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The Gender Pay Gap: Newsroom EditionA Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of theRequirements of the Renée Crown Honors Program atSyracuse UniversityShoshana StahlCandidate for Bachelor of Artsand Renée Crown University HonorsDecember 2019Honors Capstone Project in Broadcast and Digital JournalismCapstone Project Advisor: ___________________________Keith Kobland, BDJ Assistant ProfessorCapstone Project Reader: ____________________________Harriet Brown, Magazine Journalism ProfessorHonors Director: ____________________________Dr. Danielle Smith, DirectorShoshana Stahl 2019AbstractThe gender pay gap is woven into almost every industry across the country and potentially, across the world. Journalists are supposed to report on the inequalities happening across the world and bring light to situations in which people are not treated fairly. But what do journalists do when the inequalities are within their own industry? The video and this paper explores the gender pay gap within the broadcast news industry with specific anecdotes from professionals who have experienced this discrepancy. There is no recommendation on how to completely bridge the gap, but these interviews offer an insight into the subject from personal experience.Video link: SummaryThe gender pay gap affects so many industries and so many people, but it is rarely discussed with a set goal for change in mind. Media coverage was very prevalent following the Time’s Up movement gaining a lot of traction in the recent years. Time’s Up focuses on the entertainment industry as a whole but the mission is to provide a safe and fair work environment for all women. Time’s Up also includes “time being up” for women to be paid less than they deserve. My honors thesis elaborates on this idea but specifically focuses on the broadcast news aspect of the media industry. I produced a social media video that has interviews with women in broadcast news as well as an agent who negotiates deals.This topic interested me because I am an aspiring journalist and a woman. Upon graduation, I will be entering the industry as a full-time employee and will know that there is a chance I will be paid less solely because I am a woman. This thesis is used to shed light on the inequality in an industry that is supposed to be fair and equal in their reporting, but can’t seem to do so in their pay.The research and interviews I conducted turned into a social video that I filmed and edited before releasing on social media. I interviewed Patty Steele who is a CBS-FM radio show host, David Katz who is an agent and Suzanne Lysak who is currently a broadcast journalism professor at Chapman University and a former news director.Research into the pay gap was essential before conducting the interviews to be able to have some statistics and a general understanding. This information was then used to formulate the questions to ask the interviewees. The goal for the main aspect of this video was going to be focusing on the stories the women had to tell of their own experiences with pay inequality. I knew they would be strong and powerful stories and I wanted them to be able to hold a lot of the weight in the piece. The final step of this project was actually putting the video out onto social media for people to see. I decided to publish it on my Instagram account because that would be the most beneficial place it would be posted for a news organization if they had made a social video on a story as well. I wanted this to represent a real example so it made sense to publish it as such. I hope this video continues to reach more and more people and change can be made.AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank everyone who has helped me with this thesis along the way, whether it be for the paper or the video aspect. Newhouse has allowed me to grow as a journalist over the last four years, and I am so thankful to this school for teaching me everything that I know. Thank you to Professor Harriet Brown who was willing to be my reader even though I am no longer her student. Lastly, and most importantly, thank you to Professor Keith Kobland. As a professor, you taught me so much about what it is to be a journalist. You go above and beyond to help your students, and you took on the role as my honors advisor, even though you didn’t have to. I can’t say thank you enough for the endless amount of help along the way.Table of ContentsAbstract ………………………………………………………………………………………. iiiExecutive Summary …………………………………………………………………………. ivAcknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………viChapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………………………1Formulating the Idea …………………………………………………………………………... 1Research and Statistics ………………………………………………………………………… 2Chapter 2: Video Creation …………………………………………………………………... 4Preparation and Interviewing …………………………………………………………………. 4Editing the Video ……………………………………………………………………………… 6Chapter 3: ConclusionDispersing the Video …………………………………………………………………………... 8Future Implications ……………………………………………………………………………. 9Works Cited …………………………………………………………………………………… 11Chapter 1IntroductionFormulating the IdeaAs a broadcast and digital journalism (BDJ) major, we are required to take a media ethics course. I took this class sophomore year, and we had to do a media criticism paper but had free will to choose any topic in which we wanted to criticize. This was during the time that the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements were gaining a lot of traction, so I decided to do my paper on the gender pay gap within the television industry. This paper didn’t focus specifically on just the news industry but on Hollywood as well. I became extremely interested in this topic and discovered that there was a pay gap within the industry. As journalists, we are supposed to be the watchdogs of society. We are supposed to report on the inequalities happening around the world and yet, there was inequality in our own backyards?This has stuck with me through the last two years. As someone aspiring to be a journalist, it’s disheartening to know that I am at a disadvantage because I am a woman. However, thanks to strong women who have come before me, there is change being made.When I was posed with the quandary of deciding on an honors thesis topic, it was almost hard to decide when I was given the ability to do almost anything I wanted. I knew I wanted to make it a creative piece and make a video but then it dawned on me. Why not shine light on the inequalities within my own field, the same way I will have to shine light on inequalities in my career. Just because this is a topic many people don’t want to talk or think about, doesn’t mean it isn’t one we NEED to talk or think about. This became my inspiration for pursuing the gender pay gap within the news industry as my topic for my honors thesis. However, for my thesis I wanted to specifically focus on the pay inequality within the broadcast news industry.Research and StatisticsIn order to make a claim that there is a gender pay gap in general and more specifically the broadcast news industry, I needed to do research to find facts and statistics. Not only is this essential for the purpose of this thesis, but as a journalist making sure facts are accurate in your reports is key. I first started researching the gender pay gap and found a report by The Washington Post that said women make 87 cents on the dollar compared to men (Paquette 2016). They also reported that at Dow Jones publications, the pay discrepancy begins with new hires. Male hires at their company make 12 percent more than the new female hires. This was at one specific media company, so I knew I needed to conduct more research. There was a lot of media attention into Catt Sadler leaving E! News because of pay inequality at the rise of the Time’s Up movement. Sadler hosted E! News with co-host Jason Kennedy, but it was discovered that Kennedy made over double what Sadler did (Stone & Strohm 2017). Sadler left the show after E! offered to pay her more but would not match Kennedy’s salary.In another article, I found a study conducted at Indiana University. They surveyed 1,100 journalists across the country and found that women earn 83 percent of what men do (Anderson 2014). This study took a deeper look into the journalism industry as a whole. Indiana University reported that the median income in 2012 for journalists was $53,600 for men compared to the $44,342 for women. This showed statistical evidence that within journalists in America, there was a pay gap. But what about across the globe?Carrie Gracie left her job at the BBC as the China editor because of pay inequality (Freytas-Tamura 2018). To try to rectify the situation, the BBC said they would reduce the salaries of their high-profile male journalists. The men stood by the company decision to show they stood for pay equality. However, it isn’t about men being paid less to be equal to how much women are being paid. It should be able women being paid the correct value for their work instead of being paid less for being a woman. Men shouldn’t be paid less to match up with women. Women should be paid fairly and valued equally instead.I was then contacted by one of my interview subjects, Suzanne Lysak, who sent me an article published by The Washington Post’s union in November of this year (Washington Post Newspaper Guild 2019). The article showed that even a major and prominent media company such as The Washington Post did not pay their workers equally. The Washington Post Newspaper Guild’s contract with the company obligates that they give information on pay to the union, for employees within the union, annually. The company itself has never done a pay study that analyzes the data or released one to the public so the Guild decided to do so this year.They broke down their data analysis into different sections, but the key takeaway from the newsroom section was this: “women as a group are paid less than men.” The researchers then dove in deeper and found that the pay discrepancy was highest amongst journalists under 40-years-old, with a gap of over 14 percent. There are 290 salaried employees that are men and 284 salaried employees that are women. Almost the exact same number. Yet, the salaried men make a median amount of $116,065 whereas the salaried women make a median amount of $95,595.Major media organizations, like The Washington Post, set the standards across the industry. What does it say if they don’t even pay their employees equally? The Guild analysis was released in the midst of me working on this thesis so I was fortunate that this information came to light at an appropriate time. I was able to then ask follow-up questions on this to Lysak since she was informed on the article, which added a nice aspect to the piece I hadn’t expected when I began the project.Chapter 2Video CreationPreparation and InterviewingIn order to make this a creative piece with a video element, I needed to find sources who would be willing to be interviewed. When you’re discussing a taboo topic such as money or pay inequality, it can be hard to find participants who are willing to open up—especially if they are still working in the industry.Coincidentally, my roommate’s best friend’s mom is a radio host for CBS-FM in New York City. That’s how I was put in contact with my first interview subject, Patty Steele. She has been in the broadcast industry, both TV and radio, for her entire career. I knew she would have a lot to say about the topic from our preliminary interactions, and she was willing to speak to me on camera. Since she is located in New York and we both have busy schedules, it made the most sense to do the interview over FaceTime and I would screen record it.During our conversation, Steele told me that she has an agent who negotiates her contracts for her. She was able to speak on her own personal experiences with the pay gap, but gave me the contact of her agent, David Katz, to get more specific answers from someone who negotiates the monetary aspect of the deals. Katz is also located in New York City and with our schedules being so busy, it made sense to do another FaceTime video that I would screen record. David wasn’t able to give me specific information about his clients, other than Steele, but he was able to tell me information anecdotally. He provided a perspective that was different than my other interviewees, both as a man and as someone who dealt exclusively with contract negotiations.I knew I still needed the perspective of another woman to tell this story, so I contacted one of my old BDJ professors. Suzanne Lysak was one of my first BDJ professors at Newhouse and we stayed in contact over the years. She had told me about an instance where she experienced a gender pay gap in her career so I wanted to reach out to her to see if she would be willing to discuss this on camera. Lysak recently moved to California to be a professor at Chapman University so I didn’t have access to her in Syracuse for the interview. Once again, I did the interview over FaceTime and screen recorded it.I was very fortunate that I was able to contact people so easily since I have connections within the news industry. I was also lucky that the people I was referred to were so willing to have an open and honest conversation with me about something somewhat controversial. I wanted my video to focus specifically on the disparity within the U.S. because that is where I had access to people who had experienced it in their careers.When it came to deciding what questions to ask, I had a set list of questions I wanted to cover. However, throughout the interviews there were follow-up questions to go off of what the interviewees were saying. When interviewing someone, especially on a topic that relies on anecdotes, journalists can’t be rigid with their questioning; they have to listen to what the person is saying and go with the flow of the conversation. I wanted to ease Steele and Lysak into the conversations so I asked them each to briefly explain what the gender pay gap has been like historically in the news industry. That became my starting point and then transitioned to their specific instances afterwards.Katz was a good person to have interviewed because it offered a different perspective. That being said, I also knew that I wanted to use quotes from him sparingly. I wanted this story to be told by women who experienced it. I wanted the anecdotes from Lysak and Steele to be the powerful and moving aspects of the story. They would be the people that kept the piece interesting to the viewers because people would be able to relate to either their stories or just be able to have a visceral reaction to hearing true stories from people who had endured this in their career. It would also make people think more about these inequalities and question their own industries.Editing the VideoI set a deadline for myself to have all of the interviews done by October 30th so I could have time to transcribe them and pick out the soundbites I liked best. The three interviews ended up being a few hours so I had to take the time to carefully listen to each of them to see how I wanted the direction of the story to go. In total I had 3+ hours of footage to log and condense into a short video.My original plan for this video was to make a 10-minute long-form package. I didn’t have any b-roll footage to use in between the sound bites but I knew that I needed to talk about the statistics surrounding the gender pay gap. My plan was to make this long-form package and instead of using b-roll in between the SOT’s (or soundbites) from my interviewees, that I would use a black screen with words written on it to move the story along. I thought I shouldn’t use reporter tracks and write on the black screens because I didn’t want to insert myself or my voice into this narrative. I have never experienced a pay discrepancy because I have yet to work as an employee in the industry, other than as an intern. Because of this, I didn’t think it made sense to include my voice into the piece. I didn’t want my voice or tone to change the way the audience listened to the powerful stories being told by woman who had faced adversity.When I began editing, I was watching what I had done so far and it felt boring. The piece was moving slow and I wasn’t sure how long a viewer would be able to pay attention before losing interest. I knew I needed to change my original plan. Luckily, I was in the BDJ studio at Newhouse when I came to this realization and one of my BDJ professors, Keren Henderson, was there as well. I asked for her advice and she told me that she agreed and it needed to be more visually appearing. She suggested something I hadn’t even considered: to make this a social video.Social videos are a growing aspect of the news industry. With the big shift in digital and social media platforms, traditional news organizations are looking for ways to participate in the newer forms of media. Social videos are a key part. As a broadcast and digital journalism major, the digital aspect is growing in importance. My professor suggested I use an app called Mojo because we’ve used it in class and it makes really interesting social videos that are more interactive.After I downloaded Mojo, it took a little bit to sift through all the different options to find out which templates I wanted to use to build my social video and what music was the right tone to add to it. After deciding the aspects of Mojo I wanted to use, it was time to write the script. I knew I wanted to start the piece with something that would really catch people’s attention. I knew I had to start with Steele’s story because after that, people would want to know more.When deciding how I wanted the piece to end, I wanted it to end on an upbeat note. I had made sure to ask each of my interview subjects if we can bridge the gap and if so, how? Although Katz had provided me with some useful information, I wanted the women who had experienced pay inequality to have more of the spotlight here. I knew it had to end with hope for the future and hope that in some time, everyone can be paid equally.I’m actually really glad I ended up doing each of the interviews over FaceTime and then screen record them because they all looked the same visually so it wasn’t jarring to look at. If some of the interviews had been in person and others had been over FaceTime, it may have looked strange to keep jumping back and forth so the busy schedules and locations of my interviewees ended up working out.Chapter 3ConclusionDispersing the VideoI wanted to make the video accessible for people to see outside of the honors or BDJ community. Since it was designed to be a social video, it made sense to publish it on my Instagram story—which is where this video would most likely go if it was for a real media market.My Instagram account (@shoshana_stahl) is public so I decided to post it as a story for all of my followers to see. I have 1,513 followers on Instagram but since I’m public it means people who don’t follow me can also view what I post. This gave me the best opportunity to get my video seen. On Instagram you can also make story highlights. This means that you can have a special part of your account that people can click on and see stories you have posted. I made a highlight on my account of the honors thesis video. I did this because stories expire after 24 hours but I wanted this video to have an impact on people and I wanted it to continue to get seen by my peers or even by strangers. With the story highlights saved to my account, people can continue to click on it and watch it outside of that 24-hour limit.I got a lot of positive feedback from my friends and family on this video. They told me that I took a serious topic and made it easy to digest and appealing to watch. I think the Mojo app helped me really make this video more interesting than a normal social video because of the animated text on the screen so I’m glad the feedback justified my decision to change my original plan for this project.I hope that people will continue to watch my social video over time and it spreads to friends of friends, etc. The more traction this video gets on social media; the more people it may impact in the future. I plan to continue to monitor how many views it gets as time progresses. Future ImplicationsThere’s no definitive answer on how to bridge the gap and make pay equal for all genders. After completing this project, I am confident that we can get there and we can as a society mend the gap. What I don’t know is how we will do this or how long it will take. The people I interviewed who have more experience with this issue and within the industry had some ideas for the future.According to the interviewees, one of the driving factors that perpetuated the gap was the lack of transparency between employers and their employees. Because companies don’t publish what employees make, it is almost impossible to determine if you are being paid fairly. Lysak believes this lack of transparency stems from the cultural norm that people are told they should not talk about money. Since how much you make is a topic people feel should be kept to themselves, it allows companies to keep salaries a secret. Employees are then unable to compare their salaries to others within the same position or are put in an awkward position where they have to discuss a topic many may feel is uncomfortable. Lysak believes the first step in fixing the gender pay gap is to be more transparent.Another suggestion for how to make change in the future is to see more women in higher management roles of these companies. Steele says working for women is drastically different than working for men and her current job has a female as the main boss. Lysak says it is important to have women in all roles but the higher up roles are the most essential for making the specific financial impacts. Since the salaries are kept internally within management of companies, Lysak says that women having access to that information will also help to spur change. The main theme with this piece of advice for the future was women helping other women.The final piece of advice for how to move forward in the future is to continue to have open discussions like the one I had with them. Movements like Time’s Up brought light to these discussions and we have continued to generate them as time has progressed. Lysak says that in the past there was little discussion on topics like these but now we see these conversations happening more often. She says that the more we talk about it, and make it okay to talk about, we can start to make changes.I don’t know how long it will take to make these changes but I do have faith that one day it will happen. Although this research may seem bleak to some as they prepare for graduation, I leave with some hope. I hope that when other people watch this video they think about their own actions. I hope it causes them to think about doing some research into their own industries. If I could hope for one thing following this thesis and the video, I would hope that this started an open discussion amongst people about pay and the pay gap.Works CitedAnderson, M. (2014, May 16). As Jill Abramson exits the NY Times, a look at how women arefaring in newsrooms. Retrieved from , K. D. (2018, January 26). BBC, Criticized Over Pay Gap, Cuts Salaries of Some Male Journalists. Retrieved from , D. (2016, March 10). Pay doesn't look the same for men and women at top newspapers. Retrieved from , N., & Strohm, E. (2017, December 20). Catt Sadler's E! News Exit: Her Drastic Gender Pay Gap Explained by an HR Expert. Retrieved from Post Newspaper Guild. (n.d.). A STUDY OF PAY AT THE WASHINGTONPOST. Retrieved from . ................
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