Eleanor Mills, the editorial director of the Sunday Times, has underlined her opposition to The Sun's Page 3.
In a radio interview yesterday, she revealed that she has raised the matter within Rupert Murdoch's News UK, the publisher of both titles:
"I'm on the record as being opposed to Page 3. I think it's demeaning to women and I'm really not a fan and I've said this in meetings at News International - sorry News UK - and that's the view I hold…
I think Page 3 feels quite regressive. I think it feels very kind of 70s. I have two daughters of my own who, when they open up the Sun and they see it, they're like, 'mum, why is this woman not wearing a top?'"
Mills, who has just become chair of the campaigning group Women in Journalism, did concede that "when you actually talk to Sun readers they're very pro it."
During her interview with Steve Hewlett on Radio 4's Media Show, she also referred to the problems caused by the Daily Sport's front page pictures of underdressed women often available on petrol station forecourts.
She said: "It is not good when you're raising girls and they see women being objectified in that way. And we're going to be doing a lot in Women in Journalism to stop a bit of that."
Mills also spoke about what she called "the macho culture on the newsdesks of some national newspapers."
She said there were more women editors in the past and that there are still too few women in other senior executive roles in newspapers.
And she linked the absence of women to editorial content, arguing that - at the Sunday Times - she and other female executives have pushed for positive stories about women, "not as appendages of men."
She pointed specifically to a story published early last month about mothers engaged in school runs being targeted over their parking.
That story went everywhere, she said, but men originally didn't "get it". Having women in key editorial roles makes a difference to output.
