Friday, December 15, 2006

Women in the news

No, this isn't a post about Condi Rice...or Paris Hilton.

I've just come across an item at the CBS News blog written by Margaret Lowrie Robertson. Margaret is now a novelist--click here to read the "page 69" take on her debut novel, Season of Betrayal--but she used to be a correspondent for CNN and CBS. Her blog post opens:
On a visit to New York last month, I watched the CBS Evening News, along with millions of other people.

The anchor told the top story: A mass kidnapping in broad daylight at a center of higher education in Baghdad. Next, the Baghdad reporter popped up live on the screen. The anchor interviewed an Iraqi academic, then voiced over a couple of related topics before tossing to the correspondent on Capitol Hill.

And all of the above were women. The anchor, the Baghdad reporter, the Capitol Hill correspondent. Even the Iraqi academic. It was practically the ad break before the first sign of testosterone appeared. [click here to continue reading the post]
Margaret goes on to discuss some female correspondents in war zones, most of them real persons, some of whom inspired their fictional counterparts in her novel, set in Beirut, 1983.

These female reporters reminded me of Nancy Dickerson, a pioneering woman in American television news. Click here to read more about her career as revealed in John Dickerson's new book, On Her Trail.

--Marshal Zeringue