A veteran News Corp Australia photographer has given devastating evidence to a parliamentary inquiry about the way the Murdoch newspapers treated female employees and directed photographers to only take pictures of conventionally attractive young women.
Anna Rogers, who was made redundant last year, told the media diversity inquiry she worked in a sexist and toxic culture at Cumberland Newspapers, the Australian, the Courier-Mail and the Cairns Post between 1991 and 2020, where men were consistently promoted over women.
Women were denied pay rises and flexible work hours and she believed all staff were forced to sign employment contracts which gave the company the right to “listen in” to their phone calls, she told senators.
Rogers said she had been consistently told not to take pictures of “pigs in lipstick” while the appearance of male subjects was never raised.
In 1994, when Paul Kelly was editor-in-chief of the Australian, she was told to take photographs of attractive women to increase female readership.
“During a news conference the editor Paul Kelly indicated to the news conference staff that the Australian wanted to increase female readership,” Rogers said in her submission. “His argument was that women buy women’s magazines and that they like to look at attractive women.”
In 2000, a picture editor at Queensland’s Sunday Mail ordered social photographers not to take any pictures of any “pigs in lipstick”, which was interpreted to mean any middle-aged women or those who may be overweight or not conventionally attractive.
“While working on the Courier-Mail, I was encouraged to seek out attractive women to photograph to ‘get a better run’ in the Courier-Mail,” she said. “This meant the photo would run in the earlier pages of the paper if the subject was attractive.”
Given News Corp’s media monopoly in Queensland, this attitude had a negative effect on society, Rogers said.
She said the culture was “extremely derogatory to women” but she had to comply with directions from the editors and there was no avenue for dissent or complaint.
“To keep my job, I had to apply this test which meant that women who were over 50, were overweight, were not photographed for the paper,” Rogers said.
“Whilst employed at the Cairns Post 2011-2020 I was encouraged to take photos of attractive young women, with instructions such as, ‘Get a photo of a yummy mummy,’ or, ‘Get a photo of a pretty tourist.’
“Again, there was the explanation that a photo of an attractive person would get a better run in the paper. “I feel that this emphasis on the appearance of women has diminished the chance of being treated equally to men in the media. There was never a direction to get a photo of a ‘handsome man’.
“I believe this emphasis on women’s looks has fostered sexism in our society. As a woman working in the media, the emphasis on the appearance of women made me feel compromised and uncomfortable.”
Female politicians and wives of sportsmen, or wags, were derided for what they wore while men were treated on merit, she said.
In mid-2019, subscription targets were introduced, she said, and staff became very stressed about having to sign on readers or miss a target.
A managing editor at the Cairns Post sent an email to all editorial staff that year saying “as you can imagine i get forensically anal-ised that’s not a spelling mistake about our subscription targets”.
Rogers said a lack of diversity had allowed News Corp to descend from a reputable company to one where “women are considered as pigs in lipstick, with a toxic work culture where even the managing editor feels he is being forensically anal-ised”.
She said: “The contract that we all had to sign gave the company the right to listen into our phone conversations. And you couldn’t get a job with News Corp without signing that.”
She also said she had not been given bushfire training, she had been told to clean the company toilets during Covid, and she had not been provided with personal protective equipment except for a single mask.
“I believe that the clickbait culture has created a toxic culture where staff get intimidated and bullied,” she said.
source https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/12/news-corp-australia-papers-labelled-sexist-and-toxic-by-former-staff-photographer-at-media-inquiry
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