As part of a Women’s Media Center campaign demanding that Bill O’Reilly apologize for his personal, sexist attack on the legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas, Courtney Martin, a member of the WMC Progressive Women’s Voices program, appeared on The O’Reilly Factor this week to drive the message home. Here is Martin's account of the experience and its aftermath. (The WMC also received hundreds of hateful, profanity-laced, sometimes threatening emails and calls after calling for O’Reilly’s apology)

The author, WMC’s media manager, understood the potential of networking. But the true power of the web for advocacy hit home when an injustice threatened her family. Here she describes how anyone can use the process.

They met in Toronto and cemented a movement of mothers that now promises a global network, with a website and a wide-ranging set of objectives. The author helped film a documentary tracing their progress.

As a result of Draconian federal sentencing laws imposed since the 1980s, the author, caught on the edges of her cousin’s cocaine-selling operation, remains locked up despite what her trial judge called her “extraordinary rehabilitation.” While we seek out family during this holiday season, she longs for her three daughters and hopes that a documentary about her case will influence judicial policy makers.

Journalists have had years to vet John McCain’s account of wartime heroism in Vietnam. But no real critique of its veracity has emerged from leading media outlets. Reporters and commentators remain remarkably disinclined to investigate a major underpinning of McCain’s argument that he is qualified to be commander-in-chief. Here, historian Mary Hershberger questions why.

While the old boys’ network continues to dominate mainstream media, women are tending to look elsewhere for their news and information. This year, the blogosphere has emerged as a powerful venue for women’s political activity as well.

Two thirds of the way through the male-moderated presidential debates, history has turned in this election when women broadcasters played a role.

One of the dirty secrets of the film business is that it takes women directors a long time to get their films made. The Women, which opened recently, took Diane English 14 years to bring to the screen; other examples include Tamara Jenkins award-winning The Savagesand Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, which took 10 years each. Writer/director Deborah Kampmeier joins this illustrious club with her own decade long trek to see her filmHounddog starring Dakota Fanning finally released in theatres.

Mainstream media paid scant attention to Martha Lauzen's "Thumbs Down: Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers" when the report was published on July 28 by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ), although the posting was supported by simultaneous distribution to 500 entertainment media and movie industry A-listers.

“This is a bit more civilized than usual,” one attendee could be heard saying upon entering the auditorium for the Federal Communications Commission event in New York City on Tuesday. Unlike the emotional collection of media activists, protestors, concerned citizens and artists (some of whom directed hisses and sneers at FCC Chair Kevin Martin) who attended any one of the public hearings held by the commission over the past year, this one featured mostly suits and ties, all of whom coolly assembled without fanfare at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Four years ago Lisa Stone, Jory des Jardins and Elisa Camahort Page wanted to settle the annoying question they were constantly hearing: where are the women bloggers? So they put out a call, on their blogs of course, asking women if they would come to a conference, and, as Elisa says, the "response was immediate, passionate and positive.” Today Blogher has exploded from the 300 early attendees to 1,000 women (and a couple of guys) who just spent two days in San Francisco networking, learning and creating community around the act of blogging.

“People consider me the 411 on what goes wrong with black women in America,” says Gina McCauley, founder of www.whataboutourdaughters.blogspot.com.

I work full time, but my evenings are spent writing about and promoting Hillary Clinton on the Internet. Sometimes well into the wee hours of the morning. I may be just a volunteer, but I’m one of m...

In 1996, when Eve Ensler premiered The Vagina Monologues at a small performance space in downtown New York, she received the type of response playwrights dream about: critical acclaim, an Obie award...

It's that time of the year again when most of Hollywood and the New York film world decamp to cold Park City, Utah, to feast on the latest indie fare at the Sundance Film Festival. This year seems a...

Our national conversation is a messy collision of race and gender, with ageism and the questionable state of our media tossed in as collateral damage. The 2008 presidential race is making us think...

“Global security” tends to conjure up “fighting terrorism,” conditioned as we are by the media and government. But last fall, the International Women Leaders Global Security Summit (New York City, N...

Politics is not for the weak at heart. It has to be rough being any candidate, just waiting—and in many cases, cringing—to see what will be said next, or what unflattering photo of you will appear. ...

The gladiators have moved into the amphitheatre. And who would have guessed such a spectacle would debut in Des Moines, Iowa, on a Saturday afternoon nearly a year before the presidential election? ...