Minority Reports
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November 30, 2012 06:50 AM
Gay at the Times
A lot has changed at the Gray Lady since the early '90s
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
It turns out that the bad old days were, in fact, pretty bad.
On Wednesday, The New York Times’s LGBT employee affinity group commemorated a cover story about the paper that ran in the Advocate 20 years ago. Called, “Out at The New York Times:...
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November 23, 2012 06:50 AM
Five awesome blogs about minority communities
These sites do a good job giving a sense of their group’s culture or politics, or pointing out media stereotypes
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
One of the tough things for journalists writing stories about unfamiliar minority groups is getting the full context. That’s why one of the things I’m thankful for this year is all the bloggers, activists, and media watchers of social minorities who take the time to...
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November 16, 2012 06:50 AM
The media’s woman blaming
Most coverage wrongly blames Paula Broadwell for leading Gen. David Petraeus astray
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Frank Bruni gets it.
The New York Times columnist wrote a smart, sensitive piece this week about the Petraeus mess, calling out all those in media who heaped more blame on Paula Broadwell for the affair than they did on Gen. David Petraeus.
What...
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November 12, 2012 06:50 AM
Historic votes, hidden from live coverage
The four gay marriage votes in last week's election were hard to follow in real-time
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Do you know what was most frustrating to me about the election last week? Trying to track real-time results for the ballot questions on same-sex marriage in four states.
Maine, Maryland, and Washington all asked voters if gays and lesbians should have marriage equality in...
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October 29, 2012 06:50 AM
Jenny McCarthy as a Sun-Times columnist?
Science writers are skeptical, though McCarthy won't promote a fake link between vaccines and autism there
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
The Chicago Sun-Times created controversy this month by hiring Jenny McCarthy—an actress-model, author, and activist who promotes the discredited idea that vaccines cause autism—to blog online five days a week and write a weekly print advice column about sex, love, dating, and parenting. (The USA...
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October 19, 2012 06:50 AM
Covering the candidates on women
As Obama and Romney try to secure the female vote, reporting quality varies
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
During the second Presidential debate this week, both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent significant time playing to women voters, acting on the perception that Romney is closing the gender gap in the final weeks before the election.
Most news organizations did the expected...
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October 15, 2012 06:50 AM
Covering BSA’s anti-gay stance
In the most recent incident, quality of media coverage drastically differed
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Every few months, a story breaks about a Boy Scout or troop leader who has been dismissed because he is gay. This is not a coincidence. The Boy Scouts, the largest youth organization in the country, reaffirmed in July that gays are banned from becoming...
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September 14, 2012 06:50 AM
More coverage of US Muslims is needed
It's up to journalists to provide the antidote to fear and ignorance, which is facts
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
This week, Americans commemorated September 11, which means there was a flood of stories about American Muslims. Some of these tie specifically into 9/11 while others were more light-hearted looks at the current state of the Muslim-American community, like one in the Washington Post about...
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September 7, 2012 06:50 AM
LGBT coverage worth a shout-out
The mainstream media much improved its coverage in recent years
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Every week in Minority Reports, I’ve pointed out coverage of social minorities that was done badly or could have been done better.
But the fact is, a lot of coverage is very, very good. And I thought that deserved a mention.
Nowhere is this more...
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August 31, 2012 06:50 AM
Don’t posit ‘what women think’ without quoting any
Coverage of Ann Romney's RNC speech said she connected with women, but no female voices in the stories verified the claim
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Immediately after Ann Romney’s speech to the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, some major media outlets reported the GOP plan had worked: Ann Romney connected with women. Why did they think that was the case? A male Republican strategist told them so.
Reuters, discussing Romney’s...
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August 24, 2012 06:50 AM
Akin was wrong
And journalists should've said so from the get-go, rather than simply reporting his comment
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
One of the biggest surprises about US Rep. Todd Akin’s comments on rape was how long it took most mainstream media to state the obvious: Akin is wrong.
In case you missed it, Akin, who is the Republican Congressman running for the Missouri Senate, told...
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August 17, 2012 06:50 AM
The media’s ‘happily ever after’
Why are women like Jennifer Aniston portrayed as sad and lonely if they aren't married?
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Jennifer Aniston is one of the wealthiest women in the entertainment industry. She has appeared in 27 feature films, starred in the hit sitcom Friends, owns a film production company, and just secured her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But the poor...
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August 3, 2012 06:50 AM
The Olympics’s women coverage
It should be about female athletes' achievements, but it's often more focused on their chromosomes
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Gender issues were threaded throughout the coverage of the Olympic games this week, beginning with the opening ceremonies, which showcased that, for the first time, all of the 204 delegations included a female athlete. London 2012 has been dubbed “The Year of the Woman,” noted...
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July 27, 2012 06:50 AM
Coming out posthumously
Sally Ride and questions of how to memorialize semi-closeted public figures
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
In the first obituaries about former astronaut Sally Ride, the news was easy to miss - buried at the end of the stories, after many hundreds of words about her achievements, was a variation of this sentence: “Dr. Ride is survived by her partner of...
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