This is a story of two fetching women, one known for glitz and vacuous socializing, one known for serious news commentary and for reinventing the television morning news show format. Yes, as my title reveals, they are Paris Hilton and Mika Brzezinski whose paths crossed unwittingly, emblematic of American female beauty and brains.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Brzezinski last night, as she was the Commencement speaker for our Graduate College. She shared with our graduates, predominantly women, the challenges of equality in the workplace – equal pay for equal work – detailed in her recently published book “Knowing Your Value.”

Progress has been made since 1963, the year the Equal Pay Act was passed, when women’s paychecks averaged 59 cents for every dollar earned by a male counterpart to about 78 cents from a 2007 estimate. Ms. Brzezinski shared a striking example of inequity from her own career when she was first hired as co-host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC – her salary was “fourteen times less” or about 7% that of Mr. Scarborough’s. She assured the audience that this gap has been corrected and emphasized that salaries represent far more than money; they symbolize the value of an individual in an organization. I agree.

Now the “Paris Hilton Incident.” In the early days of “Morning Joe,” Ms. Brzezinski was given a news story about Paris Hilton as the “lead story” of the day. She refused to present the story, going against the network’s management, ended up apologizing – only to find that her management had done a “sudden 180″ five minutes later by offering Ms. Brzezinski her own show for one hour each day!

This “incident” was, of course, uploaded onto YouTube, generating close to four million views (see video below.) Ms. Brzezinski thanked the audience for “saving her job” – a result from the broad scale public support of her news broadcast protest, a statement against fluff stories that entertain more than inform.

Source.

finally someone with prominence and presence in the news media machinery took a stand, and a public one at that. Mika Brzezinski of MNSBC refused to follow up on the news script handed over to her calling for the Hilton jail release to be treated as the lead story. Obvious to many except for her producer apparently, the Hilton story was not a worthy item to devote to a lead story position… it never has, never will,

Her statement was not spontaneous; it was choreographed:

From “Knowing Your Value” p. 31-32

I couldn’t believe this junk was being passed off as news, so Joe and I called it out by mocking ourselves and the news business as a whole. At first I held up the news script and simply announced I wouldn’t read it; then Joe goaded me into ripping, burning, and shredding it at the top of each hour of our three-hour show.

Despite the achievements of narrowing the gender gap in pay, such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and success stories such as Ms. Brzezinski’s, there is a bumpy road ahead. Two recent examples remind us that women in media are still more likely to be seen rather than heard, that is, if they are included in the picture at all.

A recent study from the University of Southern California concluded that:

An analysis of the 100 top-grossing movies of 2008 shows that men had 67% of the speaking roles; women had about half that, 33%.

Men also were far more likely to work behind the camera. For every five male directors, writers or producers, there was one female.

The sexualization of teen girls in the movies was the most troubling finding to the researchers at Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

No, this is not news, but documents what we see everyday. It gets worse. What about women in powerful positions in government or in corporations? Below is one very disturbing example:

Consider Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, featured prominently in the WhiteHouse photograph of the situation room during the military raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. An Hasidic group took exception to her inclusion in the photograph – to the inclusion of any women, actually – and published the WhiteHouse photograph in their newspaper Der Tzitung with the womens’ images deleted. The choice of this example, I assure you, is in no way intended to be anti-Semitic. In fact, Rabbi Jason Miller wrote:

This publication has the freedom of the press to determine what to include and exclude from its pages. However, altering photographs in this manner is in violation of Jewish law — it is a misrepresentation of the truth. No matter what rationale these Haredi publications use to explain their policy of hiding photos of women from their readers, they must own up to this travesty.

What did the Hasidic newspaper have to say about this? See below: {my emphasis shown in bold}

We are, in various ways, still in the Dark Ages hoping for brighter rays of enlightenment.

Full statement by Der Tzitung.

The White House released a picture showing the President following “live” the events in the apprehension of Osama Bin Laden, last week Sunday. Also present in the Situation Room were various high-ranking government and military officials. Our photo editor realized the significance of this historic moment, and published the picture, but in his haste he did not read the “fine print” that accompanied the picture, forbidding any changes. We should not have published the altered picture, and we have conveyed our regrets and apologies to the White House and to the State Department.

The allegations that religious Jews denigrate women or do not respect women in public office, is a malicious slander and libel. The current Secretary of State, the Honorable Hillary R. Clinton, was a Senator representing New York State with great distinction 8 years. She won overwhelming majorities in the Orthodox Jewish communities in her initial campaign in ’00, and when she was re-elected in ’06, because the religious community appreciated her unique capabilities and compassion to all communities. The Jewish religion does not allow for discrimination based on gender, race, etc.

We respect all government officials. We even have special prayers for the welfare of our Government and the government leaders, and there is no mention of gender in such prayers.

All Government employees are sworn into office, promising adherence to the Constitution, and our Constitution attests to our greatness as a nation that is a light beacon to the entire world. The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. (See below.) That has precedence even to our cherished freedom of the press! In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status. Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.