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A&F
Female reporters fight sexism in the workplace
GRETCHEN LEDFORD
Contributor
gledford@unca.edu
Asheville journalist Jennifer
Bowman said investigative news
stories do not come tied up with a
big shiny bow magically conjured
by reporters out of thin air and pub
lished the next day.
“Documents tell the story —
numbers, facts, figures,” Bowman
said, “It’s not sexy like they make
it in the movies. It doesn’t happen
to a music montage in the span of
a few minutes. But more often than
not, the best stories lie hidden in a
records request, and you’ve got to
be willing to work at it.”
Cue applause from a long line
of female journalists, going all the
way back to the first investigative
journalist, Ida Tarbell, in the early
1900s. Hard work — not sex —
makes a great reporter.
A scant 10 days into her new
job as the Buncombe County gov
ernment reporter for the Asheville
Citizen Times, Bowman faced one
of the biggest scandals ever report
ed upon in the mountains. The FBI
was investigating the former coun
ty manager, Wanda Greene, for in
appropriate financial transactions.
“Only a few days into the job,
and I am still trying to set up first
meetings with commissioners and
county staff just to introduce my
self. I wasn’t able to finish that list
before I just had to start asking peo
ple about one of the most contro
versial stories ever,” Bowman said,
grimacing at the memory.
Bowman admits it was not just
her relatively new face on the the
scene creating difficulties. Usually,
she gets some time to build creden
tials with sources.
“I am young. I’m friendly and
sometimes they don’t understand
when the young and friendly wom
an is asking you, ‘Why didn’t you
know about these questionable fi
nancial expenditures?”’ Bowman
said.
According to journalist Geneva
Overholser and professor Kathleen
Jamieson, from the nation’s found
ing, the press has been the watch
Jennifer Bowman, a reporter with the Citizen Times, said she and
other women faced discrimination in the workplace.
dog for the masses, raking through
the muck to expose the source. Yet,
according to research from wom
en’s media organizations when that
same eye turns inward, many of the
issues glare right back.
Bowman graduated from San
Diego State University six years
ago. She said while her female pro
fessors gave plenty of advice about
arguing for fair pay as a woman,
other possible difficulties were nev
er mentioned.
“I'm not sure I ever had any talks
in college courses about how to
handle how women are harassed,
which I think is prevalent especially
in media,” Bowman said. “Maybe
that should have been talked about.
Maybe that was ignored. A missing
gap in my career.”
Behind the stories, female re
porters say, “Me too”
In recent months, reporters have
called out men in power for their
sexist treatment of women, start
ing with Harvey Weinstein. While
the movement echoed back into the
cave from which it came, the same
excuses are heard from within: “A
different time, a different culture.”
Barb Blake, who retired from the
Citizen Times in 2014, saw many
changes in the newsroom during
her 40 years there. In an email cor
respondence she described a news
room where most of the women
were put on “women’s pages” —
covering society news, food, wed
dings and the like.
“One of my, not official but
clearly expected, duties was to
fetch coffee from the back shop for
my city editor throughout the night.
Our desks backed up to each oth
er, and when he was in need of a
refill, he swung his arm out with
his empty mug in his hand and sim
ply said, ‘More coffee, dear,’ never
even looking up. This was at the be
ginning of my career, mid-'70s, and
I was so young and naive I proba
bly didn't question it then,” Blake
wrote in an email.
According to Blake, getting cof
fee was not the worst of it. In addi
tion to various sources who would
drape their arms around her in un
comfortable ways, she faced ha
rassment within the office as well.
“There was one older staff mem
ber, covered religion, of all things,
who was a verbal lecher, always
making semi-lewd remarks in a
whispery, Barry White-esque voice
in the elevator, or he'd call on the
phone from across the newsroom to
say how lovely I was looking today
in that sexy blouse, or whatever,”
she wrote.
In a 2013 study of about 1,000
female reporters, the International
Women’s Media Foundation found
nearly half reported sexual harass
ment on the job and 14 percent ex
perienced sexual violence.
Jennifer Forsyth, the deputy chief
of investigations at The Wall Street
Journal and part-time Asheville
resident, wrote in an email that for
many women field work can be
dangerous.
“When I was a reporter in the
field, I tried to be sure that I didn’t
meet alone with a source unless ab
solutely necessary, by taking along
a photographer or a colleague, and
that my bosses knew where I was at
all times,” she wrote.
Fox News contributor Geraldo
Rivera gave a different perspective
in his response to former NBC To
day Show anchor Matt Lauer’s ac
cusers.
“News is a flirty business,” Rive
ra tweeted.
Yet the same study from the In
ternational Women’s Media Foun-
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