We took this picture on the set of ABC News when visiting Tamar Gargle

Today our group went to ABC News to interview Tamar Gargle, and get a tour of their workspace. We took the one train to 66th street, where ABC was across the street from the subway exit. When we got there, Tamar talked to us a little about herself, and what she does. Tamar is the manager of all the graphics operations, so although she doesn’t actually work on the graphics specifically, she manages them. She also talked to us about the way women and girls are portrayed in the news compared to an ad for a product, or a tv show that doesn’t have to show them in reality. If the news uses a photo of a woman or a man, the only touching up that is done would be little things like fixing red eyes, or making the light a little brighter because the persons face is hard to see. The news does not sexualize women, but portrays them as they really are, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be presenting correct news. Tamar also said that when portraying women and men in the media, ABC treats them as equals. We asked Tamar what she thought of how women are portrayed in ads, and much of the media we see today, and she described to us how the other day, she was in a cab with her son, and there was an ad for Guess jeans where a woman had the jeans on, but was lying on a motorcycle with no top on. Tamar talked how horrifying it is to see women sexualized in that way, and she did not want her son or herself to have to see ads like that. Tamar also mentioned how sometimes it can be hard working in a place where she could be in a meeting of twenty people where she is one of two girls, but she believes companies such as ABC news are trying hard to make their jobs racially fair, and bring more women into the business.

This is a photo from a room where some of the graphics from the news show 20 20 are done

A Panorama of some offices at ABC

Besides talking to us about her job, and her opinions on women in the media, Tamar took us on a tour of parts of the ABC News building. We got to see many different parts of the graphics of ABC, and all the different jobs and hard work that goes into it. We talked with a few different people about their specific jobs; one woman worked on the titles for a news show on ABC called 20 20, another man did 3D designs to help explain news that they didn’t have specific footage for. Tamar also took us down to a station where many of the news shows are actually filmed, and we got to stand in the place where the newscaster would sit. We also went above and got to see all the lights and such, and stare down into the room where all the live filming happened. Our second to last stop on the tour was the control room, where we were explained to a little bit about how everything worked, and got to see all the different camera angles, and all the feeds that came in. Our last stop was the editing room, and then we made our way back to Tamar’s office. Overall the experience was incredible, and seeing how everything came together was amazing, especially since our topic is women in the media.

Here is a link to the ABC News website: http://abcnews.go.com/