Journalism Midterm

Conner Wise

Looking at some of the key differences throughout journalism in today’s world compared

to older shows such as the Mary Tyler Moore show, we can see that there is a huge difference in

the comedy aspect and how certain people are portrayed. Question one and two kind of go hand

on hand with women portrayal in these shows and how this would not be okay in today’s society.

Looking at Lou Grant season one episode 11 Housewarming, we see the cops come in and start

questioning domestic abuse from the husband. Within the first couple minutes, the cops start

questioning the husband asking the husband if he hit his wife. The husband responds with,

“What if I did, she’s my wife there’s no law against it.” Right off the bat, we can tell that this is

number one, not true, and number two, if this was aired in today’s media world, there would be a

bunch of scrutiny. When we look at some of the up-to-date journalism shows such as The

Newsroom and Dateline, these shows tend to be more serious with avoiding sexism remarks.

These shows are more journalism focused in my opinion and I am glad that there was a switch

made because this would not do well with the society that we live in today.

Regarding some of the stereotypes that we see in the Mary Tyler Moore show, within the

first few minutes, the stereotypes about women start talking about women’s pay. We find out

that Sueann makes $47,000 a year and how its more than what the males are making. Going back

to this time period, the transition from women being known as housewife’s wo women starting

their own career was just beginning and people were not used to this. I feel like they used

comedy to cover up the harsh reality behind this by making people laugh and having the

audience laugh to cue when people should think a joke is funny. Men and majority of people

were not used to women making more than them or having a higher position than them so
obviously there was going to be discussion about this. Comparing this to today’s media, one of

the main recent films that correlates somewhat to this degree would be the movie Anchorman. In

this movie, Ron Burgundy and his crew are not used to a woman having a higher position than

them, but I think the key difference between these older shows and Anchorman would be that

Anchorman is purposefully making jokes about this fact and people know it’s a comedy. I think

that some of these older shows had the wrong intention with women in the workforce, especially

journalism, so they had a different way about portraying this onto television that now once we

look back, we can see that there was a problem with this.

In conclusion, I guess one of the biggest takeaways I got from watching these clips would

be how bad women in general were treated in a work scenario. Women have the same capability

to own and run a position in the journalism world, yet they were never given the opportunity due

to the time period and how social stigmas affected this severely. Comparing journalist media

programs from 50 years ago to today, we can see that there has been a complete switch with how

women have taken what is equally, rightfully theirs. For example, in The Newsroom, we see a

woman take over a position and the men do not question anything because they now know

women have the opportunity, something they did not have a while ago.