Is the male-dominated media biased as to which historical events get commemorated ?

The answer - unfortunately - is yes : male-dominated news coverage is still very gender-biased.

When it comes to commemorating violent versus beneficial historical events , it usually proves that male journalists are from Mars and the women from Venus.

And since most executive editors and executive producers are still men , guess which kind of historical events are splashed about and which get merely 'noted' ?

Wartime New York had two Manhattan Projects - one pioneering death-dealing atomic bombs and the other pioneering life-saving penicillin.

Both will be celebrating their seventy five anniversaries next year but it is quite likely that you will only see news stories about one of them.


In March 1940, Columbia University scientists Fermi and Szilard got $6,000 for building their atomic pile , on the authorization of President Roosevelt, an event usually viewed as the start of the atomic Manhattan project.

Call this the 'Little Boy' Manhattan project, after the name of the first bomb. (Would women name a bomb that was about to burn tens of thousands of children to death after a child ?)

The American national government has since spent far more than six trillion dollars on atomic research - a sum (by no coincidence) that is about the size of the entire publicly held debt of the America national government.

Try converting all that into new books for school libraries, extra staff for nursing homes and new places in daycare centers to imagine what $ six trillion dollars looks like when it is spent on something useful and productive.)

On October 16th 1940, penicillin's Manhattan project began, when the first needles of penicillin-the-antibiotic were given to patients Charles Aronson and Aaron Alston by Columbia University scientist Martin Henry Dawson, thus ushering in our Age of Antibiotics.

And by the way, Dr Dawson - who was combatting a painful terminal illness the whole time he was fighting for abundant cheap wartime penicillin for all humanity - never asked for any money from the government.

Call his effort the 'Baby Girl' Manhattan project .

(After the August 1943 story about how dying baby girl Patty Malone only received penicillin after intervention by Citizen Hearst's newspapers sparked a national protest by Doctor Mom that finally made penicillin world famous overnight, fifteen neglected years after it was first discovered.)

If male journalists continue to rule the roost - guess which event will be ballyhooed next year and which one will be ignored or only 'dutifully noted' ?

Mars may still domain the battlefields - but it does not have to go on dominating the newsroom and the TV in our living rooms .

A 1999 Newsday/Newseum survey of 35,000 American media consumers confirms that male readers think that the atomic bomb and the Little Boy story was the top news story of the 20th century.

But the women thought penicillin and the Baby Girl story was the top news story of the 20th century.

Since there are slightly more women than men , a prudent journalist should try and think of all their audience when they have two similar stories at the same time to report.

But unless New York's female media 'Act Up' , I think the events behind the 75th anniversary of the start of the life-saving Age of Antibiotics will be ignored --- once again....

Agape's TRINITY : dawning the Age of Antibiotics , October 16th 1940 , New York City

To female members of the media reading this blog : 

Another 16th day , July 16th 1945 , is considered the dawn of the Atomic Age , our new age of possible instant global death , and it is a day well marked by (male) historians and (male) journalists alike.

But who marked then - who will mark now (because its seventy fifth anniversary is next October 2015)  - of the dawning of a more hope-filled and life-saving age, our current Age of Antibiotics ---- if not you ?

On October 16th 1940, registration day for America's first ever peacetime draft , all media eyes (along with the eyes of a good many diplomats from Germany and Britain)  were on the 1a students of  New York's Columbia University.

After all , three thousand of Columbia's students had famously voted to never again to go to war - would they now register , to fight a new possible war ?

No eyes were on another part of the near-deserted Columbia campus (all classes were cancelled to ease the registration process) as a new class of medication was about to undergo its first critical (systemic/internal) test on an actual human patient.

Columbia's medical school dean knew of this crucial test but deliberately chose not to release a press release about it - so how could any media have reported upon it ?

But would they have anyway ?

Because as America girded up for a possible war, 1A young men and their medical conditions - war medicine - was the new priority.

Lowest of the lowest priorities - for news media and medical researchers alike - was 4F medicine - social medicine.

For that was the news that had greeted all of Columbia's medical researchers as they returned to work in the Fall of 1940.

Even lower still in priority were any pioneering efforts to help the 4Fs of the 4Fs.

People like the young men with weakened heart valve conditions likely to die at some point of invariably fatal subacute bacterial endocarditis , because they were judged unfit not just for military life but even for work in the crucial war industries.

This instrumentalist view of humanity : viewing the worth of your fellow human being by only what they can contribute to the war effort - was really done best by Hitler and Stalin.

But America was willing to give it the old school try - starting with the SBE sufferers.

However - and thankfully for all humanity - one Columbia medical professor, Dr Martin Henry Dawson , felt quite differently.

He began his own Manhattan Project - Agape penicillin - on that October morning.

A military hero of WWI,  he nevertheless felt that one of the best ways to combat Hitler was morally - by showing in practise how much we opposed the Nazis' instrumentalist view of humanity.

So on October 16th 1940, he felt America should show it cared at least as much about its unfit 4F youth as it did about their fit 1A companions.

A  Jew, Charles Aronson , firstly, and then a black man , Aaron Alston - in 1940 America they were practically 4F simply by ethnicity alone - were the two patients who got the first ever needles of penicillin-the-antibiotic that day.

Aaron eventually died but amazing, Charles survived : a hopeful start to the new Age of Antibiotics.

So on October 16th 2015, seventy years later, will the New York media mark the start of the American peacetime draft registration - still very much a part of American life ?

Or will the New York media mark the start of the Age of Antibiotics  , still very much part of everyone's life around the world ?

Or hopefully both - seeing how intimately the two events were intertwined,  way back in October 1940 .

But I doubt - if left to the men alone - it'll ever happen.

A 1999 Newsday-Newseum survey of 35,000 American men and women revealed a perhaps not so surprising difference of opinion as to the top news story of the 20th century.

The men thought it was the death-dealing Manhattan Project and its atomic bomb.

But the women thought it was the life-saving Manhattan Project and its wartime vision of cheap abundant penicillin for all humanity.

So women, particularly if you work in the media - its time to step up to the plate and make sure that , this time , the dawn of the Age of Antibiotics gets its due ...