News and Feminism: A Historic Dialog

Mediation involves the movement of meaning from one text to another, from one discourse to another, from one event to another. It involves the constant transformation of meanings... - Roger Silverstone (1999) Why Study The Media? The relationship between news media and social movements is a critically important element in our understanding of social change. Though new ideas germinate and coalesce in communities, it is through their circulation and mediation through popular culture, especially through news, that challenging ideas are mobilized into the larger public sphere (Barker-Plummer, 2000; Kielbowicz and Scherer, 1986; Rochon, 1998; Ryan, 1991). How news media approach, engage with, and mediate social movement claims makes a critical difference to how these groups are perceived by publics or policy makers, and ultimately to the success or failure of movements for social change (Barker-Plummer, 2000; Bruck, 1992; Gamson and Wolfsfeld, 1993; Gitlin, 1980). The U.S. women's movement's historical interaction with news media is an especially rich and interesting case study. While the women's movement has been recognized as one of the most transformative movements of the 20m century, its public mediation remains very problematic. Secondwave feminists challenged fundamental gender relations at work and at home, in relationships, in education, in credit, the law, religion, sport and the professions (Brownmiller, 1999; Freeman, 1975; Hole and Levine, 1971; Hartmann, 1989; Katzenstein and Mueller, 1987; Rosen, 2000), but they were often ignored or ridiculed in the press, especially in the early years (Ashley and Olson, 1998; Douglas, 1994). Feminists added new issues to the agenda and systematically publicized and politicized experiences, such as sexual harassment, marital and date rape, for example, that had previously been relegated to the privacy of intimate relations, thereby subtly but radically extending the range of what can legitimately be considered a political issue at all (Fraser, 1990, 1992; Habermas, 1981; McLaughlin, 1993; Offe, 1985). However, retaining the seriousness of these issues in public discourse has been a continual struggle as journalists often reframe what feminists see as structural issues into interpersonal he said- she said contests (Cuklanz, 1996; Vavrus, 2002; Worthington, 2008). And, while some feminist frames for experience, for example, sex discrimination, have been taken up generally and have profoundly refrained our understanding of gendered inequality at work, other feminist ideas, such as the problematizing of hegemonic masculinity and its articulation to violence have been sidestepped or undermined in much media coverage (Benedict, 1992; Meyers, 1997). Feminism's historical interaction with media has been marked both by moments of progressive publicity and by persistent ideological containment, by positive and legitimating coverage in some contexts, and by marginalization and ridicule in others, leading to what often seems to be a very contradictory historical narrative (Barakso and Schaffner, 2006; Byerly, 1999; Mendes, 2011; Rhode, 1995). What accounts for this contradictory narrative? How do we explain both the moments of breakthrough and the sense of consistent containment expressed in studies of feminism and media? Are we witnessing the slow, but gradual, incorporation of feminist views over time? Or is news systematically containing feminism? This essay engages with these questions through an analytical review of the literature around news media and the women's movement in the United States from the last 40 years. Drawing on scholarly studies of feminism in media, and extending beyond these to also incorporate accounts of feminists and media from published histories, memoirs, and interviews by the feminists and journalists who were involved, it traces and discusses what is known about the problematic public construction of second- and thirdwave feminism in U. …