Women Play Sport, But Not on TV:

  • Cooky, Cheryl, et al. “Women Play Sport, But Not on TV.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, SAGE Publications, 4 Apr. 2013, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167479513476947#articleCitationDownloadContainer.

This source is a six week analysis of the lack of respectful and serious coverage of women’s sports on local and national televised news (ESPN, local news affiliates in Los Angeles). The article aims to reveal how news media builds audiences for men’s sport however silence and marginalize the audience for women’s sport despite the evidence of increased participation of girls and women in sport at the high school, collegiate, and professional level. It is intended to prove that the way these media outlets incorrectly portray women in sport is a message to audiences that sport is only for and about men.

This source offers value and limitations in that it regionalizes its data to a specific area, which doesn’t exactly offer a good representation of the lack of representation of women in sport throughout the whole country or the whole world. However it is able to represent the incline and decline in female athletic coverage from the period of 1989 to about 2009. These results were important in showcasing how under represented these women really are.

Biasing Influences on Balance in Election News Coverage: An Assessment of Newspaper Coverage of the 2006 U.S. Senate Elections:

  • Fico, Frederick, and Eric Freedman. “Biasing Influences on Balance in Election News Coverage: An Assessment of Newspaper Coverage of the 2006 U.S. Senate Elections.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 3, 3 Sept. 2008, pp. 499–514., doi:10.1177/107769900808500302.

This analysis of newspaper stories covering U.S. Senate races in 2006 aims to uncover the factors that influence bias on election news coverage. Most stories favor democratic and other liberal candidates. However the article claims that newsrooms with greater proportions of women editors were more even in total stories favoring conservative and liberal candidates. Women were also responsible for stories covering open races and more evenly balanced treatment of candidate assertions.

Although this article is more about the factors that influence bias than how bias differs between men and women, it still provides valuable information in which can be used when analyzing gender representation in news media. Firstly, the article points out that newsrooms with greater proportions of women editors provided for more balanced stories, however this just shows how the roles of women in the news scene. The article mentions that because of the decrease in the structural imbalance of coverage could be because women are ultimately more fair and balanced than men.

Women in the Newsroom: Influences of Female Editors and Reporters on the News Agenda:

  • Craft, Stephanie, and Wayne Wanta. “Women in the Newsroom: Influences of Female Editors and Reporters on the News Agenda.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 1, 1 Mar. 2004, pp. 124–138., doi:10.1177/107769900408100109.

This article conducted a study to compare issue agendas and story focus at newspaper with high percentages of women in editorial positions with those at newspapers with lower percentages of female editors. The research revealed that there wasn’t much of a difference in issues covered however the difference was what male and female reporters covered related to predominant editor gender. The study aimed to investigate potential influences of women in newspaper newsrooms; basically they wanted to see if news-papers with a high percentage of women editors covered a different agenda of issues than male-dominated newspapers. Women are having an impact in the newsroom however in different less noticed ways that anticipated.

The way the authors collect data is interesting and can cause eternal bias to their results. They in order to get data, they counted the number of positions under management headings and the proportions of those positions held by men and women. By doing this they had to evaluate each name, and which they made separate lists: names that are not unquestionably “male” or “female”, names that are, and listings that included initials only. This can cause a problem in determining whether these names are held by females or males and in turn skew the data if a name is incorrectly assigned, which 9 out of 10 times happens pretty frequently.

News, Gender and Power:

  • Cynthia Carter. “News, Gender and Power.” Web.
An international source, this source attempts to establish how the gendering character of sex crime news in British tabloid newspapers is contributing to the wider cultural normalization of sexual violence against women. According to the article reports invite readers to accept that sexual violence is a natural seemingly inevitable feature in the daily lives of women and girls. The behaviors of these news outlets make violent male behavior stand out as being truly exceptional. This increases fear in women that they are at higher risk for becoming a victim of sexual violence which could potentially result in death or rape and that men and boys are who they should fear the most.
This article has value in that it is seen across the border that representation of men and women effect the daily lives of both. If women all around the world are presented as weak, sexual creatures only available to male use then men will proceed in the way they think is acceptable behavior.

Overrepresentation and Underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as Lawbreakers on Television News:

  • Travis L. Dixon, Daniel Linz; Overrepresentation and Underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as Lawbreakers on Television News, Journal of Communication, Volume 50, Issue 2, 1 June 2000, Pages 131–154, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02845.x

This is an analysis of the representation of minorities in Television news and how most of the time they are depicted as the law breakers while whites are presented as the law defenders. It was revealed that Blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely than Whites to be portrayed as lawbreakers on television news. Blacks however are most time overrepresented as law breakers where as Latinos are underrepresented as officers and perpetrators.

While this article is not exactly about gender representation it is important to understand the misrepresentation of social groups in television news to compare how each group is represented and misrepresented. Also, not explicitly the main topic in the article but women fit into the group of minorities that are presented as the more violent group. It can also be noted that women are not portrayed as violent or with a law breaking persona. Because of television media we almost automatically assume the people being portrayed as criminals are men.

Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of Television News:

  • Sanders, Marlene, and Marcia Rock. Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of Television News. Illini Books Edition, 1994.

This book aims to uncover the struggle of women in television news. Most of the women included in the book are women that are beneficiaries of the women’s movement of the early 1970’s, which is thought by the authors to be the reason why they are in television at all. The timeline of women in television news is examined to an extent by these women.

Being significantly valuable in the history of how women came into the limited positions in the newsroom now, the book only features women that fit into certain standards. Most of the women for example are in their forties and are a result of the women’s movement. They do not address modern news media that we see on television now and how certain media outlets only hire a certain demographic of women. However understanding how something started, is important in understanding why it is the way it is currently. This is a valuable source for background information.