LaFlamme flap shows we’re not past all that

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/08/2022 (855 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I had so hoped we were long past all this.

I began my career in the news media fresh from Carleton University’s school of journalism, with the words of one of my professors stuck in my mind: “Girls, go into newspapers. No one will ever accept a female reporting news, not in TV, not in radio.”

But we girls in that 1971 class had been raised with such role models as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. I promptly applied for my first job where I had done my Christmas break internship — at CBC Radio news in Winnipeg. My mentor there had been congenitally cranky radio news veteran Frank McGregor. “Write this shorter, girly!” he would growl, flinging a page back at me over the typewriter. I loved him.

So I thought, why not? They’d seen I could do the work.

I was wrong. The director of radio news carefully explained CBC did not hire female because the cameramen and sound recordists’ wives would be distraught if their men went on road trips with female reporters.

The backup plan: the Free Press. I started in the Weekly Report on Farming and moved on to the daily; the “Old Lady on Carlton Street” had gingerly begun putting female reporters on the job outside of the social pages.

The Winnipeg Press Club did not then admit women as members. Nor did the infamous Beer and Skits night, a yearly beer-soaked set of filthy satirical skits. Men on stage (many in drag), men in the audience.

So, when another of my Carleton professors arrived in town for a journalism conference coinciding with the drinkfest, I proposed we attend. I would wear full Annie Hall, and we would see how far we got. Carman Cumming said, “Hell, yeah,” and we actually made it in, sat down, and were promptly rousted.

As I was dragged out (the go-limp thing I’d learned at anti-nuclear protests came in handy), Carman trotted beside me, noisily protesting the injustice.

Fast forward to 1976.

The CBC suddenly offered me an on-air TV contract. Somehow, in just five years there had been a quantum shift in attitude. At the press club, I was asked to play a busty Sharon Carstairs in Beer and Skits — where women were now allowed in the audience and as press club members.

Change was happening everywhere, with giddying speed. By 1979, there were female reporters in TV newsrooms across Canada, and I was one. By 1987, Global TV Winnipeg offered me their TV news director slot. The fulsome news release announcing my hiring noted I was the first female in Canada in private television with that job.

Almost simultaneously, CBC, CTV and new upstart CKX all became helmed by women. But it was nasty in the private TV boardrooms — corporate gamesmanship underpinned management decisions; news was produced the cheapest way possible. It was soul-crushing enough to burn me out; I bailed and went on to make a happier living as a freelancer.

Still, I thought we girls had pretty much won the media wars. Women were visible everywhere, even as local news anchors. And Lisa LaFlamme, well-known for her hard-nosed approach to TV news and journalism in general, scored the big centre seat at CTV 11 years ago.

But then, this.

I really had hoped we were past the macho posturing that allegedly led to Michael Melling, recently minted Bell boss in charge of news (he replaced a woman who’d held that job for 12 years but abruptly announced her resignation at the end of 2021) blasting Lisa LaFlamme out of the anchor’s chair. He landed his job in January; by late June, LaFlamme was out.

Word is she dared to challenge him repeatedly over budgets and corporate interference, and that letting her hair go grey incidentally displeased the mighty Melling. There are public mutterings that LaFlamme was a mean boss to her staffers.

Privately, though…

Privately, every woman journalist like me, every female who for 50 years has refused to meekly accept a place behind the typewriter, every one of us knows. All those national male anchors likely easily got away with challenging bosses. Just guys being feisty guys, getting respect for their toughness and news integrity.

We girls? Best not get uppity with our male bosses. Because they will throw us out on the street. So, if anybody’s been kidding themselves about how far women have come in the past 50 years…

Well.

We coulda told you so.

Judy Waytiuk is a retired veteran Canadian journalist and broadcaster who spends half her time in Mexico and other half watching the world unravel.