By Kelly Glista
In today’s media environment, an abundance of information is accessible via newspapers, television and the Internet-however, how Americans perceive news varies from source to source.
Being an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, freelance writer, media critic and author, Dr. Kristal Brent Zook, urged her audience to examine where they get their news during “Soldiers, Strippers and Soundbites: The Representation of Women in the Media” on the second floor of the Axinn Library Wednesday night.
According to Zook’s presentation, most American households get their information from local television stations and newspapers, with a dominant focus on crime and accidents. Zook then asserted that news organizations are failing to provide a deeper analysis about their stories and subjects, leaving a lack of information for historical documentation in years to come.
“Well, we’re not [and] that’s the problem,” she said.
Many large news corporations, both print and broadcast, are moving away from reporting and toward gathering, said Zook, citing that in Philadelphia about half of working reporters had been cut in the last 25 years, leaving fewer writers out in the field.
As a writer for Essence magazine, Zook highlighted two of her major articles in her lecture. One, titled “They Never Made it Home,” focused on 26 black women who died serving in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan that the mainstream media either mentioned briefly or not at all.
She said that the important thing about each of their stories was that it provided a context not often heard in war coverage. Zook repeatedly mentioned the rhetorical question “why did she join?” -emphasizing the lack of background on the human aspect of modern war stories.
One of the women in the article, Tyanna Avery-Felder, was killed in Iraq when an explosive hit the vehicle she was traveling in. Felder had joined the service to help pay for her schooling after finishing only one year of college at the same school her older sister had dropped out of because of financial constraints. She wanted to overcome the obstacles her sister had faced.
“If we had more of these perspectives and these human faces would we be where we are today?” Zook said.
Zook also wrote about missing African-American women, and covered the Duke Lacrosse case, spending more time with the accuser’s family than any other reporter. She said the lack of dedication on the part of journalists and news corporations is one of the main problems with the media today.
Being a journalist, as well as a published author, Zook has written two books, one entitled “Color by Fox and Black Women’s Lives,” both related to the subjects of race and media. Her next book will be about the issue of ownership regarding minority and gender studies.
“It’s important to know what corporate affiliations the media has, because that’s who is really controlling what gets the most coverage,” Zook said.
To be empowered citizens, Zook supported the idea that being knowledgeable about world issues also involves a certain moral foundation for decision-making. She said that the media should be that source for world perspectives.
“Without it [the media],” she said, “We’re never truly free.”
Columbia University professor, Kristal Brent Zook, discusses women’s representation in media.