MINNEAPOLIS, March 26, 2015—Last week, PRI's President and CEO, Alisa Miller had the fortunate opportunity to speak about Across Women's Lives at TED. Her TEDTalk highlighted the lack of women voices in the news and the distorted effect this creates in our understanding of, and interactions in, our world. Her talk received very positive feedback. Here is an edited version of TED's summary of the TEDTalk:
Let’s get more women in the news. “Picture a place where women are only seen 24% of the time,” says Alisa Miller, the CEO of PRI. “That’s what global news media serves up to you each day … and when women are seen and heard, we’re all too often shown as objects and victims.” This distortion damages everyone, she says. It not only makes everyone feel more hopeless and cynical, but creates a wide “empathy gap”, inequalities and declines in health and social well-being. Distorted news and empathy gaps also fuel an environment where harassment via social media grows. So what can we do? According to Miller: (1) increase the level of women in news leadership, and cover more women in the news, (2) push social media companies to provide tools to combat harassment, and (3) spread newsworthy stories about women and use social media to drive change. She ends with an anecdote about Alanah Pearce, an Australian journalist, who, when she gets harassed online, looks up the harasser—and shares with their mother what they said.
Miller says, "It's 2015, and it's time for women to be shown as the powerful force we are in society. We are done with news misshaping our world."