Unequal Media Coverage In Sports

Gender classification is a predominant topic within today’s sports and is most broadly understood through the portrayals of sports media. Through overt and covert ways, sports media has continued to promote a masculine representation of sports (Millington & Wilson, 2010; Messener, Duncan, & Jensen, 1993). By understanding the way in which sports media portrays sports, one can recognize how masculinity has dominated the world of sports. With the aid of two unique studies of sports media, this paper will critique the way in which media has effected the gendered depiction of sports.

While participation of women in sports has increased, the media representation of women in sports remains problematic. Even the most talented elite female athletes like Michelle Kwan and Monica Seles are portrayed in a sexual fashion, as a way of deemphasizing their athleticism and neutralizing any possible threat they might seem to pose to male viewers. Very few male athletes are portrayed in such an objectified manner; they are portrayed as competitors first and foremost, not as personalities. Also, the media coverage of athletes is disproportionately focused on male athletes. The coverage of female athletes tends to stress individualized female sports where women can be sexualized like tennis and figure skating, versus competitive team sports like basketball and soccer.

Gender representation and in particular misrepresentation is a key issue within sport and media today as female coverage of sport is overlooked in all forms of mainstream media. This issue is what we, as a group of 3, had to tackle and present to our academic peers in a student led seminar session. The issue derives from the main theme of sport and media and their relationship but could also be said to have direct links to other themes such as sport and (in) equality. Gender representation comes under both media and equality in terms of broader topics because it is the concern of the media to help broadcast more female sport and raise awareness of the inequality which exists to the wide audience it has to target, this doesn’t happen enough currently. Research by Cooky et al. (2013) suggests that female sports coverage on ESPN sport takes up around 3% of coverage time which is a shocking disparity compared to men’s coverage on the same channel. It also found that 0 news stories on WNBA were published out of season across multiple news channels while the NBA had 72 stories. Studying this topic is particularly important to understand historically and culturally why this problem exists as well as to look at the negative ideologies which exist within sports media around the subject of gender representation.

Male sports receive more recognition than female sports. “Additionally, in a study of four major newspapers--USA Today, the Boston Globe, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Morning news--women-only sports stories totaled just 3.5 percent of all sports stories.” (Collins Live Strong). Has one ever heard of Lisa Leslie, Kerri Walsh, or Chris Evert? Lisa Leslie is a WNBA basketball player. Kerri Walsh is a famous volleyball player for Team USA. Chris Evert is a tennis player. Has anyone heard of David Beckham, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Michael Jordan or Lebron James? Those well known names do not need any explanation. However, those female athletes have worked just as hard and have achieved so much for their team that they should receive just as much recognition. Whenever an individual searches through the sports section of a newspaper they are bombarded with news about male sports, but what about female sports? Mckenna Peterson is a twelve year old athlete who plays basketball. While she was reading the Dicks Sporting Goods Magazine, she realized that there were no female athletes featured in the magazine. “McKenna added in her letter that the only women featured in the catalog are sitting in the stands, or dressed as cheerleaders in the coupons” (Murray ABC). Editors of sports magazines need to take a closer look at their content and not be so discriminatory and realize that they could draw in female readers by including female athletes. Currently, it is so hard to imagine that a sports magazine would not feature female athletes along with male athletes. More people would run up to famous male athletes in public than famous female athletes. For example, more people would take notice of Derek Jeter than Jennie Finch if someone saw them in public. People are glued to their TV screens while watching

It is also believed that female athletes become objectified in the media as an “attempt to limit female power, thereby reinforcing hegemonic masculinity” (Pederson,2002). Mass media and sports are one of the most commanding hegemonic social institutions and there is a strong link between athleticism and masculinity. It is due to this hegemonic masculinity that women, in many ways are considered inferior to men and treated as if they have no place of their own in sports, where only male power dominates.

“In the earliest generation of sports it was clear that men’s were much more developed and produced than women’s. Now to this day, the overwhelming difference of the two gender’s sports is significantly exposed. If the media were to equalize women’s sports to men’s then it would decrease the ratings, but the house should force the media to display, promote, and report women’s sports equally to men’s sports because increased media would essentially expand the fund for women’s sports and it would create role models for young women to get engaged in a sport.

Gender stereotyping in sports media is something we see everyday in magazines and on TV. Since sports were invented, males have dominated one of Canada’s largest pastimes. Reasons for this being physicality and strength, but as time progressed women began to become more involved in the culture of sport. Today there is almost an equal amount of women participating in sports as man, yet women are still not being represented with the same approach as men. About a month ago I found a video online that followed a sports reporter who was trying to make a point about gender stereotyping within sports media. He would interview professional male athletes but rather than ask them the typical interview questions we see in male sports, such as “has your workout routine changed since…” but rather asked them questions that are typically related to female athlete interviews such as one that was asked to swimmer Michael Phelps “Shaving your body hair gives you an edge in the pool, but how about your love life”, or “any comments about reports about your girlish figure”. At the end of the video they show real women athletes being asked these types of questions in real interviews. The men’s reactions of embarrassment to disgust vs. the women’s reactions of showing no surprise to being asked these derogatory questions, says it all. It is no surprise that the sexualization of female athletes is something all too common in sports media. We’ll be looking into the idea of sexualisation in

Before I conducted this media analysis about women in sports and sport broadcasting, I hypothesized the obvious - that more male sports would be in the media, and that there would be more male sports broadcasters as well. Through my observations I did find that the sports arena and sports broadcasting sphere are male dominated. However, I also found that although there are not many stories about women, there has been a steady progression and magazines like Sports Illustrated are becoming bold enough to highlight women athletes in a magazine that is targeted towards a male audience. Although women still have a long way to go, they are making some headway into the male-dominated sports arena.

Turn on a sports channel, odds are it is a male sport or the talking of men in sports playing. The odds that this is true is because according to the Washington Post, “in 2014, ‘SportsCenter’ dedicated just two percent of its highlight program to women’s sports” (Talbi). That would mean that they could go nearly an entire show and only mention women once. Women compared to men in their image of their respective sports is incredibly less. Women are shown as more of an attractive side while men are shown as more heroic or athletic. Studies have been taken showing how unfair women are shown in sports compared to men. How does the attractiveness and athleticism of women’s sports play a role in their sponsorships and media portrayal? Women’s attractiveness

In sports there is huge gender inequality in the media with women athletes often only receiving attention for having good looks or the best body, rather than their athletic abilities. Men, however, don’t receive this attention and people only focus on their athletic prowess. This report will review and analyse two examples of how the media portrays different genders in accordance with the following question: “How does the media portray men and women in sport?

According to Knight and Giuliano’s 2001 article, gender equality has been and will remain a current topic of hot discussion in the media and its portrayal of athletes. Athletes have a unique ability to deliver their thoughts and information to the masses through the media outlets given to them in regard to their social status. Once the media has heard what the athletes have to say it can be at the media’s hand for interpretation. In this specific study 92 undergraduates were given a fake newspaper that covered an Olympian with the main focus being on attractiveness. The study covered male and female athletes in the newspaper article while focusing predominantly on attractiveness. Results show that the readers not only disliked the attraction focus, but also preferred the reading be more focused on the athleticism of the Olympians. The largest take away from the study is the media and its coverage or portrayal of athletes being geared towards athletic achievement over quality of appearance

The documentary discusses how media coverage of women's sport works to reinforce the traditional stereotypes of both masculinity and femininity. There has been both widespread acceptance and movement of women in sports but at the same time there has been an increase in backlash about women's success and their presence. The documentary states that sports and sports media are traditionally masculine domains and the media coverage keeps them that way by marginalizing the increased power and presence of women in the media world of

This study examines how the gender and race of athletes influence the writing of sports reporters and their evaluations of those athletes. This academic research explains how the genders and races of the reporters also play a role in the ways they talk about athletes. Reporting varies depending on if the athletes are of similar or different races and genders as the reporters. This study is useful to my own because it examines the importance of the background of the reporter and not just the athlete.

Is media becoming the enemy? For the past decades media seems to be earning a bad reputation. Mass media, including T.V, and newspaper has poisoned the minds of people in society, who supports and partakes in athletic activity. It’s evident, that in today’s society, males are the dominant figure in sports. They receive a magnificent amount of media attention than female athletes. This situation not only started recently, but from a long time ago. Young boys have more heroic figures to look up to in action cartoons and heroic images on magazines. Females on the other hand, don’t do not much action figures or heroic images to look up too.

From the three network affiliates they studied, they found that 96.3 percent of the coverage was for men’s sports and women only received 1.6 percent (Messner and Cooky 4). When analyzing the coverage of Sports Center, which is arguably the most popular sports show on television, they found that women still only received just 1.4 percent of their coverage (4). This study also found that 100 percent of the Sports Center programs had a lead story that was about men’s sports (4). Even the most renowned and credible sports show, which only shows sports all year long, does not even provide women’s sports with equal attention. Even more shocking than this was that the study also revealed that reporters devoted more coverage to men’s sports that were out of season than they did women’s sports that were actually in season (4). This can be extremely disrespectful to female athletes when their sport is pushed aside and ignored so that a men’s sport that is not even being played can be covered by the media. These women put all their effort into performing their sport at the highest level, but their media attention gets replaced by men who are in their off-season.