It was a story about a stamp that got my attention. It was written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Elizabeth Becker in The New York Times opinion column “Vietnam 67”. It was about a commemorative stamp Australia issued for Veterans Day honoring Austrailan war correspondent Kate Webb. Webb quit her newspaper job, and flew to Vietnam during the height of the war to cover one of the biggest stories of her generation. She was hired by UPI. She was captured by the Viet Cong, and wrote a book about her 23 days in captivity. She was also the first wire service reporter to reach the US embassy in Saigon as it was being attacked during the Tet offensive in 1968. Becker also covered the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. She was the first to report that Pol Pot was head of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia which killed over a million people in a sweeping policy of genocide. Becker went on to write about other women correspondents who fought their way to the front lines, to prove they could cover the big story just like their male counterparts, and wouldn’t be relegated to covering soft feature stories. They were in the vanguard of the womens’ movement for equality in the workplace.
There were also broadcast journalists like Hilary Brown of ABC News who lead the way for women in television news. Brown worked with my father at ABC News during the fall of Saigon. ABC cameraman Tony Hirashiki recounts a story in his book about the war about how Brown wanted to stay behind in Saigon and cover the Communist takeover. But her boyfriend pleaded with her to get out, and she did. She ended up on the USS Hancock where US Navy helicopters were landing full of evacuees. In one of the more famous reports about the end of the war, Brown showed the helicopters being pushed over board after people were taken off because there was no room left in the ships hangers for the choppers.
These women were the pioneers in getting women into newsrooms, where today many newsrooms have more women than men working from desk assistants, to writers, producers, reporters, news directors, and general managers. I can remember the summer of 1969. It was my second summer working as a desk assistant at WABC in New York. The first day I was surprised to see a young woman working as a desk assistant. I know this sounds strange today. There were women working in the business at the time, but this showed me that the new generation of broadcast journalists would be different. I spent the last 14 years of my career working for a woman news director who was as tough and harder working then any man I ever worked for.
Newsrooms had always been dominated by men, and they could be rough and uncomfortable for women. I’m sure many of them were discriminated against and harassed. As in many businesses they persevered, and changed the business and society. But, as evidenced by today’s stories about sexual assault and harassment at the highest levels of government and the entertainment business, their fight is not over. While its taken brave women to come forward and speak out about this injustice, it calls for men to take responsibility, not just for their actions, but for their inaction. Men who behave badly are not going to admit anything, unless they are caught or called out. But, other men need to stand up and challenge this behavior, even if it’s “locker room talk” among men. They should think of their wives, girlfriends, mothers, daughters, and granddaughters. How would they feel if they were victims, or even overheard such talk? Women have been at war for too long. It time to join the fight, and bring it to an end.
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