“Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”
In the wake of President Trump’s sexist admonishment of Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey — aboard Air Force One and in response to a perfectly fair question — Lori Falce wrote a column for the Tribune-Review in Pittsburgh. Falce is a community engagement editor and opinion columnist for Trib Total Media. She laid bare what it’s like to be a woman working in news today:
“It is not enough for us to do our jobs well. It is not enough for us to know the subject matter we cover. We must also not offend men while we do it. While a man in the same role can be stern, we must be likable and nonthreatening. We must charm without being too charming. Sometimes it helps if we are pretty. Sometimes it helps more if we are not.”
It’s a familiar theme and the subject of many memoirs written by female journalists — how to navigate male-dominated workplaces and public spaces; how to contend with the public’s opinions and treatment of women journalists on the job; how to fight for equitable opportunity and pay; what it’s like to be subjected to sexist treatment and rhetoric; and still worse, becoming the victim of gender-based crimes, such as sexual harassment and assault.
Representation matters
Misogyny manifests in many ways. There are the overt examples, like sexual harassment and sexual violence, but it can also be seen in newsroom culture, “soft news” pigeonholing, lack of mentorships and professional development opportunities, online harassment and even how women are represented in the news. A September 2025 report by UN Women — dedicated to monitoring women’s and girls’ rights and gender equality — found that, although women make up half of the global population, women’s voices and stories are represented in only 25% of news coverage.
In a statement about the study — part of the ongoing Global Media Monitoring Project — UN Women Executive Director Kirsi Madi said, “Media reflects reality — and is essential for democracy and a fair and equal world for all women and girls. But when women are missing, democracy is incomplete. In today’s backlash against gender equality, these findings are both a wake-up call and a call to action. A radical rethink is needed so that media can play its role in advancing equality. Without women’s voices, there is no full story, no fair democracy, no lasting security and no shared future.”
If you look around the news media community, you’ll find impressive, accomplished women in the highest executive roles — leaders like Jennifer Bertetto, CEO, Trib Total Media and 535media; Elinor Tatum, publisher and editor-in-chief, the New York Amsterdam News; Judi Terzotis, CEO, Georges Media Group; Suzanne Scott, CEO, Fox News; Dr. Frances “Toni” Draper at AFRO-American Newspapers; Isabel Rafferty Zavala, co-founder and CEO, Canela Media; and Katherine Maher, CEO, NPR.
Yet, a 2025 Reuters Institute study found that only 38% of U.S. newsroom leadership roles were held by women — that’s down from 41% in 2020. By comparison, the United Kingdom reports 46%, and South Korea has just 7%.
It’s difficult to calculate leadership equity because news media companies are often reluctant to disclose hiring practices and personnel demographics. In 2020, the News Leaders Association paused its annual news media diversity survey — which dates back to 1978 — because voluntary disclosure was hard to come by.
The politicization of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — with politicians wielding the DEI acronym like a slur — has further complicated matters.
“It’s so hard to get a sense of what is really happening on the ground,” said Elisa Lees Muñoz. “While many organizations have sort of taken the opportunity to dial back these programs and resources — which, clearly, they must not have been very committed to from the get-go — many others may not be talking about them but are still doing them. … They don’t want to attract attention, so even if they’re doing the work on the inside, it still has repercussions. The silencing of that work has repercussions, and it does say a lot to the people working in those institutions. … We are hearing from our network that they are definitely feeling the squeeze. … All of this rhetoric is giving license to very bad behavior.”
Muñoz is president of the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF).
“The organization was started in 1990 by a group of leading women journalists in the Washington, D.C. area, including Judy Woodruff, Susan King and Maureen Bunyan,” Muñoz said. “Among the local and big-media network news anchors, they recognized back then the glass ceiling they were experiencing in their own careers, even as successful women journalists. They recognized the importance of coming together as women to support other women in the news industry.
“At the same time, they were observing what was going on around the world. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was more information about what their peers around the globe had to do, just to do their work, and they established the Courage in Journalism Awards.”
The organization also provides professional development and skills training, as well as women-in-leadership initiatives worldwide.
“The organization has evolved tremendously as the industry has evolved, and as the globe and geopolitics have evolved,” Muñoz said. “We started to recognize that one of the major barriers to women in the news force is safety, globally. It is safety in their newsrooms. It’s safety outside of their newsrooms, and safety in terms of press-freedom issues. It’s about safety against governmental action and online safety. That confluence of needs led us to where we are today, which is one of the leading organizations providing safety and security for journalists around the world.” IWMF also administers grant programs.
Its mission is not gender specific, Muñoz said: “We know that safety is intersectional and that one person can’t be safe if the person next to them isn’t safe. We direct our broad, vast resources toward all journalists. We also focus on underrepresented communities, including local journalists, ethnic journalists and journalists of mixed immigration status.”
There are other organizations keenly focused on training, networking and advocating for women in news media — for example, the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit founded in 2005 by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem. The Center’s mission is to “raise the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media, and thereby, ensuring that their stories get told and their voices are heard.”
Since 2015, the Online News Association (ONA) has convened cohorts of women and non-binary journalists for leadership training. In conjunction with ONA’s 2026 conference in Chicago, participants in the Women’s Leadership Accelerator gathered for a two-day workshop. For four months, they’d been meeting virtually for seminars and coaching sessions.
There were 26 chosen by application for the 2025 cohort; they represented 16 U.S. states and six other nations, and every type of news platform. The program is funded by the Dow Jones Foundation, the Tiffany Shackelford Foundation and WordPressVIP.
The politicization of gender
The #MeToo movement — in part sparked by the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of two tenacious journalists at The New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey — passed the “microphone” to women, elevating their voices and their stories of gender-based harassment and crimes. That was the case for the news media, as well, which was overdue for a reckoning.
Linda Steiner, Ph.D., is associate dean, faculty affairs and inclusion, and a professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. She has authored and edited nine books, including “Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage.” When E&P spoke with her in February, she was working on a forthcoming book about the #MeToo movement’s impact on women, including women in the newsroom.
“Given how the #MeToo movement went so viral so quickly and seemed to bring down so many men in powerful places, including journalists, there was a confidence that it had this permanent impact,” Steiner said. “I’m not so sure that it’s had as much impact as that early trajectory suggested. … In terms of these specific issues — sexual harassment, sexual abuse and general sexism in the workplace and work culture — there has been some improvement.”
Compared to 20-30 years ago, women are now more likely to come forward and report sexist behavior or sexual assault experienced on the job, she estimated.
“I think there is a huge willingness to believe women, and I think it’s, in part, because of all the women who came forth and told their stories,” she said.
As an educator, Steiner has conversations with aspiring women journalists about gender-based threats. Sometimes the “invincibility of youth” leads them to feel like these lessons don’t apply — that they won’t encounter sexism, and if they do, they’ll know how to confront it head-on and in the moment. But consider the “Quiet, piggy” moment, when none of the journalists standing before the president said anything in response. In the moment, comments like that are startling and disconcerting, and can leave journalists wrestling with dilemmas about professionalism, mission, ethics and safety.
Steiner doesn’t want this to discourage women from choosing journalism as a profession. It’s important that women aspire and are represented throughout the news organization — and that they’re treated fairly, paid fairly, assigned fairly and promoted fairly, she said.
To so many women working in news media, #MeToo felt like progress, like there were finally consequences. But politicization of gender was here to stay, evidenced in the anti-DEI movement that came next.
IWMF’s Muñoz explained that efforts to undermine women and people of color in the workplace and in society are well-financed and politically expedient.
“It’s really important to understand, this isn’t a ‘cultural movement.’ This is a political tactic that is being financed, supported, pushed out, augmented and amplified,” she said.
That message: Feminism has ruined the business world.
“All the numbers show that’s not true,” she said. “Any economic indicator you look at shows that diversity in the workplace leads to increased profits.”
Muñoz said the news media needs to mount a counter-lobby.
“If I had one message to business leaders, it’s: Know where this is coming from. You are being used to peddle a false political agenda. It’s a false narrative, and you’re being swindled into thinking it’s a cultural movement. It’s all based on mis- and disinformation, misogyny and hate and lies,” Muñoz said.
Words hurt
The rhetoric of sexism has cultural, institutional and very personal effects.
Nisha Patel, M.D., a San Francisco-based doctor who specializes in women’s cardiometabolic health, posted to social media in the aftermath of President Trump’s mocking remarks about the U.S. Women’s Olympic hockey team: “[It’s] not harmless banter. Misogyny is alive and well. And as a physician, let me be clear: misogyny is a public health threat to women’s health. It isn’t ‘just words.’ It’s linked to depression, heart disease, pregnancy complications and early death. If you care about women’s health, you can’t stay silent when it’s being undermined in plain sight.”
When sources respond to a reporter’s question with a personal attack smacking of sexism, it’s obviously a deflection tactic, IWMF’s Muñoz said.
“How do you create an environment when you’re not allowing that deflection to happen?” she pondered. “I had a conversation with a Spanish journalist right after the ‘Quiet, piggy’ comment. He could not believe that nobody standing around her stood up for her in that moment. He was appalled. ‘Who are these people?’ he said. ‘How could they let their peer, their colleague, be talked to in that way without saying this is wrong?’”
“Are media organizations going to put institutional policies in place that allow their journalists to — for example, in that moment — go sit down in the back of the plane, to just stop and not allow it to happen? You actually have some power here,” she added. “I’m not trying to be Pollyannish; it’s Air Force One, but nevertheless, somebody else could have asked the same question, and then somebody else could have asked it. Or, they could have all turned around and taken their seats.”
It may not have felt or looked like it in that moment, but women in news media have allies. Muñoz would like them to be louder.
“I have no doubt that the women journalists who are targeted by the president go back to their news organizations and get a great deal of support, which is meaningful and important. But they also get pilloried by the public after they are called out, and so we need to see that support publicly,” Muñoz concluded.
Back to Lori Falce’s Nov. 21, 2025 column, “From Nelly Bly to Mary Bruce, women journalists don’t tiptoe around.” It was more than a lamentation; it was a rally cry: “Our questions are not worth less because of our gender. Indeed, since the days when Nellie Bly started writing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch, we have brought our perspective to bear on critical issues. We have been there to shine a light on war, crime, politics, corruption and the changing landscape of society. … We are not sitting still. We are not staying quiet. And we will keep asking questions.”
Gretchen A. Peck is E&P’s editor-in-chief. She welcomes your emails at editor@editorandpublisher.com.
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