Marciarose Shestack, First Woman Anchor in Major-Market Prime-Time US TV, Visits Adham Center as Consultant

MAY 17, 2000 “She is a role model for all the women at the Adham Center who want to work in broadcasting.” That was Marwa Ragaa's reaction to the veteran TV journalist Marciarose Shestack, this year's Adham Center visiting consultant and the first American woman to anchor a major-market prime-time TV news show. Marwa is one of the Adham Center's MA candidates in TV journalism who attended the studio workshop Marciarose conducted, “Anchoring and Interviewing Techniques.” First-year Adham Center graduate student Mahitab Ezz El Din said of this session, “the way Marciarose shared her past experiences with us during the workshop showed her generosity and her dedication to helping a new generation of journalists.”

Marciarose also drew upon her personal experiences when she gave a lecture, titled “American Women in TV Journalism: Past, Present and Future” in Oriental Hall that was co-sponsored by AUC's Gender and Women's Studies Advisory Group. She provided a sense of the difficulties women faced in overcoming the prevailing opinion, as recent as three decades ago, that women lack the authority and credibility to anchor TV news. She alluded to her own experiences as the first American woman to anchor a prime-time TV news show in a major market in the early seventies. Marciarose spoke with the detachment of a veteran TV journalist who went on to produce award-winning documentaries the elite public broadcasting network PBS, and as a daily columnist commenting on the media for “The Philadelphia Inquirer.”

But for the Adham Center’s second-year graduate students, the high point was their own graduation project presentation session, where Marciarose headed a professional panel that critiqued the MA candidates’ work. Dana Zureikat said she was honored “to have someone who has gone so far in the business comment on my work.” Classmate Yasmine Attia agreed. “It was a great experience to be critiqued by a celebrity like Marciarose. Whatever she said, we took it for granted that was the way reports should be done.” Effat Kamel, who served as executive producer for this year's graduating class, noted: “You didn’t feel offended by criticism but were happy to have someone like Marciarose helping you do a better job.”

Marciarose was also videotape interviewed by Adham Center alumni Nihal Saad for Channel 2 and Nile TV’s prestigious “Good Morning Egypt” show. Nihal is an old fan of Marciarose’s; she had Marciarose on her show four and a half years ago when Marciarose was last in Cairo as a visiting consultant. Nihal says: “Marciarose is brilliant and beautiful. I hope I can mature as she has—she’s a poised professional in all circumstances.”

Ibrahim Saleh, Adham Center class of 2000, also interviewed Marciarose for his show on ERTU’s satellite Family Channel. For convenience Ibrahim used the Adham Center studio, and his classmates helped out behind the cameras and the mixers. Ibrahim has conducted all the VIP interviews over the past year for the AUC TV Video Magazine, which showcases the graduate students’ weekly field report assignments; his interviews have included such VIPs as Gulf DTH/Showtime CEO Peter Einstein and Egypt’s Minister for Environment Nadia Makram Ebeid. So this interview with Marciarose was a moment of emotion for Ibrahim; it was the last interview that he would do from the Adham Center.

Marciarose told Ibrhaim she was struck by the high percentage of women working in Egyptian television in general and in news in particular, a much higher ratio than in America, where the struggle for qualified women to have their rightful place in the TV news studio as anchors was a hard one.

In her talk at Oriental Hall on this issue Marciarose noted the progress women have made. Her pioneering role as the first American woman anchor is now a model for almost all of more than 2,000 local stations broadcasting in the 500 markets in America: local prime time news shows often feature male and female co-anchors.

But the downside, according to Marciarose, is that mature women, however knowledgeable, professional and presentable, will not be selected for that slot when competing with younger, less knowledgeable women. This is not the case with men, where the public can appreciate the mature, greying male anchor like Tom Brokaw. Station managers and network executives justify this prejudice by recourse to audience research which points to nearly all male viewers and even most female viewers preferring the younger-looking woman to the older woman.

Dr. Cynthia Nelson, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, introduced Marciarose at the Oriental Hall lecture in her own capacity as head of the AUC Gender and Women’s Studies Advisory Group, which co-sponsored the talk. She said “the lecture was exciting and provided the context to understand the struggle of American women to participate in the field of television journalism. She [Marciarose] is a lovely lady.”

For Marciarose it was wonderful seeing the enthusiasm and determination of the Adham Center students to become professional TV journalists. "It was exciting for me to critique their work and to see how good it was," she said. "I had a terrific time, and I look forward to returning."