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(By Conor Powell) The fact that women and minorities are underrepresented, inadequately represented or sometimes not represented at all, in media is no secret. Society is still not doing nearly enough to address this glaring inequity.
On the entertainment side, movies and TV shows are judged by the Bechdel test, which asks does the work feature at least two women talking to each other about something other than one of the male characters. While the DuVernay test measures whether minority characters serve a purpose other than as backdrop in a white story.
These tests are not without their critics but they do help illustrate the short shrift women and minorities continue to face in media.
Journalism has the same shortcomings, and the consequences can be even more serious when we are expected to present an objective view of society. The tale of modern America has largely been told through the eyes of a small subset of the country: white, college educated, middle- and upper-class men. They have dominated politics, media and industry for generations. Up until a few years ago, every major news organization was run by this group.
They have often provided a skewed view of the world.
These are the men who often wax fondly of the 1950s and the “Golden era” of America - with its stickball games in the streets of Brooklyn or hunting in the fields of Ohio from the back of a Ford pick-up truck.
There was nothing “golden” about that time for African-Americans living in the South or in Northern cities like Boston. Or for women who were harassed in the office and prohibited from performing even routine tasks like taking out a loan without a husband’s income and some times permission.
This is to say nothing of the discrimination that Chinese, Japanese, Mexican-Americans, and gay people faced - amongst so many others.
The reality is, America has always been far more complex and as the New York Times Magazine has shown with its 1619 Project that is re-examining the legacy of slavery in the U.S., and our history should be revisited with new perspectives.
So when I began researching my podcast series Long Shots, and mapping out how to tell the story of eight presidential candidates who lost their bid for the White House but still changed America, I really didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of previous generations.
It would have been easy to find a roster of all white men - journalists and campaign workers – to tell these stories. White men, after all, largely made up the ranks of the campaign managers, senior advisors and chief political correspondents – reflecting the inequities of the times.
But now more than ever that would have been a serious miscarriage of history and journalism, and Long Shots podcast listeners would have been worse off. 
From the start, I set a goal of having as diverse a cast as possible. For every episode, I expected to interview 4-5 people on the record about each campaign. My hope was to have women and minority voices in every episode – with a goal of at least 50 percent for the series.
As a middle-aged, white male, who once worked for Fox News, I have to admit I wasn’t sure how my request for an interview would be viewed. Some people did express concern about my past, but once I explained the project and my background, those concerns of who I was and once worked for, disappeared.
I didn’t have to look hard to find qualified women and minorities. Every campaign had them; all qualified in their own right. They offered unique and invaluable perspectives on the campaigns and the political environment of the time.
Former Time Magazine correspondent Jack White, who early in his career covered race relations in the South, explained to me that Jesse Jackson’s 1984 campaign was the next phase in the Civil Rights movement. The massive political gatherings he witnessed at the black churches where Jackson spoke in the 1980s were part of the evolution from the protests politics he covered as young African-American journalist in the 1960s.
“These guys didn’t know what they were doing in terms of politics,” White told me, “they knew what they were doing in terms of movement.”
In the episode about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president in 1872, I interviewed five women, and they all pointed out that the petty stereotypes the media and political opponents used to attacked Woodhull in 1872 were still as common today as they were more than 100 years ago.
“There is this implication that a woman candidate needs to be nice,” gender-equity advocate Adrienne Lawrence told me. “She needs to be dainty or pretty. She also needs to be married and to have children.”
“Any time a women candidate does anything that is perceived, or is actually sexually transgressive in its era,” the author Eileen Horne added, “she is immediately compared to Satan.”
While Linda Hansen, Herman Cain’s 2012 Deputy campaign manager, added yet another unique perspective that was different than the other professional women I spoke to. Hansen was both a conservative political activist and a full-time at home teacher.
Hansen told a story of being asked by her male colleagues to review Cain’s infamous “Smoking Man” ad because they needed a “home school mom’s opinion.”
The controversial political ad showed Cain’s campaign manager Marc Block standing next to a wall, puffing on a cigarette and imploring supporters to turn out for the businessman turned politician. Her male colleagues were unsure if Block’s smoking would turn off some supporters.
“I watched that video three or four times,” Hansen told me, “and I said I hate smoking and I don’t like cigarettes, but you need to leave that cigarette in there because it exemplifies who we [the Cain Campaign] are.”
These insights would likely have never come from a white male campaign worker or journalist. Long Shots podcast is more complete and more accurate with its diverse group. They provided a robust picture not only of the presidential campaigns but also of the political and social environments of those times. These voices added indispensable color and dimension to what would otherwise be a black and white (mostly white) depiction of American history.
In the end, I interviewed at least one female journalist or campaign worker for each episode of Long Shots but I fell just short of my goal of half of all my interviews coming from someone other than white men – 19 of the 43 interviews were from women and minorities.
Not bad, but not nearly good enough. However, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Some people were just unavailable, others didn’t want to talk.
Still, I believe this is a step in the right direction towards accurately reflecting history. Sadly, it also is a reminder of how women and minorities have continuously been left out or minimized in our history.
_Conor Powell a veteran journalist and creator of Inside Voices’ #LongShotsPodcast. _@conormpowell
Comments:
<> I found this a plus. At least you were not nurtured in the progressive groupthink “bubble” aka today’s mainstream media.