Joy Crysdale - Fearless Female Journalists

Fearless Female Journalists

The Womens Hall of Fame Series

Fearless
FEMALE
Journalists

Joy Crysdale

Second Story Press

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Crysdale, Joy, 1952
Fearless female journalists / Joy Crysdale.

(The womens hall of fame series)
ISBN 978-1-897187-71-5 1.

Women journalistsBiographyJuvenile literature.
I. Title. II. Series: Womens hall of fame series

PN4820.C79 2010 070.922 C2010-900610-0

Copyright 2010 by Joy Crysdale

Editor: Debbie Rogosin
Copyeditor: Karen Helm
Designer: Melissa Kaita
Cover photos and icons istockphoto.com

Printed and bound in Canada

Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario ArtsCouncil and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through theBook Publishing Industry Development Program.

Published by
Second Story Press
20 Maud Street, Suite 401
Toronto, ON
M5V 2M5
www.secondstorypress.ca

For my parents, Minnie and Bryden Crysdale,with love and gratitude

CONTENTS

All of us want to be brave. Few of us think we are. The women in this book are truly courageous. That doesnt mean they didnt feel fear, or anxiety, or darkness. It means they went ahead anyway and did what they believed they had to do. It was their journalism that was fearless, and through it, each of these women changed the world in some way.

Mary Ann Shadd fought the terrible curse of slavery with every fiber of her being. Margaret Bourke-White strode straight into danger to create a photographic record of the tragic things that happened in war. Anna Politkovskaya never stopped speaking out about the evil she saw, and experienced personally. Farida Nekzad is at risk every day because she reports on the terrible plight of women in Afghanistan.

There are many ways in which journalism can have an impact. It can produce wonder. People were completely mesmerized by the fact Nellie Bly traveled around the world by herself faster than anyone could have imagined. It can take away shame. Thembi Ngubane did that by telling her own story of AIDS. And lets not forget, everyone needs to laugh once in a while. Barbara Frum was one of the toughest journalists in the business, but she also delighted in bringing funny and absurd stories to her audiences, and they loved her for that. To be a good journalist, you have to be brave enough not to care what people think of you. If youre in the business of telling people the truth, and that is the business journalists are supposed to be in, there are many people who wont like what you say, and will be angry with you for saying it. Sports reporter Pam Oliver has been publicly taken to task for what shes reported, but she speaks for every honorable journalist when she says shes not in the business of being liked.

Many women in this book also had the courage to make breakthroughs in workplaces that were mostly male, and that restricted what they could do. Doris Anderson, who literally changed a country through her leadership of a magazine, nearly didnt get the job because of prejudice against her as a woman. Katie Couric insisted she be allowed to do the same kind of interviews as her male co-anchor, and broke the mold for female morning show hosts ever after.

Despite the difficulties, and sometimes the dangers, of journalism, one factor overrides everything. It is one of the worlds best jobs. All the amazing women in this book absolutely loved what they did, and do. Its exciting, a life of constant learning and public service, and a way to go where others cant. I learned this when I started in radio at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. One of my first stories was about the Toronto Zoo, and I went inside an enclosure with a baby gorilla. She sat beside me, placed her hand against mine, and compared the two. I couldnt believe I was lucky enough to be doing that for my job, and that I was being paid for it. Later in my career, working with Barbara Frum at The Journal, and then after that on many other kinds of programs, I continued to feel that way.

One of the reasons this book has been written is because many people dont understand the role of journalism. And yet it is crucial to a free society and democracy. Journalists find things out, and tell the public what they find. If people know about things, they can try to do something about them. In Anna Politkovskayas Russia, when journalists finally had the freedom to tell the public the truth, the government was forced to stop a war. Truthful information for the public is power for the public.

This book begins with a woman who started a newspaper, and ends with a woman who wrote a blog. In between you will meet women who work in magazines, on television and radio. As you read their stories, I hope you will discover what journalists can be, and what they contribute. And I hope you will be as inspired and moved as I have been. Some of the women are tough, a few disagreeable, and others you might not necessarily want as friends. They were, and are, human, after all. But they are all admirable, and I believe deserve our gratitude for taking on the challenges they did.

There are so many more like them, through history and today, who work hard just to bring us the truth. My only regret about this book is that I couldnt include all the brave women journalists who deserve recognition. We need them. I hope you enjoy meeting these women. And I hope they inspire you to make your own way in the world with courage.

Joy Crysdale

MARY ANN
SHADD CARY

M ary Ann Shadd didnt care if she made people angry. As a matter of fact, she seemed to enjoy it. If people were going to get in her way when she was doing what she believed to be right, they had better watch out. As one black historian who knew her wrote, trying to stop Mary Ann was as useless as attempting to remove a stone wall with your little finger. She was a formidable foe, willing to take on anyone in her battles for equality for black people, and for women. Journalism and the written word were Mary Anns weapons of choice, and they established her place in history. She became the first black woman editor in North America, and some say she was also the first African-American woman to establish and publish a newspaper in Canada or the United States.

Free Blacks Before 1861
Before the American Civil War, about ten per cent of the black population were not slaves but free although there were many barriers to what they could do. There were a variety of reasons they, or their ancestors, were free; some slaves were released by their owners, some ran away, and some were rewarded with freedom when they fought with the American side in the revolution. Others were freed when some northern states abolished slavery.

Mary Ann was the first of Abraham and Harriet Shadds thirteen children. She was born in 1823, in Delaware, at a time when slavery was still legal in most of the United States. This cruel practice of people owning other people as pieces of property had been in place since the 1600s, when Africans were forcibly shipped to America to be sold. The Shadds were not slaves; they were part of a small minority of free blacks, and their family had been free for generations.