Women and Media Spin

I was intrigued by this book, Spin Sisters by Myrna Blyth, when Laughin reviewed it on her journal a couple of weeks ago. Then I ran across this review of the same book (found via Thunderstruck) in Godspy.

I'll let the Godspy review sum up the premise of this book:

The female media elite, who edit the women's magazines we buy and host the news magazine programs we watch, are subtly feeding us negative, destructive messages that don't reflect our lives.

And here's more:

...Blyth points to polls that show that the average woman doesn't feel the way the mainstream media portrays her. She further says that women in the media sell victimhood because they believe it's true. Their answers to women's problems stem from their out-dated feminist ideology, liberal views, and pampered, wealthy lives.

Not hard to see, nor to believe. What can be tough, though, is separating agenda from truth as the two are so often woven together in the stories we're told. Two ideas are worth pondering when it comes to what we get served from the media: the power of an emotional story and the politicization of news.

And here's a great point from Laughin's post:

The reason women are targeted by the media is because women spend the money. So by scaring the crap out of women with stories of missing children, death, and sob stories, the media is able to keep the attention of women and therefore sell more ads. I am not sure if Blyth gets into marketing so much, but I see it all the time. Locally, channel 10 is the worst offender when it comes to the "You could DIE" mentality. "You could DIE" and to fix it, you need to write the government and demand this that or the other.

Women's magazines have never interested me all that much. And I don't like the sob sister mentality of a lot of media that's aimed at women. Even though all this media manipulation is pretty obvious to me, I'm interested in reading a book by someone who was once one of the manipulators. So I guess I'll be adding this one to my wish list.

(On a totally unrelated note, it looks like Laughin may be having her baby this weekend...congratulations Laughin!)