Highlighted Alumna: Bonnie (Ginzburg) Erbe '74, Host, "To the Contrary"
 Bonnie Erbe '74 knows where she'll be this September 20: at a special event hosted by the Congressional Women's Caucus in honor of the 15th anniversary of "To the Contrary," the women's issues public television program that Erbe created and hosts. Two hundred guests, including members of Congress from both parties, will celebrate Erbe's achievement.
Erbe always knew she wanted to work in television. While at Barnard, where she majored in English, Erbe was an intern at CBS and at Channel 21 on Long Island. After graduating from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, she worked on-air as a news reporter for the CBS-affiliate in Washington D.C. and then as a correspondent for NBC news in Atlanta.
Discouraged after a round of layoffs at network news operations, Erbe attended Georgetown Law School at night. But the kid who grew up watching Walter Cronkite and dreaming of network news wasn't fated to be a lawyer. In 1988, Erbe had just accepted a job with a law firm when she came up with the idea for "To the Contrary" She left the law firm, and four years later , "To the Contrary" went on the air. "My time at Barnard was the most influential experience I had in terms of getting the show going," Erbe says. "Strong women were the rule rather than the exception, and interest in women's issues was very strong."
Finding support for the show was not easy. "I just talked to a million different corporations and foundations and finally found a few willing to fund it," Erbe recalls. She met resistance from many who questioned whether an "all-female news analysis series" was necessary and whether it was inherently sexist.
Erbe recalled telling them: given the thousands of hours of programming aimed at men, 30 minutes a week for women was hardly radical. "To the Contrary" aired on Maryland PBS in 1992 and became independent in 1996. Today, it is seen on more than 251 PBS stations nationwide and in Canada, as well as internationally on Voice of America Television .
Erbe firmly believes in the need for women-centered news. "Women have a different idea of what's important in their lives, and therefore what constitutes news," Erbe says. She notes that most media stories about the slump in President Bush's approval ratings do not even mention the fact that the president never won the women's vote overall while "To the Contrary" has explored this side of the story. "Other shows ignore what we cover," Erbe says, "which are issues affecting women, families, and people of color."
As host, Erbe has traveled widely interviewing women leaders. She covered the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing; interviewed Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; reported from New Zealand in 2002 on the election of that country's first female Prime Minister, Governor General, and Supreme Court Justice; and traveled to Egypt for a report on the first female pharaoh to rule ancient Egypt.
In addition to her work on "To the Contrary," Erbe also writes a political blog for US News & World Report and a weekly political column for Scripps newspapers.
"I want to keep doing all three until I'm too old to have the energy, which I think won't be for awhile," Erbe says.
--Ilana Stanger-Ross
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