Abstract
The last quarter century has seen a dramatic movement of girls and women into sport, but this social change is reflected unevenly in sports media. This study, a 5-year update to a 25-year longitudinal study, indicates that the quantity of coverage of women’s sports in televised sports news and highlights shows remains dismally low. Even more so than in past iterations of this study, the lion’s share of coverage is given to the “big three” of men’s pro and college football, basketball, and baseball. The study reveals some qualitative changes over time, including a decline in the once-common tendency to present women as sexualized objects of humor replaced by a tendency to view women athletes in their roles as mothers. The analysis highlights a stark contrast between the exciting, amplified delivery of stories about men’s sports, and the often dull, matter-of-fact delivery of women’s sports stories. The article ends with suggestions for three policy changes that would move TV sports news and highlights shows toward greater gender equity and fairness.
Highlights
The last quarter century has seen a dramatic movement of girls and women into sport, but this social change is reflected unevenly in sports media
The presentation of gender in the televised sports news and the ESPN SportsCenter broadcasts we have studied for the past 25 and 15 years, respectively, does not appear to have changed much
We present the findings of the most recent iteration of our 25-year longitudinal study of gender in televised sports news and highlights shows
Summary
As with previous iterations of our study, viewers of the news and highlights shows in our sample rarely see any mention of women athletes or women’s sports. Neither the local network affiliate news broadcasts nor SportsCenter devoted many stories in their main coverage to the women’s tournament. Viewers can regularly watch live televised women’s college volleyball, softball, and gymnastics, women’s professional tennis, WNBA games, and other sports Such growing media attention to women’s sports, our study has shown, has not migrated to the nightly TV news or to highlights shows like ESPN’s SportsCenter. While career longevity is not in and of itself a bad thing (Full disclosure: The second author of this study has held his same university position for nearly three decades, more than spanning the life of this televised sports study.), these men have shown little change over the years, besides becoming less overtly insulting to women, and devoting ever-larger proportions of their broadcast time to covering men’s big three sports. To begin to move themselves into the 21st century, ESPN’s SportsCenter and TV sports news shows should take the three above benchmarks into account in their future decisions about hiring, retention, and programming
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