{"id":69198,"date":"2016-07-29T13:56:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T18:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69198"},"modified":"2016-11-19T15:59:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T20:59:08","slug":"why-bill-was-the-face-of-hillarys-historic-nomination-numbers-and-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/07\/29\/why-bill-was-the-face-of-hillarys-historic-nomination-numbers-and-theories\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bill Was the Face of Hillary’s Historic Nomination: Numbers and Theories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"7\"On Tuesday the\u00a0first female presidential candidate was officially nominated by a major party. Newspaper headlines across the country referenced the historic event with headlines like\u00a0\u201cHistoric First!\u201d and \u201cClinton Makes History!\u201d but a surprising number featured\u00a0photographs of Bill instead of Hillary Clinton.\u00a0I coded the pictures\u00a0of\u00a0each of the 266 newspapers that ran the story on the front page on\u00a0July 27th\u00a0(cataloged at\u00a0Newseum<\/a>). Here\u2019s the breakdown:<\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Somehow more than three-quarters\u00a0of newspapers used photos of someone other than the nominee. Nearly the same number of newspapers showed pictures of the crowd at the DNC as the number that showed Hillary Clinton. A non-trivial number of\u00a0newspapers only showed pictures of Senator Bernie Sanders and a few\u00a0featured\u00a0pictures\u00a0of Vice Presidential Nominee Tim Kaine.<\/p>\n

So, why? Why did nearly half of the U.S. newspaper front pages Wednesday morning show only pictures of Bill Clinton?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s consider some explanations.<\/p>\n

(1) Journalistic norms.<\/strong>\u00a0Journalism is governed by a set of norms. One requires that any photo that illustrates an\u00a0event should be taken from the event itself. Some have suggested that since Hillary Clinton\u00a0wasn\u2019t physically in attendance at the convention Tuesday evening, reporters couldn’t use a photograph of her. That fact that 21%\u00a0of newspapers did<\/em> use\u00a0an image of Hillary Clinton, though, suggests that this can’t fully explain the numbers. Of the 55 images of Hillary Clinton, 21 used photographs of her video appearance at the convention; the rest used file photos. She may not have physically been there, but front pages like that of The Boston Globe<\/em> and Newsday<\/em> (below) show that journalistic norms\u00a0can’t explain her overwhelming absence.
\n<\/a> \"9\"<\/a>(2) Hostile sexism. <\/strong>Sexism that’s hostile is aggressively and proactively anti-woman.\u00a0<\/strong>Is it possible that some journalists are so uncomfortable with or opposed to a female presidential nominee that they just couldn’t stomach putting Hillary Clinton’s face on the front page? Maybe. There might be\u00a0a few\u00a0overtly sexist journalists who just refused to put Hillary on the cover, but that probably doesn\u2019t explain such a high percentage of newspapers with no picture of the nominee.<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0Supportive sexism. <\/strong>Perhaps journalists (unconsciously) felt that an\u00a0important thing about her nomination was that she was endorsed by\u00a0men.\u00a0Political authority \u2013 the authority to speak in the public about political issues \u2014 is a masculine authority usually held by men. As a male politician and former president, Bill Clinton\u2019s image lends authority to Hillary Clinton\u2019s historic nomination. His words about her (his \u201cnod\u201d) have weight, giving legitimacy to her candidacy for an office that has always been held by a man. Headlines read \u201cHe\u2019s With Her!\u201d and another said \u201cBill makes his case!\u201d\u00a0She earned \u201cBills praise\u201d and got\u00a0a \u201cboost.\u201d \u00a0Maybe some journalists intuited that that was the real<\/em> story.<\/p>\n

\"16\"<\/p>\n

(4) Bill Clinton\u2019s own gender barrier.<\/strong> Former President Bill Clinton also gave a historic speech Tuesday evening as the first male spouse of the first female presidential candidate. As Rebecca Traister wrote for New York Magazine<\/a><\/em>, \u201cfor the first time, the spouse wasn\u2019t a wife. It was a husband, who was … [performing]\u00a0submission.”\u00a0Perhaps men’s gender bending is more inherently interesting since masculinity is more limiting for men than femininity is for women. Or maybe this is a more subtle form of sexism: finding things men do inherently more interesting just because men are doing them.<\/p>\n

(5) A (gendered) failure of imagination.<\/strong>\u00a0Maybe Bill Clinton appeared on so many covers because there was no one in the newsroom to notice that putting him on the front page was weird.\u00a0Or no one with the authority and gall to speak up and say, “Uh, shouldn\u2019t we use a picture of Hillary instead of Bill?\u201d This may reflect the gender gap in journalism<\/a>. Three out of five print journalists are male. It’s probably even more skewed at the top.\u00a0With so many male journalists working on front pages across the country, it is plausible that they just didn\u2019t think about gender or those that did were afraid to speak up.<\/p>\n

All these explanations together, and likely ones I haven’t thought of, help explain why Hillary Clinton’s face was so absent from\u00a0the story about her historic moment. The consequences are significant. Politics is still largely a man\u2019s world, and conceptualized in terms of masculinity. U.S. politicians are overwhelmingly male<\/a>. Only 6 state governors are female, and only 19.3% of U.S. representative seats are filled by women. Only 20 women serve in the U.S. senate. Showing images of a male politician, Bill Clinton, when a female politician has earned an historic victory, only continues this gendered order of politics.<\/p>\n

Wendy M. Christensen is a professor of sociology<\/a> at William Paterson University. Her research interests center on gender, the media, political mobilization, and the U.S. Armed Forces. You can follow her on twitter at @wendyphd<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday the\u00a0first female presidential candidate was officially nominated by a major party. Newspaper headlines across the country referenced the historic event with headlines like\u00a0\u201cHistoric First!\u201d and \u201cClinton Makes History!\u201d but a surprising number featured\u00a0photographs of Bill instead of Hillary Clinton.\u00a0I coded the pictures\u00a0of\u00a0each of the 266 newspapers that ran the story on the front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2094,23680,23679,2100,129,23624,85,20068,76],"class_list":["post-69198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-politics","tag-gender-sexism","tag-gender-subordination","tag-gender-work","tag-media","tag-media-newsopinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-election-2016","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/07\/8-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69198"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69211,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69198\/revisions\/69211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}