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Women Overcome Typecasting

     With the doors to broadcasting being opened up to minorities, women began to make great strides in broadcast journalism as well.

     Being a woman was more than a double-edged sword that cut many different ways. Women were denied entry because news, and especially broadcasting was considered a man's profession. Yet, when barriers were broken down in other fields, women were hired or promoted as tokens.  An Asian American woman was a double minority token who fulfilled two slots. Women were underestimated but they could turn that misjudgment into an advantage as they swept past men stuck in complacency or by convention. Women were denied the best assignments and most challenging opportunities because the male bosses thought attractive, feminine females were too pretty, pampered, and soft to be real journalists or TV news people. Yet those very same intangible qualities of attractiveness and charisma could become very valuable and justify elevation to on-air reporter and news anchor positions.

     Many women were motivated by media sexism to work harder, take greater risks, and perform better - often for less pay than men. Women eventually proved they were just as tough, just as brave, and just as smart as men, if not more so.

     Yet even after the doors were opened in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu (Ken Kashiwahara, reporter/anchor, 1968), it was very hard elsewhere. Joanne Lee, who blazed a trail in every market she entered (Sacramento, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cable News Network in New York), said "California was paradise - it was much easier to be hired as a token. Chicago was really tough, a LOT of racism. They never saw an Asian face before that could do any reporting." More than once when she showed up with a news crew for an interview, a spokesperson for a corporation of the government would say to her, "Why don't you come here and sit on my lap and I'll tell you a story?"

     Before Linda Yu got to Chicago as the first daily news anchor of Chinese ancestry, she was told by a secretary, "We hired someone more minority than you." That made her angry and determined to show that there is room for an Asian American like her in the business.

     To stay in the business for a long time, or to achieve credibility, respect, and accolades, you had to be good and show some "moxie." Joann Lee recalls that when she was hired in Philadelphia in the 1970s by the man who would eventually become the head of CBS News, Eric Ober, he later told her that the reason he hired her was obviously not for ratings, but because she was a good reporter, and he was impressed by her assertiveness which came through during lunch when she stopped in the middle of their conversation to ask the waitress to bring her a better fork. Her fork was slightly bent.

     Connie Chung used her tenacity, drive, and aggressiveness to become the first Asian American network correspondent covering Presidents Nixon and the Watergate scandal, political conventions, etc., then the first Asian American evening news anchor on CBS, and now the most visible Asian American public figure.

     Switching from biology, Chung earned a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland in 1969. Her first job was with WTTG-TV as a copy person and secretary, waiting for an opportunity to advance to the news division. When a position opened up, Chung was denied it on the grounds that she was essential where she was.  Unwilling to accept this, she found a replacement for herself and reapplied, this time getting the job. She was made an on-air reporter in 1971.

     Later that year Connie Chung secured a job at CBS's Washington bureau, aided in part by the Federal Communications Commission's timely mandate for stations to hire more minorities.

     In 1976, Chung moved to KNXT Los Angeles, where she became a very high-paid local news anchor, receiving as estimated $600,000 annually.  By the 1990s, her work for NBC and CBS catapulted Chung to celebrity status. The winner of three national Emmys and a Peabody, she currently co-anchors 20/20 on ABC and other special assignments under a multi-million-dollar contract.

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