ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604190074
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ARLINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Women make up 52 percent of the U.S. population but are involved in only 15 percent of front-page newspaper stories, according to a survey sponsored by Women, Men and Media.
Men's voices, activities and images comprised 85 percent of the references on newspapers' front pages, and also dominated the local and business pages, according to the report released last week.
The figure for women in last year's survey was 19 percent.
Women, Men and Media monitors how women are covered, hired and promoted in the press. It is co-chaired by Betty Friedan and Nancy Woodhull and financed mainly by The Freedom Forum.
``A free press in a democracy should reflect all its voices. None should be invisible. The press needs to focus on this trend toward the invisibility of women and their concerns,'' said Woodhull. She is senior vice president of the Arlington-based Freedom Forum and executive director of its Media Studies Center in New York City.
The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center is a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, education, research and training.
Twenty newspapers were surveyed in February for female references, bylines and photographs. The survey looked at front pages, opinion pages, and the first pages of the business and local sections.
When females were covered, more than half were victims or perpetrators of crimes or bad conduct - women and girls were murdered, missing or abused; females were accused of crime; women died; and Britain's Princess Diana announced she was getting divorced.
Fewer than 1 percent of the references in front-page political stories were to women, and women in power received little coverage, either as newsmakers or as sources, the report said.
Women had 35 percent of the bylines in the study, up from 34 percent last year, and were in 33 percent of the photos, unchanged from 1995.
The survey found that 60 percent of the articles about Hillary Rodham Clinton were negative. It found little significant coverage of Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash.; Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both D-Calif., or Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., in major newspapers in their states.
Laura Tyson, President Clinton's top economic adviser, and New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, along with leading female economists and analysts, had little presence in stories about the economy, the report said.
Paul Luthringer, spokesman for the Newspaper Association of America, said he could not comment without seeing the report. Efforts to reach other association officials Monday night for comment were unsuccessful.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB