I had been a reporter in Seattle for a year, but my real value to the country radio station KMPS-AM & FM where I worked was as the traffic girl who joked with the hugely popular morning DJ/host Phil Harper and news anchor Don Riggs. The station had a decent news operation, but the money-makers were the music and on-air personalities. It was cool to be on the show in the morning when people were driving to work, during the radio station’s largest audience of the day. Our Morning Drive Time threesome usually had the largest audience of the Metropolitan Seattle area, which translated into higher advertising rates.
The KMPS news director knew I had left a TV anchor-reporter job in Yakima for the chance to work in big-market Seattle, even though it meant working in radio rather than the more glamorous television. He also knew morning drive traffic reporting, even on a highly rated program, was not the journalism career I aimed for, so he gave me substantive story assignments after the morning fluff.
I was getting good reporting experience covering the county and city councils and big breaking news stories, like the gasoline tanker truck that blew up and burned for hours on I-5 at the 405 Interchange. I was pleasantly surprised when he assigned me to a news conference with the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. It was December 1979 and militant Iranian students had been holding 52 American diplomats hostage for more than a month inside the US Embassy in Tehran. That put President Carter at the center of the biggest story in the nation, if not the world. Their hellish ordeal would ultimately last 444 days and doom Carter to a one-term presidency.
It is often the case that tragedy gives news people the opportunity to shine professionally, and this was one of them. I could demonstrate my reporting skills to my boss, but it was also nearly as important that I make a good impression with reporters from the big news operations where I hoped to work someday.
I decided I would distinguish myself by asking the first question. Realistically, the odds were against me. Women worked in the local and national media, but print and broadcast journalism was still mostly a man’s world. I would be out of my league with the more experienced national press corps assigned to the president. Asking questions would be tough at such a high-profile event. Several especially aggressive local TV reporters—who happened to be men—would be there, people who were known to be rude to other reporters and newsmakers.
I started my career during a time when the women’s movement was high profile, and it definitely impacted my job prospects. My early career demonstrated why so many women were fed up with the status quo and wanted opportunities, jobs and pay equal to men. In the late 1970s, women like me were getting jobs in professions where few, if any, women worked. Sure, women had worked in radio since it was first invented in the 1920s, but men eventually dominated the industry and convinced the world that women weren’t credible delivering important news. Besides, they said, women’s voices were shrill.
My own news director spoke frankly about his beliefs concerning women on the radio. He said I was great doing traffic reports but I would never get a drive-time news anchor job because a woman’s voice on a car’s AM radio, coupled with the sound of traffic, would make the sound quality so poor that no-one would want to listen. In other words, I would be bad for ratings just because I was a woman.
While the nation debated the need for the Equal Rights Amendment, several things happened in my small part of the world that made the equality issue crystal clear to me: I was definitely hired as the token female at my former job in television news. I knew this because the news director told me. I had been surprised when he called me for an interview because the station already had a female news anchor. I learned that she was about to be fired but first they needed to find her female replacement. That is when I happened along with my audition tape.
Sex, not equal rights, was likely the determiner for getting my radio traffic-girl job—I wasn’t a token, but I was a young woman who had good chemistry joking around with the two men with the important jobs. The news reporter part of my job may have been to get a female voice on air, but as I said, the news director made clear there was no room for advancement. In addition, the fact that I was often the only woman at events or news conferences showed equality did not reign in the world of journalism or broadcast journalism that I aspired to.
The first real eye-opener about equality for me was covering the 1976 State-of-the-State speech by Governor Dan Evans. I was an intern at KZOK-FM and set to graduate from the University of Washington. At about the time the governor took the stage in the luxurious Olympic Hotel dining room, I realized I hadn’t seen any women sitting at tables for this important speech hosted by one of Seattle’s prestigious civic groups. I searched the 500 movers and shakers assembled there, and as far as I could tell I was the only woman who wasn’t wearing a waitress uniform and slogging dirty plates into the kitchen. I had a hard time concentrating on the speech as I ruminated on this observation; how could I be right about the lack of women in the room? I continued to search the sea of suits. After the speech, I watched people leaving but my tally of 500 men didn’t change. That should have been the story I reported that day. But I was too green. I wasn’t gutsy enough to suggest it to my news director.
Now, three years later, I was again headed to the Olympic Hotel. This time I would be covering the biggest story of my short career. However, my professional handicap had doubled since my internship: I was not just a female reporter, but this time I was a pregnant female reporter. I expected to be treated differently than male reporters at this presidential news conference, because that was happening to me at less important events.
For pregnant women who chose to work outside the home, good luck finding business work clothes. Women didn’t have boutiques full of stylish clothes to show off what are now called “baby bumps”. At the time, aside from the TV reporters, it was obvious that most reporters in the Seattle Press Corp didn’t put much thought into their clothes. But given my condition, I had to think about my maternity wardrobe prior to President Carter’s important news conference. My pregnancy wardrobe was minuscule, and I literally didn’t have anything appropriate to wear for the President’s visit. It irritated me that I was having a wardrobe crisis. It seemed like such a girl thing.
Most of my pregnancy clothes were from the Bon Marche’s single rack of maternity clothes in the back of the women’s department, an afterthought filled with tent-shaped tops and frumpy pants meant to cover what were then called large fat bellies. I decided my only option was my one good dress that I had bought for the station’s upcoming Christmas party. It was peachy-pink crushed velveteen with long sleeves, it made me feel overdressed for a presidential news conference, but it beat the maternity wear in my closet.
The day of President Carter’s visit was getting closer. Security checks and other preparations in advance of his arrival were nearly complete when the White House announced that President Carter had to stay in Washington DC to deal with the crisis. Vice President Mondale would come instead. I was disappointed, but I would still be covering the visit of the Vice President of the United States—and I was still determined to ask the first question.
I knew I was aiming high. There is prestige in being first, and many men didn’t know how to treat a pregnant reporter. I might not be called on at all. Once my pregnancy became obvious, I was treated differently at news conferences, compared to when I my pregnancy did not show. My brain was the same, but my body had changed. The same business leader who used to chat with me before and after events, and who called on me early for questions at news conferences wouldn’t look me in the eye, now that I was pregnant. He called on other reporters when it should have been me. I was perplexed the first time it happened. And really mad the second and third times.
I had many sexist-related career surprises, including on the first day I worked at KMPS radio. I had to elbow a handsy news guy who managed to touch my breasts as he rushed up behind me and reached around me to ‘fix my microphone’ as I sat down to anchor the news. Mr. Handsy caught me off guard the first time. I was too embarrassed to say anything to him but as the day progressed, I developed elbow maneuvers to push his hands away so he couldn’t touch me most of the times that he tried ‘to fix my microphone.’ The second day, I was ready for him and shoved my strategically placed elbow in his ribs as I told him I didn’t need his help. He left me alone after that.
Being molested just seconds before delivering a five-minute newscast each hour was embarrassing and made it hard to concentrate. I was the only woman on the air at the station and my work was thoroughly scrutinized by managers and colleagues. But I didn’t want to rock the boat so I never told my boss. Or my husband. I eventually did tell my husband, spurred by my anger over the mistreatment of Anita Hill when she testified before the US Senate judiciary reviewing the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination.
After all my preparation—getting a security clearance, staying current on the hostage situation, figuring out my clothes, practicing my question—the big day arrived. I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the station and to prepare for the 6 a.m. start of morning drive. I went home at 9 a.m. for a few hours and tried to nap. My mind was on high alert, a closed loop running through my head of the details of what could happen at the 5 p.m. news conference and the logistics of driving from my Kirkland home to downtown Seattle and not being late.
The scene at the hotel was just as I imagined. A couple of dozen print, wire service and broadcast reporters and photographers were there because Mondale was the closest reporters could get to President Carter during an international crisis where the lives of 52 Americans were at stake.
It was stuffy and crowded. Hot television lights brightened a wide spot in a hallway, big tripods held approximately eight or so TV cameras, over a dozen microphones were precariously mounted—some with duct tape—on the lectern. A handful of print photographers kneeled on the thick carpet between the TV cameras and the lectern so they would stay out of the picture. Stone-faced plain clothes security agents surveyed the mob of reporters and photographers who jostled and joked as we waited. For me, it was already a heady experience and the VEEP wasn’t even there yet.
My cheeks were pink and my stomach queasy from the realization of where I was and what I was doing. I had to force myself to stay focused as we got word that Air Force One had landed at Boeing Field, and later, that Mondale’s motorcade had arrived at the Olympic Hotel.
I battled the urge to forget about asking the first question and just sit back and let myself be in awe of the whole setup. The area jammed with the media and hot television lights grew warmer; my stomach started to flutter, and I began feeling like I was just a shy girl from Everett unworthy of standing with all the prominent local and national news folk, secret service agents and Mondale’s staff. I didn’t know anyone, so I hadn’t participated in the banter among the press corps members who frequently encountered each other on the job. I hated my party dress and silently noted the irony when I realized I was standing next to the local TV reporter who I dreaded most in my planning. In my opinion, he was cocky, rude, and overly aggressive in asking questions at news events.
Suddenly, the area was filled with the distinct sound of rapid clicks and whorls of multiple 35-millimeter cameras as Vice President Mondale stepped into the bright lights and up to the mountain of microphones. He gave a few remarks, skillfully avoiding anything substantive about the Iran hostage crisis.
I wasn’t the only one who wanted the honor of asking the first question. The moment Mondale opened the news conference for questions he was bombarded by a cacophony of reporters trying to out shout each other for his attention. In my mind it was happening in slow motion, but actually, it was just a flash of a few seconds when most reporters dropped out of the shouting match. A few other reporters dropped out one at a time over the next fractions of seconds until only two reporters were left vying for Mondale’s attention: Me, and the TV reporter next to me.
I was startled but glad to hear only our two voices as the other reporters became quiet and dropped out. Then I dropped out too. I let Mr. Full-of-Himself finish his question.
The Vice President of the United States looked at Mr. Full-of-Himself TV reporter.
But he pointed at me. “I believe she was first,” Mondale said.
What! Am I hearing him correctly? Wow, I thought, I’m going to be first! I was so impressed that I could win favor over the man next to me.
Mondale looked at me. “Go ahead,” he said. He waited for my question.
My jitters instantly disappeared. Calm, collected and professional, I asked the first question: “To what degree is Carter personally involved in negotiations to free the hostages; what is the current tone of negotiations and the likelihood of their quick release?” And then the follow-up: “Do you believe the Americans will be released in time for Christmas at home?”
I remember knowing from the reactions of the other reporters and from Mondale that I had asked the perfect questions for the events of the day; that they were important questions. I felt pride in knowing they were questions all the reporters wanted to ask, questions that the world wanted answers to. I was proud that the questions were not asked by a woman, or a pregnant woman—they were asked by a young radio reporter who hustled to ask them first.
Author: Carolyn Duncan
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