Hillary Evens the Score on the Sunday Morning Circuit

I watched as much of Hillary Clinton as I could yesterday—it was almost an all day affair. In a well orchestrated media blitz, the Clinton campaign managed to squeeze in lengthy interviews on all five Sunday morning news shows: NBC's "Meet the Press," "Fox News Sunday," CBS's "Face the Nation," ABC's "This Week" and CNN's "Late Edition."

For those who complain—and we are among them—that not enough women appear on either side of the interview desk in this prime real estate, it was fun to watch her move, by satellite, deftly from show to show, defending her health care plan (she learned from her mistakes), her vote on Iraq and timeline for pulling out the troops (no more funding unless troop withdrawal was included; a reduced force will probably need to stay), clarifying her position on the MoveOn.org Petraeus ad (against it, as well as the swiftboating of John Kerry, and savaging of Max Cleland in the last election) and the fundraising scandal (the real solution is public financing of campaigns).

She handled herself well: serious when required, but showing an ability to laugh—at herself and Rudy Giuliani. Her media training team is doing an excellent job: she no longer appears somber and scolding. Her performance led the panel on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos (except, reliably, George Will) to conclude that she appeared ”presidential.” Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks seemed the most effusive.

It is my guess that just in terms of sheer hours of talking, Hillary Clinton put a major dent in the deficit of women experts on television. That every single host of these important shows is a man, though, is a media scandal. That every humorous late night clip played for clever relief, comes from shows hosted by more men is additionally insulting.

It puts the first woman candidate for the presidency of the United States in an even more rarified male domain: not only are all her opponents men, but so are almost all of her inquisitors. The Sunday morning marathon reminded me of Billie Jean King against Bobby Riggs—in that historic tennis match-up that Billie Jean won. Many would agree that Hillary won her matches yesterday as well—not batting an eye when Tim Russert, especially, attempted to rough her up.

But the real shame of it, for American media, is that there is a woman candidate for president—but the networks have not been able to find a woman candidate to host a serious Sunday morning news show. The Women’s Media Center came into existence to help correct this baffling imbalance of men and women in the media. According to an Annenberg study, women occupy only 3 percent of positions in media that can be considered “clout” positions; only a quarter of syndicated columnists are women—and some major papers can boast of only one or two high visibility women. The White House Project did groundbreaking work in this area—pointing to the shocking lack of women experts on these Sunday morning shows. The result was shesource.org—now a database of 400 women experts in every field available to news organizations.

Perhaps the media gods, comfortably settled in their C-suites are saying, “We gave you Katie Couric, what else do you want?” I would say that until there is a Katie to watch on Sunday morning, we will continue to ask why George Stephanopoulos, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Chris Wallace, Chris Matthews, and Wolf Blitzer get to determine what is news—and why no women, and no people of color, have key roles in this very essential piece of our democracy.