Website secretly censors all news about men for a month to make point about sexism
Business website Which-50 says it lost much of its audience and social presence after it removed all mentions of men as part of a month-long experiment.
For the entirety of July, Which-50 either “ignored” or “discounted” some of Australia’s most senior executives when they would otherwise have featured in articles. They included Amazon Australia boss Rocco Bräuniger and the new CEO of Domain, Jason Pellegrino.
The company also ignored Nine CEO Hugh Marks, Nine sales boss Michael Stephenson and outgoing Fairfax Media CEO Greg Hywood, despite the major media merger which was announced last week.
No photographs of men appeared on the site, and when the companies were written about, their male bosses’ names were excluded.
How Which-50 de-gendered its business coverage
According to a piece on its website, Which-50 continued to write the same stories it always had, interviewing both men and women. But despite the interviews it then deliberately excluded the men, by either referring to them as “spokespeople” or removing them completely from a story.
The post from editor in chief Andrew Birmingham, editor Tess Bennett and writer Joseph Brookes explained:
“For the month of July, we secretly erased men from Which-50.
“Our audience numbers dropped, our social presence evaporated, and we annoyed people who for years have helped us build our brand off the back of their hard work and expertise. They did nothing wrong — we were just jerks — but that’s discrimination for you.”
The team said it experienced levels of “discomfort” during the month.
But in that time, it had doubled the number of women compared to the number typically mentioned.
Unfortunately, that number (45) wasn’t close to the 111 men written about in June.
“When men rang up to query why they had suddenly gone missing from the story (or, more commonly, when their female PR managers or agents rang on their behalf to ask) we simply responded by asking ‘How does it feel to have your contribution discounted on the basis of your gender?'”, the post said.
Bennett said Which-50 wanted to “do something different”
“This month would have been easier on us if we had co-opted the industry’s help and lined up 20 female executives to interview ahead of time. In the end, we rejected that approach because the worst kinds of discrimination happen in the dark, not in the light— although a surprising amount occurs in plain sight.”
Bennett told Mumbrella the exercise was a lot harder than first anticipated, highlighting the fact the company didn’t have a strong enough contact list of female executives.
“We wanted to do something different. There’s so much sameness around events and stories on ‘Women in X’ that it begins to feel like the situation for women at work isn’t going to improve any time soon. We were all of the view that men in gatekeeper positions who hold the resources are the problem and it would be interesting to treat men the way women are treated every day, by having their contributions diminished or overlooked on the basis of their gender,” she said.
“It’s really important to add that we tried not to change our reporting or the stories we covered. Instead we would simply erase them from the story by removing the names of men. The men we discriminated against in July were just unlucky.”
She explained with it, came some challenges: one being the contact list of female executives wasn’t very large and the other, was that a lot of women were less likely to share stories about themselves. Bennett also said the team felt uncomfortable excluding the names of men they had interviewed.
“The women we reached out to were also less likely than men to call us back or reply quickly. Improving those relationships is something we are going to continue to work on,” she said.
At the same time, Birmingham recruited his brother, John Birmingham, author and Fairfax columnist, to complete a column for the end of the month. The column, ‘Men, sucking’ aimed to address some of the issues women in different industries faced.
“There was a lot of women who contacted via DMs and private messages and some by email, with just horrific stories to tell,” Birmingham explained.
“I wouldn’t say it was eye-opening, because men really are dicks, but when you get your face rubbed in it for two days straight, you begin to understand what it must be like for women who get their face rubbed in it every day of their lives.
“The thing that really struck me was – as bad as the reported stories were – the stuff we didn’t put in the site was much much worse. Violence…just really awful stuff.”
The experiment concludes on Wednesday.
Coooool.
Wait, what point were they making?
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So are they trying to claim the media ‘deliberately excludes or removes” women from stories? I also don’t understand the point of this. Seems like all they have proved is how to run a website into the ground in the space of a month.
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Very brave. Like it. Well done Andrew and team.
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This is probably the worst attempt at gender equalisation I have seen . The language and tone used in quotes in this article show just how misguided this approach was .
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The whole premise flawed. It proves nothing except that a lot of the site’s traffic is SEO, generated by the names of people in their stories, most of whom happen to be men because it’s a business site and most businesses are run by men, like it or not. The editorial also suggests women are being deliberately ignored by the business media, however if females are not running major companies which dominate the news how can they be ignored by reporters if they are not speaking on behalf of their company in the first place? Anyway….
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I get the idea –
but if most of the key movers and shakers in the industry are currently men (we all wish it wasn’t true, but sadly it is), then discounting them would have made your reports and articles less relevant, as you wouldn’t be covering the key people?
Just a thought, from a woman.
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This story outlines a pathetic experiment based upon a supposition, a possible illegality, and a stretch of the imagination.
Change is a gradual process, it evolves and it continues to shift. The world is populated by, among other things, human beings, who arrive on the planet courtesy of males and females, and who mainly comprise males and females; they live and must survive together in the same time frame which always ends with death. “Men are dicks” “Women are stupid” “Men are better” “Women are better” “We are equal in every way” are all either wrong, or very questionable comments.
Other life forms seem to cope better than we so called super intelligent beings, if we don’t wise up fairly soon, this constant in fighting may lead to deep disaster.
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Lets fight sexism by excluding all the people of one gender!!!!…..oh wait….
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This whole article and debate reinforces the fact that any discrimination creates barriers and conflict. In any situation where one group demands privilege over another, conflict MUST arise. The debate over gender equality is one manifestation. Women have been discriminated against. But the philosophy of “now it is our turn” simply makes those antagonists as bad as the people they criticise. Underpinning true equality is RESPECT. If respect is the underpinning philosophy, the conflict and “us and them”; becomes unnecessary. It is axiomatic that two wrongs do not make a right.
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Hello friend,
We’re not demanding privilege, or special treatment over men.
We would like equity. This means that everyone gets what they need, to give them their best chance at success.
Until that happens, any experiment that draws attention to inequity, is most welcome.
Hearts<3
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Explain then how this experiment achieves this drawing of attention to equity and what the outcome will be? What have we learned? How will behaviour change?
I can see nothing in the article that answers these questions.
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Hey peeps… it was just an experiment! No one hurt in the making of this story. I admire Which 50 for have the guts to see what the results would be. I doubt it’s a long term strategy. Good on them for having the curiosity to see what the results would be. Even if they weren’t very surprising (male readership dropped). Why are people so p!ssed off with them? It’s their site, they can do as they like
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There is an old saying that the comments underneath a story about feminism will always justify feminism.
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Richard, more like based on a suppository methinks.
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“…because men really are dicks…”
I had to re-read this statement about five times to see how I’d misunderstood it or taken it out of context. I’m still kinda hoping I have.
The reverse stereotyping and gender discrimination displayed within this comment is stunning. The logic of the ‘campaign’ and its associated quotes and rationale are so flawed, naive and mean spirited I can’t actually list them all out, as I’d hope they’d be manifestly obvious to anyone of intelligence. I would offer that it’s a universal rule that one does not solve any problem by acting in the exact same manner. I know this, because my Mum taught me.
John, you may wish to typecast yourself ‘as a dick’. Perhaps you believe that as a male you have automatic license to say whatever you like about men, or that you are genetically hardwired to be discriminatory towards others based on their gender, or that society has inalterably nurtured your views in this way. Whilst I realise that’s the point you’ve attempted to make, I prefer not to be stereotyped in this way, please, as that would be gender discrimination. Um, obviously.
One final perspective: if anyone rightly wants to help change the world, try to magnify solutions, not wrongdoing, please.
Cheers.
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Being sexist to prevent sexism is like going to war to create peace… look how well that’s worked for the US
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Hi, sure, I will try –
When the men questioned why they were not named in these articles, Which-50 responded with – “How does it feel to have your contribution discounted on the basis of your gender”
How ludicrous! That they would be discounted, just because they are male!!
Through this experiment, Which-50 are drawing a parallel to women in the workplace who are not considered for gatekeeper roles, who’s ideas are discounted, who’s everyday lives are effected, just because of their gender.
What have we learnt;
Even with a leg up of canning all male mentions (111) in these articles for a month, they couldn’t even get to half the amount of female mentions (45)
That asks the question; Why? Because, women are not in gatekeeper roles.
Why? Because they are not given the opportunity to begin with.
How to change it?
That’s the BIG question— and I do not have all the answers.
I would say at the very least, employers should stop talking and start doing.
Widen the hiring pool to see who’s around, empower female workers to lead in situations a male would normally ‘take charge’. Work on the work culture.
Trial and error; any change is a start.
Reading their article in full, helped me understand the experiment a bit more too.
https://which-50.com/cover-story-no-mans-land/
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Devalue your own product in the service of an ideology. It’s the pomo thing to do.
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The only ones hurt in the making of this story are Which-50 (whoever they are).
It is not an experiment. An experiment has a hypothesis, a control, data on variables, and a conclusion.
This was “let’s just stop using men’s names to see what happens” followed by a press release stating “men are dicks” and “some of them were a bit angry”.
All they demonstrated was a correlation (distinct from causation) between “the use of mens names” and traffic to their site.
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Interesting that the Which-50 team as profiled on their website consists of five men and one woman.
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I really hope Fairfax gives this method a trial. They already have an unnwavering bias towards females and their left leaning agenda, the rest of us males who only read the SMH for Sport and Finance nowadays would likely abandon Fairfax quicker than Clementine Ford can insult any male she comes within 5 feet of…
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