US Major Television, Radio, and newspapers are generally owned by large corporations that are global in every way - except in covering news about women, gender and government! The US is truly already living behind a Gender Information Iron Curtain. For example,
Most United States people have never heard of the French Gender Parite Law and Elections. They do not know that there were several week-long sit-ins in the Indian Parliament to attempt to pass legislation for women's and men's balance in government. They do not know that the European Parliament is assisting women to gain representation in every nation, while the European Union Convention has been excluding them. They know nothing about the fact that women all over Europe, and in South Africa, China, Australia, New Zealand, and many other nations have far greater presence in their governments than do US women. Like prisoners behind an Iron Curtain, US audiences are led to believe their nation is "best", and have no idea of the truth. (We detail some of the negative examples of US media not communicatin about gender representation and balance effectively, if at all in our examples section.)
Almost all these gender and politics/government stories are being withheld by US television, radio and newspapers, and kept from the US people, either deliberately and/or carelessly. To the human heart, these stories about the end of genderism and rise of gender partnerism, especially when they pertain to large, leading or long world power nations like France, India, China, South Africa and regions, like Europe as a whole, are as epochal as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of totalitarian Communism or landing on the Moon. Yet, most Americans who have learned of the stories have learned them from a non-US source, personal or business contact, and or the Internet. And they understand that means their broadcast and paper media may be censoring all kinds of important international stories.
GOOD Suggests the Following:
1. International Activists Should Take a few Hours to Request Newspaper Archive Sections of the Major US Newspapers During Weeks and Months of Important Gender News, to see if and how the US newspaper covered it. We suggest contacting the largest newspapers for this information, beginning with:
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe - all easily locateable via your search engines.
Consult US journalist websites to find the largest papers in other cities: Miami, Dallas, Detroit, Denver, etc. Create a brief summary of your findings to each newspaper, and specifically inquire and include, if you can find it out, information about the gender balance of its staff and company board. Release copies of the summary to all your to your own national media and government, to international journalist organizations, particularly women in journalism, to Deans of Schools of Journalism in the US, (easily available from Journalism websites), to Social Studies Teachers in US High Schools, via internet newsgroups on teaching and education, and to your US and international women's, pro-women, and and gender balance contacts. See our links section for some contacts and websites to start with. Title your findings simply:Half the News Is Worse Than None: Distorting Truth by Gender
2. Encourage fair-minded women and men in news and talk media, international sports, comedy, music and politics, especially willing Olympian athletes, to start hold on screen protests of 30 second silences to symbolize that women and politics news is being withheld, saying : "This is part of an international woman in government story the station management did not want you to know hear".
3. International women in media and government should immediately and publicly reach out for help and solidarity with well know US media women, especially Oprah Winfrey, at www.oxygen.com. Other good possibilities are the Markle Foundation, www.markle.org and women in related fields whose work is broadcast on television and advertized in newspapers frequently, such as actresses, such a Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep and others in the Screen Actors Guild, as well as likely receptive actors like Warren Beatty, who has repeatedly called for a US woman President, as well as his sister Shirley Maclaine. Many of these celebrities, like much of the US public, may not yet be aware of the epochal gender balance news in France, Nordic Countries. South Africa and around the world. Actors and Actresses at the Oscars and interviews afterward could be informed to use these appearances as opportunities to get the Good word out to an increasingly restive, overentertained but underinformed US public.
4. Heads of Governments in Nordic Countries, France, Spain, Belgium, South Africa, and government women's commissions spokespersons and ombudspersons should arrange to call live into popular talk shows in the US, like the Oprah Winfrey Show, the CNN's Larry King Show, and as many as possible talk or news programs. The hosts will likely be quite receptive. But, if they are not and offer isolationist excuses or delays, European and other international governmental officials they should publish that fact widely, and hold national investigations and debates about allowing US based corporate media, which is exerting a political Gender Iron Curtain when broadcasting to gender imbalanced nations like the US but allowing gender news to be reported in others in order to reach potential female customers of US-based/multinational advertisers products, continued access to International audiences.
You can even use the editorial section, or if you can't get it into your paper in another way, buy a small amount of classifed add space, and publish a brief decription of the Universal Manifest Declaration on gender balance and government in your local newspaper, and or those in other states or nations, with a list of nations that have achieved or are working quickly to achieve gender balance
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