THE GENDER GAP: Women Are Still Missing as Sources for ...

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THE GENDER GAP: Women Are Still Missing as Sources for Journalists

May 23, 2005

For More Information Contact: Tom Rosenstiel, Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism Amy Mitchell, Associate Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism Project for Excellence in Journalism Dante Chinni, Atiba Pertilla, Wally Dean, David Vaina Research Tom Avila, Jennifer Fimbres Staff

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THE GENDER GAP: Women Are Still Missing as Sources for Journalists

Despite rising numbers of women in the workforce and in journalism schools, the news of the day still largely comes from a male perspective, according to a new study of press coverage.

A broad look across the American news media over the course of nine months reveals that men are relied on as sources in the news more than twice as often as women, a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism has found.

More than three quarters of all stories contain male sources, while only a third of stories contain even a single female source, according to the study, which was drawn from an examination of 16,800 news stories across 45 different news outlets during 20 randomly selected days over nine months.

The disparity, moreover, holds true across newspapers, cable, network news and the online world.

The findings may strike some observers as ironic given the efforts of many news outlets to increase their audience by reaching out to women--and particularly to younger women, a group that generally is under represented as news consumers.

Among the findings: ? In every topic category, the majority of stories cited at least one male source.

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? In contrast, the only topic category where women crossed the 50% threshold was lifestyle stories.

? The subject women were least likely to be cited on was foreign affairs. ? Newspapers were the most likely of the media studied to cite at least one female

source in a story (41% of stories). Cable news, despite all the time it has to fill, was the least likely medium to cite a female source (19% of stories), and this held true across all three major cable channels. ? On network TV, the morning news programs, which often cover lighter fare, relied more on female sources. The evening newscasts were somewhat less likely, but still did so more than cable. ? The sports section of the newspaper stood out in particular as a male bastion. A mere 14% of stories on the front page of the sports section cited a woman, versus 86% that contained at least one male source. The study by the Project, a research institute affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, examined 16 newspapers from a range of circulation categories, four nightly newscasts (commercial networks and PBS), three network morning news shows, nine different cable programs, and nine Web sites studied at four different times during the day. The study counted all sources whose gender could be determined by their appearance, a typically female name, self-identification, or some other form of positive identification. A source is defined as anyone providing information to the report, be it through a direct quotation, indirect quotation, or as the person to whom data or other information is attributed.

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The numbers suggest that the representation of women as sources in the news

has a significant distance to go towards reflecting their role in American society

generally. Women account for 52% of the country's population and roughly 47% of the

employed civilian workforce, according to 2000 data from the U.S. Census. What's

more, their presence in management positions is not far behind--42% of those working

in management, business and financial operations are women.

Their representation in politics is relatively strong as well. For instance, a full

44% of press secretaries in the U.S. House of Representatives, the staffers to whom reporters often speak, are women, and they account for 51% of House staffers overall. 1

On the other hand, when it comes to elected officials women are still behind. They hold

only four of 21 presidential cabinet seats and only 69 seats in the House of

Representatives out of 440.

In the news, however, the numbers come closer to reflecting those of elected

officials than the American workforce. Looking across all media, three-quarters (76%) of

the stories studied contained at least one male source. Just a third (33%) contained a

female source.

The gap between the genders grows even larger if we raise the bar to two or more

Male and Female Sources

in the News

Percent of all Stories

Males Females

0

24%

67%

1

21

20

2+ 55

14

Totals may not equal 100

due to rounding

sources. Reporters were more than three times as likely to cite two or more males within a news story as to cite at least two females (55% versus 14%). This suggests that the orientation toward males goes beyond the primary source in a story.

1 "2004 House Staff Employment Study," U.S. House Committee on House Administration, 2004, .

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Finding a male as the best first source does not apparently lead a journalist to look for a female as the second or third source.

There is no suggestion here that journalists should seek gender balance in every story. Certainly in some stories the most appropriate sources might be male just as in others they might be female. Instead, the study was designed to look across a wide spectrum of news coverage and media to get a basic idea of gender representation in the news.

The dominance of male sources over female exists in all media, though in some more heavily than in others.

Female: 1+ Male: 1+

Female Versus Male Sources, Percent of all Stories

Newspapers 41%

Online 36%

Network Evening 27%

PBS NewsHour 17%

Network Morning 34%

88%

89%

63%

59%

55%

Cable 19% 53%

Newspapers Not only were newspapers more than twice as likely as cable news to cite even

one female source, they were also more likely than other media to cite two or more. The study examined all news stories found on page A1, the front page of the

metro section and the front page of the sports section for 16 different newspapers across four circulation size categories--6,589 stories in all.2

Overall, 41% of print stories contained at least one female source, and 19% reached the higher threshold of citing two or more. One such story ran in the

2 Please see the Methodology section at the end of the report for the full list of papers.

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Philadelphia Inquirer on August 10, 2004. The A1 piece about remarks Mrs. Laura Bush

made about stem-cell research quoted both Mrs. Bush and Mary Rachel Faris, a

hematologist at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania.

Nevertheless, print stories were still half as likely to contain a female source as a

male source (88% cited at least one male source). Even the stem-cell story in the

Inquirer cited four male sources.

The type of newspaper story also made a difference. Wire service stories were

less likely to cite females than were reports written by the newspaper's own staff

members. Staff-written stories were about twice as likely as wire service stories to

contain a female source (47% versus 25%). Stories that were a combination of staff and

wire copy fell in between (37%).

It is not simply that wire stories use fewer sources. The same kind of gap did not

occur with male sources. Here staff written pieces and wire copy were roughly equal. A

full 91% of staff written stories cited at least one male as did 87% of wire copy and 89%

stories that combined staff and wire material.

Gender of Sources in Newspaper Stories, Staff Versus Wire Copy

Staff

Wire

Female Male

Female Male

None

53%

9%

75%

13%

1 or more

47

91

25

87

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Combo Female 63% 37

Male 11% 89

The size or circulation of a newspaper also seemed to make a difference. Bigger papers included more female voices (46% of stories in the largest papers versus 43% in

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midsize and 33% in the smallest). Smaller papers also tended to carry more wire service reports than did large papers, perhaps accounting for some of the disparity.

Another difference emerged in the various sections examined: Page A1, the metro section-front and the sports section-front.

The front of the metro section was the most inclusive of women--citing them in more than half of its coverage, 57% of all stories. Page A1 was slightly behind at 50%. But on the front-page of the sports section, a mere 14% of stories included a female voice. This was the mirror image of male sources, who were cited in 86% of stories and not cited in 14%. Even in the era of Title IX and the push for women's sports, the sports section-front stands out for its lack of female voices.

(A separate study by Terry Adams and C.A. Tuggle suggests similar disparities may exist on cable sports programs. Their 2002 study found that women were the subjects of less than 5% of coverage on ESPN's SportsCenter.3) Cable

Has the 24-hour news culture been more inclusive of women? Hardly. Females fared worse here compared with any other medium studied. Of the roughly 6,550 cable stories examined on CNN, FOX and MSNBC, just 19% cited a female source.

The 20-day study spread across nine months of the year included three program types from each network representative of three distinct parts of the cable day: daytime programming, the closest program to a traditional newscast and the highest-rated prime time talk show on each channel. These criteria resulted in the following programs: The 11-12 o'clock hour at each network; CNN's "Newsnight with Aaron Brown" and "Larry

3 Terry Adams and C.A. Tuggle, "ESPN's SportsCenter and Coverage of Women's Athletics: `It's a Boy's Club," Mass Communications & Society, 7 (Spring 2004), pp237-248.

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King Live"; FOX's "Special Report with Brit Hume" and "The O'Reilly Factor"; MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and "Hardball with Chris Matthews."

Past research has found that cable news stories tend to cite fewer sources overall than do other news media.4 This was borne out in the examination of gender as well. Indeed, cable stories were less likely than other mediums to even cite a male source (53% on cable versus 63% on network evening news and 88% in newspapers).

Nevertheless, the gap between male and female sources stood out. While most mediums were roughly twice as likely to cite a male as a female source, cable stories were nearly three times as likely (19% female versus 53% male.) The gap was so great on cable that these stories were even more likely to have two or more male sources (21%) than to have just one or more female sources.

On three different nights of MSNBC'S interview-style program "Hardball with Chris Matthews" (April 15, May 4 and June 16, 2004), every single guest on the show was a man. The segments ranged from the Iraqi prison scandal discussed with members of Congress, journalists covering the story and former military personnel, to a discussion with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about his new book, to the role of religion in politics, to election advertising strategies of the Bush and Kerry.

In one segment, Matthews ran a video clip of the wife of a solider accused in the prison scandal. Otherwise, every single source on these three nights--guest or other-- was male.

Cable Channel Similarities

4 The Project for Excellence in Journalism, The 2005 Annual Report on the State of the News Media, Cable content chapter, , 2005.

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