On Monday, I shared the happy news with you that the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger — which Women In Media & News and many other media activist organizations had actively opposed — was officially dead. And last night, I spent the first night of Chanukah on “The Big Picture” with Thom Hartmann, explaining how the festival […]

DVR Alert: Tune in to OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) TOMORROW, Saturday, Nov. 12 at 11am Eastern, for the re-airing of the award-winning documentary “Miss Representation.” The film features insights from me, Rachel Maddow, Jean Kilbourne, Gloria Steinem, Malkia Cyril, Cory Booker, Caroline Heldman, Barbara Berg, Carol Jenkins, Rosario Dawson, Margaret Cho, Katie Couric and […]

Guest Blogger Coco Papy

“Sluts are a figment of the patriarchal imagination…” –Nicole Ouimette
“You know there is a rapist out here, right?”
I pause, unsure of what exactly is happening. A Brooklyn police officer is now standing directly in front of me, so close I can see his uniform stitching and smell his breath. I have […]

As a born-and-bred Brooklynite — and a lit geek, ‘natch — I’m thrilled to be bringing my book, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV to the fifth annual Brooklyn Book Festival, along with brilliant writers including Laura Flanders (GRITtv host, author, and fellow WIMN’s Voices blogger), Jeremy Scahill, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and […]

The deficit crisis is an artifical triage situation created in a recession to diminish aid to those over 65 as well as others in need

As a result of a court decision last week, women and people of color have an open door to advocate for media policy that will serve to expand their media ownership.

Finding women and people of color in the long-awaited Federal Communications Commission report The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age is an exercise in near futility. The 478-page report integrates details on the status of various media platforms and assesses mediated informational needs by communities within the United States in the years to come, ending with a short chapter on recommendations.

Yet those of us know through experience that when women and people of color are omitted or barely mentioned in such a comprehensive undertaking, their interests are most certainly not going to be part of any structural changes. If Congress and the FCC follow this report, the future of media promises to be as white and male as the present.

By Guest Blogger Tamura A. Lomax

If you’ve been boycotting newspapers, magazines, TV news and the blogosphere for the past few weeks, or if terms like “rape,” “slut” or even “sex” lead you to hurriedly put down the newspaper or magazine and turn the TV channel (as they do for my media-savvy grandmother), then you may […]

To the chorus of outcry against politicians’ efforts to attack women’s reproductive rights in general and defund Planned Parenthood in particular, add the voice of online environmental magazine Grist. This past weekend, writer Lisa Hymas put out the call to support PP and reproductive health care through political action and personal stories, observing:
A society is […]

Welcome. Earlier this evening, I posted this “Viewers Guide to MTV’s Abortion Special: Send young women your love, but give Dr. Drew the side-eye.” I hope you’ll find it useful as you watch the abortion special that is airing right now. I’ll be liveblogging here for the next half hour.
Due to the snowpocalypse, I didn’t […]