More of the Same Old Story? Women, War, and News in Time Magazine

Abstract

From a feminist standpoint, this study provides an updated analysis to the age-old subject of women and war reporting. A content analysis of 406 stories from Time magazine explores the intersection of U.S. war reporting and gender in the coverage of the U.S. war in Iraq. Relying on feminist theories, this research dissected the normative method of war coverage to emphasize the reality of women's silence. The results demonstrated that women's perspectives—from official sources to private civilians' voices—are still scarce in war reporting. Women also accounted for only a fifth of the bylines and were mostly quoted as private individuals—representing less than a tenth of the subjects cited. The data showed that women, when it comes to war, are still symbolically annihilated through omission. Feminist ethics must be integrated into journalists' work to rectify the masculine perspectives and viewpoints found in war coverage.

Keywords:

• feminist theory
• gender
• Iraq war
• news
• news routines
• war coverage

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to extend their gratitude to Jesmin Loke for assistance with this project. This essay was presented at the 2010 annual conference of the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Denver, Colorado.

Notes

^a Cramer's V = .145; p < .01.

^b Cramer's V = .126; p < .05.

^c Cramer's V = .146; p < .01.

χ² = 145.184; df = 4; p < .001.

χ² = 67.142; df = 5; p < .001.

For example, an article by Sally Donnelly was titled, “Did Marines Kill in Cold Blood?” and she then proceeded to discuss how U.S. marines had killed innocent civilians while hiding details of the actual incident in the official military report.

A study about the link between gender and international crisis reporting on television network news during the 1990s found that on average 31% of reporters and 11% of sources were women (Sutcliffe, Lee, & Soderlund, 2005). These findings indicate that improvements are yet to happen.