How the Media Deal With Sex

Although Shaw chooses to conclude his series by stating that “it would be rank sexism to suggest that reporters of either sex have a monopoly on intelligence, sensitivity, frankness or virtually any other quality,” the slant of his second article, it seems to me, is that there is something called “a female perspective” that can affect the production of news. He writes, for example, “Perhaps it is no wonder then that most male editors tend to be more squeamish and more ambivalent about coverage of sexually charged issues than do most women.”

Research I have conducted on students at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and UC Davis contradicts this notion of a female perspective in journalism. Students were quite consistently unable to correctly identify whether newspaper stories were written by male or female reporters.

STEPHEN HESS, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.