media criticism

Childbirth educator and documentary filmmaker, Vicki Elson likes to say, aside from the typical hospital birth, there are essentially three kinds of births on television.

The "perils of home birth"? How about "the perils of mainstream media coverage of home birth"? The Today Show mangles its portrayal of midwifery and out-of-hospital birth as excellent maternity care options.

"Respectable" mainstream media outlets have unleashed a torrent of misogyny. There's a middle-school mentality afoot here--a class of journalists forced by circumstance to acknowledge that there is such a thing as gender discrimination flinging back insults at their critics.