ABSTRACT
When Hillary Rodham Clinton lost the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama in 2008, many observers were quick to blame media bias and sexism for her loss. The Women’s Media Center decried the “pervasive . . . sexism in the media’s coverage” of Clinton’s campaign and mounted an online petition campaign, urging television viewers to “call on the national broadcast news outlets (CNN, FNC, MSNBC and NBC) to stop treating women as a joke; to stop using inherently gendered language as an insult or criticism; and to ensure that women’s voices are present and accounted for in the national political dialogue.” The National Organization of Women assembled an online “Media Hall of Shame,” a video collection of “the most outrageous moments of sexism from mainstream media’s coverage of the 2008 elections,” accompanied by a “Misogyny Meter” so viewers could rate each one. The treatment of Clinton on cable news in particular ignited controversy. Most memorably, perhaps, critics decried MSNBC’s Chris Matthews claim just after Clinton won the New Hampshire primary that “the reason she may be a frontrunner, is her husband messed around” (a reference to her husband’s infamous sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s). Matthews later apologized on air for this comment after women’s groups organized a letterwriting protest, though he also told the New York Times that “I was tonally inaccurate but factually true.”2
