The political editor of the Herald Sun, Ellen Whinnett, said that the editorial agenda was driven by the audience and not the gender of the editor.
Fellow panellists ABC news director Kate Torney and The Australian’s Victorian editor, Patricia Karvelas, agreed.
Ms Karvelas said that newsrooms were improving in their accommodation of women and there was a major shift under way in newsroom culture.
“Most newsrooms have highly developed agendas and interests. The last five years has seen a transformation in domestic violence reporting. Ultimately, it is the people you appoint and not their gender. The best newsrooms are the ones that put the right people in the editorial roles.” — Patricia Karvelas, The Australian
“Newsrooms are not immune to sexism, but they don’t breed it,” Ms Karvelas said. “Things are changing. More women are in positions of power and men are now asking for flexibility in their work. Home and work are interlinked.
“Most newsrooms have highly developed agendas and interests. The last five years has seen a transformation in domestic violence reporting. Ultimately, it is the people you appoint and not their gender. The best newsrooms are the ones that put the right people in the editorial roles.”
Ms Torney called for more “leadership modelling” by women.
“The people who were most influential in my career were mostly colleagues who did not have a leadership role,” she said.
“We should recognise, encourage, develop and support senior editors who act as mentors but who don’t recognise their innate leadership skills.”
According to panel chair Gael Jennings, 85 per cent of by-lines in newspapers, quoted sources and experts were men.
“The pace of a newsroom, like in the ABC, is extraordinary. If your contact book is filled with men’s names for the past 10 years, you aren’t finding new talent. You have to deliberately make time to broaden that talent pool and ensure that it includes women.” — Kate Torney, ABC
Ms Torney added that media companies had to make a conscious effort to talk to sources and experts who were women.
“The pace of a newsroom, like in the ABC, is extraordinary,” she continued. “If your contact book is filled with men’s names for the past 10 years, you aren’t finding new talent. You have to deliberately make time to broaden that talent pool and ensure that it includes women.”
The panel said that technology had offered women greater flexibility in being able to work from any location and new media, such as online publishing, had introduced opportunities that had not existed previously.
Last year, the ‘Women in the Media’ project reported in New Matilda that of the nine news organisations that had started online, five were run by women, including The Hoopla and Guardian Australia.
The project’s news media survey last year found that 73 per cent of women in journalism who did not have children under 15 said that they delayed motherhood because their workplace had not been family-friendly.
Ms Karvelas said the attitude of employers was crucial. “I can organise my entire morning from my home,” she said.
“Technology has made directing photographers, reading the news list and being with my children possible from my home. I could not do this 10 years ago. I care about stories and am fine if it interrupts my family life. It is an opportunity.”
Ms Whinnett warned that journalism involved “working intense hours” and that working for news media did not make the workload easier.
“Journalism is not easy,” she said. “It is a wonderful job and it is a wonderful life. It’s how you look at the world. There are difficult periods and it ebbs and flows throughout your career.
“Technology has changed the nature of the industry in terms of shifts. If you work at a start-up, you again have to do a lot of work.”
Ms Torney said that sexism had to be handled in a “gracious” way.
“The issues we face in newsrooms are similar to most organisations in other industries. Going to war is counterproductive. I am not saying that sexism does not exist at the ABC, but there is a commitment to ensuring that it is a respectful workplace,” she said.
A survey conducted by Louise North, of Deakin University, last year found that 577 female journalists working across all media platforms found sexism and sexual harassment towards women to be a systemic problem in Australian newsrooms, with 57.3 per cent of women journalists having experienced some form of sexual harassment (up from 51.6 per cent in 1996). Most of the sexual harassment had happened during the previous five years.