Sir, – Another missive from Women on Air, this time from Jane Suiter (Opinion, August 9th), complains about the lack of female voices on Irish radio and television. As usual, it propagates the myth that insufficient zeal by media producers is to blame. I've been contributing to and presenting television and radio programmes for almost 15 years including high-profile shows such as Questions and Answers and the various Sunday shows. I was the first female stand-in presenter for Tonight with Vincent Browne and currently present Talking Point on Newstalk (Saturdays at 1pm). Any reasonable observer might agree I am a "Woman on Air" and can therefore testify that the whiney complaints of this committee that they are victims of neglect by malign or malingering broadcasting executives is wrong on all counts. Perhaps I'm just a girl who can't say "no", but the point is, I was asked, and said "yes". This is the issue.
Suiter cites the Women on Air list of female contributors which she claims (as it does) contains details of 1,000 female experts willing to contribute to shows. Total tosh. There are about 940 entries on the list,but they are entered by subject not person. Each woman can be listed as an expert in anything up to a dozen fields. When the duplications are removed there are about 230 women. That still seems impressive, and about two years ago I and my then female producer attempted for six weeks to use this list to secure women panellists for Talking Point, especially in the areas of economics, finance and politics, where they are scarcest. We abandoned it after that time because the result was the same. An invitation was greeted with an apology that they simply couldn't do it that day. Just last week Talking Point had a discussion about trade unions and with the shrill complaints of WoA ringing in our ears, our producer, Francis FitzGibbon, tried the famous list. Yet again we drew a blank and instead secured a fantastic panel of three men who were passionate enough about the topic to say "yes". I'm sure that earned us a black mark in a WoA audit.
We have found fantastic female contributors to our show, particularly on psychology, international politics and social issues, few of whom appear on the sacred list. But since the economy is the big topic, and appropriately qualified women are a) scarce and b) decline the invitations, then it is natural the panels will be male-dominated. If “no means no”, what does Suiter expect producers to do? – Yours, etc,
SARAH CAREY,
Presenter, Talking Point,
Newstalk,
Digges Lane, Dublin 2.