Andrea Mitchell Says “There Is A Lot Left Undone” For Women In The News Media
18.11.2022 - 20:19
/ deadline.com
NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Women’s Media Center, said that there “was a lot left undone” for women in the news media, citing the situation in other countries and also in the United States.
“Now we have women executives at the highest levels in our news divisions and women proving their courage every day in Ukraine,” Mitchell said in her remarks to the group. “But there is a lot left undone for women here, and around the world, not just in China, but in Afghanistan, where women broadcasters, judges and teachers are being driven back into the Middle Ages by the Taliban. In Iran, where women are beaten and jailed and some, killed, for challenging the regime according to human rights advocates. Surely none of us who came of age in the 1960s thought that a right embraced by the Supreme Court nearly a half century could ever be taken away.” She was referring to the court’s decision last summer overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Mitchell also talked of when she first joined NBC News in 1978 and worked with friend and mentor Judy Woodruff, who is about to step down as anchor of PBS NewsHour. Mitchell’s rivals on the White House beat included Lesley Stahl of CBS News and Cokie Roberts of NPR and ABC News.
“We were a band of sisters, competing for exclusives, but commiserating on the campaign plane or Air Force One about husbands, children, boyfriends, aging parents and a host of other challenges at home,” she said.
Of the bosses in that era, she said, “there were always predators, but most were just paternalistic.”
She recalled that when she was NBC’s energy correspondent in 1979 and covered the Three Mile Island near-meltdown, the bureau chief rotated the male correspondents to cover it