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 Rachel Powers: What led you to your career?
CS: I started university on a mathematics scholarship, but couldn't stay away from the student newspaper. I loved to write, interview, and am naturally incredibly curious. In my second year I changed majors to journalism and never looked back.
RP: When you entered journalism, did you think your gender would hold you back? Why or why not?
CS: Yes, I knew there were gender hurdles, although I thought they were disappearing. That was 30+ years ago and I was very wrong to think they had ended. One professor at UW (University of Washington) said it was tough to get a journalist's job at that time but that women could be luckier because they could get jobs in the newsroom as secretaries and jump when an opportunity came up. I vowed I'd never take that route. As an undergraduate I was lucky enough to interview some of the original members of the Theta Sigma Phi, now known as the Association of Women in Communication, who were some of the first women allowed into a U.S. journalism school. The interviews I did with them opened my eyes to the historic hardships.
RP: Have you experienced any gender bias(es) in your career?
CS: Of course yes. Any female journalist who says she hasn't faced gender biases is blind or deluding herself. In my first job they automatically put me, like all the other new female journalists, onto the women's page, until they gave me a battery of IQ tests (which they did for every new employee). They called me in and said "do you know you are very, very smart? We can't waste you on the Women's Page, we will put you on politics." I looked around at the men on the politics section and not one had to be smart to get there, not one would automatically be put into a soft men's page.
At my job interview for another media outlet they asked if I was on the pill and said they hoped I wasn't planning to have children. I retorted, "how many children do you have?....how would you like it if your employer said you had to chose between this job and those children?" (Rachel, you can see I had a smart mouth on me, but fortunately I also had strong journalism skills so they hired me anyway, and promoted me aggressively over the next year.)
And now in 2010 ... I have been a consultant for a large media house where the editors say "give me some male journalism students to hire, we already have too many women." They never said that when the gender balance was the other way. In addition, the only women who have become daily newspaper editors in New Zealand this century have had househusbands or no children ... and have had to work in the newsroom 20 years before applying for editorship, compared to men who work in the newsroom only seven to 10 years before applying for editorship. (Watch for my yet-to-be-published PhD research to see the details of the "gender gap phenomenon in NZ daily newspaper leadership.")
RP: What types of media do you use in your work?
CS: I started in daily newspapers, and moved to radio, then television, then weeklies, then back to television, then Internet-with-newspapers, then back to radio-with-Internet.
Now that I'm teaching university I concentrate on converged journalism, so run the whole gamut of media platforms. I'm very keen on integrating mobile phone device platform to both the news collection and the news dissemination.
Now, however, as an academic I use all media platforms and expect my students to do so from early in their studies.
RP: How has online journalism played a role in your career?
CS: Online journalism has turned the whole journalism field upside down since I first started. I think I have enjoyed a fairly successful journalism career because I was an early uptaker of technology. I have made it my practice to NEVER shy away from anything technical. I was at Mt. Union College in early '70s where a professor named Jim Rodman had one of the first computers – the size of a bathroom and did a fraction of what the slowest PC does now. I learned from him, and tried to keep up with every innovation since then. As an example, I got Windows 7 the week BEFORE it was released by Microsoft. (Dubai is like that!)
RP: How have international experiences impacted your career?
CS: I feel that once you have practiced journalism in a second country (one in addition to your home country) you join a tightly knit group of international journalists. For some reason you feel a kinship to others who have done the same – probably because you know they are flexible, culturally open, and able to fly by the seat of their pants if need be to get a story.... so you can rely on them. You get to know each other, you gravitate to each other; and in the newsroom others treat you with some added respect.
It isn't by design, it just happens. You can walk into any foreign newsroom and feel at home. So many of my colleagues are dotted all over – one was CNN war correspondent Margaret Moth (Margaret Wilson when I knew her) who died last month; Anita McNaught is reporting this month from Iran for Al Jazeera; Paul Cutler now head of news at Australia's SBS, was global editor of CNN the day of Sept. 11 and had to make the call to cancel all other programming, etc.
RP: You have studied journalism in the United States, Australia and India. Will you please explain the relationship between the government and the press over these three continents?
CS: Have a look at the annual rating list put out by Reporters Without Borders and also the one put out by Press Freedom Map, and you will get an idea of the vast difference regimes I have worked under. Out of a total 175 in the RWB rankings (with 1 being the best) New Zealand ranks 17, the USA ranks 23 and the United Arab Emirates ranks 86 (well ahead of most other Middle East countries), and poor Solomon Islands doesn't even show up on the list.
New Zealand ranks high on both lists, way higher than the USA. New Zealand enjoys great freedom and strong judicial system as an inheritance from its ties to the British Commonwealth. Unlike the USA, NZ takes particular care of ensuring people get a fair and unbiased trial when facing the judiciary. You will already know the USA freedoms, restrictions, and limitations.
The UAE is a patriarchal monarchy only 38 years old, located smack in the middle of some of the biggest violent hotspots in the Middle East at the moment. The media law is currently being rewritten, as the current law allows journalists to be jailed for writing unfavourable things. The new law bans jail sentences, but does prevent the media from printing anything that is disparaging of the royal family, the government, or the country's economy. There is no local government for reporters to cover.
As for Solomon Islands: legally they enjoy extremely wide freedoms, but the government has had difficulty in controlling the violent ethnic militia and therefore lawlessness has prevailed over a lot of this decade. This means that journalists are bashed, hit, cut, threatened with machetes to their throats, threatened to have their homes and families burned – if they run a news story that one of the militants doesn't like. Many western journalists just don't appreciate what other journalists have to go through to keep free flow of information to the public.
RP: Do you discuss the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in your classes? Why or why not?
CS: Students in one class study a comparison of several other countries' media freedom, and of course the USA is involved. I don't hold up the U.S. Constitution as the only example of press freedom. All my classes, however, get involved in discussing Global Media Ethics, as the laws of individual laws no longer can control the media that many of us use – global media that cross national boundaries.
RP: Why did you decided to leave the career of a full-time journalist to become a professor?
CS: I started sliding out of full-time journalism when I had three little daughters and the hours were too horrendous. However I went back. Even after joining academia I went back for several stints. I can't seem to keep away from daily journalism because of the adrenaline rush of the job. Being a journalist ... especially for daily mainstream media ... is the funnest job in the world.
RP: How do news values differ between United Arab Emirates and the USA?
CS: The basic news values are the same – what is relevant and new for the audience. However, because of the media laws here ... and because of the very real security threats due to the country's proximity ... the news value errs on the side of conservatism.
RP: What do you think are differences in journalism between United Arab Emirates and the United States?
CS: There are a lot of subtle, as well as obvious, differences, and I've done two research papers on it. The media laws that prevent journalists criticising the government, the rulers, or the economy are the main one. The other is that most journalists are non-Emirates, they are here on a visa. Hence, if they cross the line in what is acceptable they don't get simply fined or censored, they get extradited from the country. When it comes to convergence journalism, the UAE is a global leader in use of the multi-media platforms, while the USA media are lagging in many areas. However the USA is the global leader in social justice and government watchdog journalism, while the UAE lags way behind.
RP: If you could tell your college-graduating self one thing, what would it be?
CS: In a journalism career, as well as academic career, there are two ways to go: have fun flitting from job to job, or stick to one job and systematically work up to a position of power. Too many women, such as myself, have a broad list of experiences. This, however, doesn't get you to the media house management positions that give you power to make changes and improvements. However I'm not sure I would change, as it is exhilarating to flit from one fun job to another and use the profession to see the world, or learn different cultures, or have different experiences.
RP: How has the world of journalism changed since your first job in the business? Is that a good or bad thing?
CS: The world of journalism has gone global and gone digital since my first job. It means journalists are filing stories for audiences beyond their small locality. It means journalists are accountable to a wider audience, too. It means that journalists can quickly research and produce stories with more context to them. However, it also means journalists too often fall into plagiarism, borrowing ideas, and viewing events from another cultures.
Here in the UAE and other Arabic countries the real problem with the global media is that the media are laden with American hegemony. It is robbing Arabic people of their own culture. One example is that 6% of the world population speaks Arabic, but only 3% of what is on the Internet is available in the Arabic language.
This is only one small example of local cultures starting to get lost because the global media water it down.
Interviewee: Cathy Strong
Former newspaper, magazine, radio and television journalist, Cathy Strong is now a professor in the United Arab Emirates. For nearly three decades Strong worked at media outlets in the Midwest of the United States in Ohio. Strong worked for the Knight Ridder Newspaper chain, then shifted to New Zealand to work through multiple journalistic mediums. Strong also held management positions at a public relations firm in New Zealand, but she decided to return to daily journalism. She also has dual citizenship status for the United States as well as New Zealand.
Strong is currently a journalism professor at the United Arab Emirates in Dubai. She is no stranger to teaching at the collegiate level. Strong has lectured at Massey University, which is New Zealand's oldest journalism school. She has also taken her expertise to Japan as well as the Solomon Island Broadcasting Corporation.
Strong received her journalism degree from the University of Washington and her master's in mass communication from Kent State in Ohio.
Interviewer: Rachel Powers
Rachel Powers is from a small farming community in Iowa called Eddyville. She is 22 years old and will graduate from The University of Iowa in May 2010. She will produce television newscasts with her Journalism and Mass Communication degree.
She is the Executive Producer of Daily Iowan TV, a student-run news station at the university. She produces shows for UITV, the university’s cable channel. She is also completing a producing internship at KGAN, a local news station. Powers is expected to write scripts for air, booth the show and run the teleprompter.
She took this class because she wants to learn what obstacles female journalists have faced in their careers. She also needs to know how women are being treated now so she is not surprised when she lands a job in the journalism field. She hopes this project shows that women’s rights across the globe are progressing as much as the United States. She wants to know how foreign female journalists fight the stereotype within their careers. Unfortunately, the only international experience she has is taking Spanish and Italian language courses. However, she enjoys hearing her journalism professors’ experiences. One of Powers’ female instructors was embedded in Iraq.
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