Child Care Issue Dominates ‘Media Watch’ Session

When Meredith Vieira, 36, replaced Diane Sawyer and joined CBS’ “60 Minutes” television show last year, she took the most important guy in her life to her contract negotiations: her baby boy Ben.

That astute move, showing her new employers “where my priorities are,” threw her soon-to-be bosses “totally off,” though for her it was a breakthrough in trying to balance career and family concerns, Vieira told participants at a weekend symposium on men, women and the media.

Her scenario illustrated a point most participants at a day-long “Media Watch: Women and Men” symposium at USC agreed on: that serious concerns remain for women about the media, both as a workplace and a force shaping their lives and society.

More than 70 people--most women, few minorities--at More than 70 people--most women, few minorities--at More than 70 people--most women, few minorities--at More than 70 people--most women, few minorities--attended Saturday’s conference sponsored by Women, Men and Media, a USC-based research and outreach project headed by author and professor Betty Friedan and Gannett News Service chief Nancy Woodhull. The project, underwritten by a $100,000 Gannett Foundation grant, seeks to monitor gender-based issues in the media.

At the weekend sessions, many women expressed concern that child care--and not the range of issues planned for discussion--dominated when many of the high-profile, high-powered media women shared stories.

Jennifer Siebens, Los Angeles manager of the CBS news bureau, whose foreign assignments have included El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Paris, said her bosses put her on hold for almost two months--because she was pregnant--before she was promoted to the Los Angeles job.

“I said I would love to go to L.A. but you have to know I’m pregnant and want six months leave,” she recalled telling her bosses. “Seven weeks later, they told me I had the job.”

Siebens said that while CBS deserves “some credit here” for helping her, the network and others in the industry need to do more about child care and family-related issues to assist women and men in their careers. “Maternity leave seems to be an accepted deal, but let’s get beyond that.”

Rhea Perlman, star of the TV program “Cheers” and a panelist, recounted her involvement in starting the Paramount Day Care Center at Paramount Pictures and Studios in Los Angeles. The five-year-old center provides care to children of studio employees--from electricians to actors.

But, while it has proved its value, it remains a unique venture among the Hollywood studios, all of which keep claiming to be “looking into” providing similar facilities, Perlman said.

Diana Meehan, author of “Ladies of the Evening: Primetime Characters from 1950 to the Present,” said working women who lack the “personal power” that Perlman and Vieira possess still can rely on their sheer numbers to push for day care and other needed services. “Currently, there are 21 million working mothers in America and we have a child care crisis,” she said. “By 1995 it’s expected that 81% of all women between 25 to 34 years of age will be in the labor force. We need to band together.”

She said women can make themselves heard by boycotting products made by companies that “don’t provide child care. . . . We can write letters to ad agencies and companies. Every letter they get represents 100,000 consumers.”

The symposium also focused on the combined problems of age- and sex-discrimination in Hollywood, with a screening of “Power and Fear: The Hollywood Graylist.” The documentary, by Loreen Arbus Productions, was praised by panelists, including Mort Thaw, chair of the age discrimination committee for the Writers Guild of America, West; Sheila Benson, Times film critic; and Ruth Ashton Taylor, a KCBS-TV reporter.

According to a study of the entertainment industry, 12% of all television network executives are 40 years and older; the other 88% of executives, however, are younger than 40 and most are thirtysomething. The statistics are bleaker for women.

Age-ism and sexual discrimination combined are “a monster we are dealing with,” said Francine Parker, head of the Director’s Guild investigation committee on age bias. “It’s absolutely terrifying to me--the arrogance, the stupidity. Is this what our youth are going to give the next set of young people?”

Thaw agreed, arguing that the media must pay attention to Americans 40 years and older, if for no other reason than economics: They have more disposable income than do 18- to 34-year-olds whom network chiefs now seek both for talent and their audience. Because of the industry’s current youth orientation, however, older writers, actors, actresses and production personnel are being squeezed out of jobs, he said, adding, “if you’re an older woman you’ve got two strikes against you.”

Sadly, he said, even writers in their mid-to-late 30s now worry about their futures and shave five to 10 years on their resumes for fear of age bias: “Speaking as a writer, there is a perception that in the entertainment industry, something happens (as you get older and) your talent gets all loused up or you don’t know what is going on in this world.”

Thaw urged his media colleagues to form a professional caucus from the various guilds in Hollywood and from newsrooms “to plan, to work, to awaken our professions to the pervasiveness of this loathsome, immoral and illegal practice of age-ism. Don’t let them put you out to rot on the stinking garbage heap . . .”