In the most recent edition of the Sports Media Guy newsletter (and here on the blog), I looked at some of the research that’s been done looking at media coverage of women’s sports.
The author of one of those studies, Dr. Cheryl Cooky from Purdue University, forwarded me two studies in which she and her colleagues updated their longitudinal studies into the coverage of women’s sports on TV.
Things are not getting better.
In a 2015 study, which was a 25-year update to their study, they found that coverage of women’s sports on Sportscenter and on the three network affiliates in Los Angeles made up between 2-3 percent of total sports coverage. Coverage of men’s sports dominated not only the time but the enthusiasm of the broad asters.
Cooky, Michael Nessner and Michela Musto found the women’s sports highlights were presented in a matter-of-fact tone as opposed to excited and amplified styles for the men’s highlights. There was a decline in the “once-common tendency to present women as sexualized objects of humor”, so, yay to that at least?
They also presented a three-pronged agenda for TV stations to improve women’s sports coverage:
“Present a roughly equitable quantity of coverage of women’s sports.” which they define as 12-18 percent of total air time devoted to women’s sports.
“Present women’s sports stories in ways roughly equivalent in quality with the typical presentation of men’s sports.” This is both from a technical standpoint and an enthusiasm standpoint.
“Hire and retain on-camera sports anchors that are capable and willing to do #1 and #2.” - including, obviously, more women.
Earlier this year, Cooky, teamed with LoaToya Council, Maria Mears and Messner for a 30-year update to this study. You may have seen the Nieman Lab’s report on this one And, no shocker here, the updated study found little overall change. Men’s sports — mainly football, basketball and baseball — still make up just about 91 percent of all stories on Sportscenter and the three Los Angeles affiliates. Coverage of women’s sports did rise to 5 percent of all stories. But coverage of the men’s Big Three sports accounted for 75 percent of all on-air time. The study also showed that posts to social media and online sports newsletters reflected the same patterns.
“When a women’s sports story does appear,” the study found, “it is usually a case of “one and done,” a single women’s sports story obscured by a cluster of men’s stories that precede it, follow it, and are longer in length.”
While the authors do note some improvements over the length of the study — an increase in live coverage of women’s sports, a decrease in treating women athletes as sexaulized punchlines - women’s sports continues to play second fiddle to men’s sports in media coverage.
Daily sports news and highlights shows’ continuing failure to equitably cover women’s sports mutes women’s historic movement into sport and the impressive accomplishments of women athletes, as it continues to legitimize greater material rewards for men athletes, while shoring up stubbornly persistent ideologies of male superiority.