten covers Capitol Hill for ABC,` ” said Sheilah Kast, who handles the House of Representatives, while Wooten takes care of the Senate. ”I haven`t heard him say that about me. I want to do a good job of reporting what I`m assigned to report, as opposed to fighting over this little piece of glory or that little piece of glory, but it is the sort of thing that tends, over time, to weigh you down.”
Only at CBS, where women finally outnumber men in the Washington bureau, is there an upbeat note.
”At my network, we`re standing pretty high,” said CBS Justice Department correspondent Rita Braver, pegged in a recent study at Southern Illinois University as the most rapidly rising female star in the business.
”We have three women who are correspondents (Braver, Susan Spencer and Leslie Stahl). Our senior producer is a woman, our bureau chief is a woman, and we have two women in senior slots for the `Evening News.`
”We only have three men in the Washington bureau who are in senior management positions at this point. That may be the next story: How are men doing in television news?”
Joe Foote, who heads the department of radio and television at Southern Illinois, found nothing in his study to support such levity.
”I looked at every single story women did on the evening news (of all three networks) from 1983 to 1987,” Foote said. ”I found there were a lot of women on the air, but they were grouped into the lower center of the spectrum. There were very few at the top.
”Of correspondents who reported at least 25 times on the news (during the five-year period), 85 percent were men and 15 percent were women. There was a pretty static environment for women. You think about all this steady movement for women, but this study didn`t show that.”
Capital is the Big Beat
Foote said that regardless of gender, however, an ambitious television journalist would do well to fight for assignment in Washington.
”Leslie Stahl was one of the most visible women when she was at the White House, and when she went off the White House beat to do `Issues and Answers,` she dropped out,” Foote said. ”Now she`s back at the White House, so maybe she`ll come back up again. My main conclusion is, it`s where you`re assigned.
”The top 10 correspondents were all from Washington. If you`re not in Washington, you`re not going to get high visibility on the news. Rita Braver has gone steadily up in all five years (of the study). She definitely is the rising star in news.”
With such status, it is little wonder that Braver sees no ”tokenism” or discrimination at CBS.
”There`s not a feeling at all here that anybody is ever going to say,
`That`s an awful big job for a little girl,` which is something I once heard, way back when,” she said. ”It`s not an old boys` network here anymore. There are a few old girls now.”
But what will happen to the ”old girls” when their hair gets as gray as Dan Rather`s, and when their faces begin to bear the lines that traditionally make men ”distinguished”? Kast, who is active on ABC`s Women`s Advisory Board, charged with carrying any complaints to news president Roone Arledge, is worried.
”We don`t know how the networks are going to react to 50-year-old women,” she said. ”There is a wave of us around 40 that they seem to be coping with, though we have seen some women get on less frequently, then be switched to something else as they age. I want to see a woman with gray in her temples who noticeably could be, if not a grandmother, at least the mother of teenagers.”
At NBC, where the frustration level among women probably runs highest now, News President Michael Gartner recently called for formation of two
”task forces,” one on women and one on members of minority groups. Network spokesman Curt Block said no conclusions were expected for perhaps two years. ”Right now, 40 percent of NBC News professionals and management are women,” he said. ”We`re trying to bring that up to 50 percent.”
Andrea Mitchell, the network`s highest-ranking Washington correspondent, who recently switched from the White House to the State Department, said such action is overdue.
”Women are taking increasingly prominent roles in some of the anchor responsibilities, but there are still far too few women involved in prominent beat assignments, and far too few being retained regularly on the premier newscasts,” she said. ”I think a lot of women at the network level have been frustrated by their lack of access to major beats. It`s true of all the networks.”
Mitchell, however, made it clear that she is frustration-free on her new beat.
”I`m delighted with my current assignment,” she said. ”I`ve been given a wonderful opportunity to carve out the beat for NBC in a way that`s not been done in the past. . . After eight years in a very confined space, I`ve discovered there is a whole world outside the White House.”
NBC`s Rubenstein did not place all the blame for low-level female roles at the network`s doorstep.
”The company clearly is in transition,” she said. ”Women in broadcast journalism took some big hits in the Reagan years, and I wouldn`t presume for a second that it`s just women in broadcast journalism. (The Reagan era) was very pro-business, with business calling the shots. They did things like disband affirmative action, and that sent messages.”
`We`re there for the distance`
In keeping with the growing prominence of women at CBS, early-morning reporter Faith Daniels said:
”We`ve come a long way and we`re there for the distance,” she said. ”I don`t think we`re at the finish line. The sexes are not necessarily equal yet, but if anything we`ve demonstrated that we`re marathoners.”
A high corporate official at NBC, who asked not to be identified, may have summed up the picture best:
”I think you probably could talk to some women who are unhappy,” she said. ”You could probably find some guys who are unhappy, too. That`s the network business. We all have a well-developed sense of personal worth, and we all have this feeling that our own sense of personal worth is not equaled by the company.
”Ego has never been a small problem among those of us who work in television.”
