Women Want Shot At Anchor Seat In Wake Of Chung’s Firing, Women See Double Standard At Network News Operations

Jane Pauley looked around the table at a lunch of some of the most powerful female anchors and correspondents in network television. Barbara Walters, Judy Woodruff, Katie Couric, Lesley Stahl, Sylvia Chase and Cokie Roberts were among those who had gathered to support an embattled Connie Chung.

The 44-year-old Pauley noticed something striking. “Here we were, a group of middle-aged women, as opposed to young chicks,” she said later. “That’s the biggest single improvement I see in the status of women in TV news.

“There’s a group of us at the networks who have shown we can get the job done,” said Pauley, who joined NBC’s “Today” show as a 25-year-old anchor from Chicago and “Dateline” newsmagazine.

“We’ve developed brand loyalty among viewers, and we’ve been allowed to mature on television.”

The women at the table have come a long way since the 1970s, when the networks, under pressure from affirmative action laws, hired their first gorup of female correspondents.

But, in looking at the controversy over Chung’s dismissal in May as co-anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” some are asking if being allowed to mature is enough.

For all the progress that has been made, is there still a double standard that allows women to succeed to a certain point, but keeps them from the most coveted jobs?

“Believe me,” Pauley said, “it is still problematic for women to be middle-aged in television. And there is not a single woman in this business who has not experienced sexism…from the emphasis on looks and youth…to the inherent rivalry between management and on-air ‘talent’ that causes some male executives to pitch an anchorwoman out on camera, with or without a career track, to see if she fails or is an overnight sensation.”

Some say that women on the air have cracked the biggest barriers - anchoring their own prime-time newsmagazines, making multimillion-dollar salaries and competing with men for the most prestigious assignments as correspondents.

Others say that not enough has changed since Walters was the first - and, until Chung - the only - woman to co-anchor the nightly news on a broadcast network, in a brief stint with Harry Reasoner on ABC in 1976.

Walters, Pauley and Diane Sawyer have found highly successful careers in newsmagazines, a genre that has proved to be very popular, especially with female viewers.

“We have so much creative and journalistic freedom on the newsmagazines that I don’t see how we could complain,” said Sawyer, 49. The trio’s salaries, including Sawyer’s reported $7 million a year, make them among the highest-paid anchors, male or female.

But the only time women sit in the anchor chairs on the three big network newscasts are on weekends or as substitutes, with NBC’s Giselle Fernandez the only Latina and ABC’s Carole Simpson the only black.

With the ugly breakup of Chung’s pairing with Dan Rather, the broadcast networks’ evening anchor slots have returned to being the province of men: Rather, ABC’s Peter Jennings and NBC’s Tom Brokaw.

As a measure of how far women have succeeded in TV news, the symbolism is important.

“It’s Tom Brokaw - not Jerry Seinfeld or even Jay Leno - who represents NBC in the minds of viewers,” said Steve Friedman, former executive producer of “NBC Nightly News” and “Today.” “That’s one of the reasons why these jobs are important - and why Tom isn’t going anywhere any day soon.”

“Women still are on the fringes as evening-news anchors,” said former ABC News executive Marlene Sanders, a professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. “The networks regard these newscasts as their symbol of seriousness, and they’re reluctant to give a woman the job.”

ABC’s Cokie Roberts said she believes the networks are reflecting the culture as well as their own corporate conservatism.

“I’m sure there are still a lot of viewers who would prefer to see a man sitting there when they turn on their TV set in a time of national crisis,” said Roberts, a National Public Radio analyst who joined ABC News to cover Capitol Hill in 1988. “It’s father in charge.”

Walters disagrees: “Cokie substitutes for Ted Koppel on ‘Nightline,’ and Diane Sawyer and I have substituted for Peter Jennings without any loss of audience. Women play important roles in TV news today. I believe viewers today would accept a woman as evening-news anchor.”

Indeed, cable’s CNN has a woman co-anchor its nightly news.

Judy Woodruff, a former NBC News correspondent and Washington correspondent for PBS’ “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” co-anchors the hourlong “World Today” 6 p.m. newscast as well as the weekday “Inside Politics,” with Bernard Shaw.

Woodruff, 48, who joined CNN two years ago, believes that the network has promoted women as anchors because it is newer than its broadcast counterparts. “CNN is less bound by years of tradition than the broadcast networks,” she said, “and the model of dual male-female anchors in local news was already established when CNN began.” In addition, as a 24-hour news channel with hourlong newscasts, CNN has more room for anchors.

No one is suggesting that Jennings, Brokaw or Rather should step aside from jobs they worked years to earn. They “are very, very good at what they do, and they were there first,” Sawyer said. “They have deep roots in their organizations, and they’ve all paid their dues in the field.”

Brokaw, who has been with NBC News since 1966 and has been the sole anchor of “NBC Nightly News” for 12 years, says he, Jennings and Rather are probably “the last of a breed” as three white men anchoring the evening newscasts:

“(We) were well-positioned (by earlier assignments) at the network, and I have no doubt that gender bias played a role at the time. But this business, like society, is changing. It seems unlikely to me that, when we retire, we’ll be replaced with three white males.”

“We’re seeing the fruition of changes begun 10 years ago,” said ABC News Vice President Amy Entelis, who was named to head talent recruitment in 1986 after a group of newswomen there protested the lack of progress at ABC.

“There are a lot of strong women in the pipeline now.”

There is little talk of a specific successor for Jennings, 56, whose newscast has been top-rated since 1989.

NBC, Brokaw said, “does not have an obvious, immediate” choice to replace him if he retired. But the 55-year-old anchor cites Pauley and Couric as possibilities. (NBC executives also mention Fernandez, 34, as an up-and-comer, along with White House correspondent and weekend anchor Brian Williams, 37.)

Brokaw says Sawyer also is “very well-positioned” to be an evening anchor.

ABC has four female and eight male anchors. The network appears to be the most willing of the broadcast networks to have a woman substitute for its two main news anchors, Jennings and Koppel.

Still, with all the advances for women, Entelis believes the network needs to make more progress in putting women into some high-profile, hard-news beats. ABC recently gave several women foreign correspondent and foreign bureau chief assignments, and the network also has hired Julie Johnson, Michelle Norris and Lisa Stark to cover Washington beats.

CBS was one of the first networks to put women on the White House and other hard-news assignments.

The network also broke the Sunday morning all-male barrier in 1983 by naming Lesley Stahl anchor of “Face the Nation.” (She left in 1991 to join the mostly male cast of “60 Minutes.”)

But men outnumber women among anchors today at CBS. The network has four female and 12 male anchors.

CNN was ahead of the other networks in anchors and executives, with Mary Alice Williams as an anchor and CNN bureau chief in 1980. (CNN today is about equally divided among men and women as anchors and as correspondents. The network has nine female and 19 male executives.

All of its domestic bureau chiefs are men.)

Woodruff, who was hired by CNN two years ago after 10 years at “MacNeil/Lehrer,” admitted that she gets a little tired of the focus on the broadcast networks.

“What they do with their newscasts is very important, journalistically and symbolically,” she said, “but the world isn’t waiting for CBS, NBC and ABC.”