How gender affects the newsworthiness of sports news on German TV: An application of the news-factors approach to understanding gender-biased sports news presentation

Abstract

Gender inequalities in sports media are well-documented. This study focuses on sports news composition and how gender influences the prominence of sports news stories. The news-factors approach offers a causal explanation for the lower prominence (i.e. newsworthiness) of women's sports in TV sports reporting. Following this theory's perspective, athletes’ gender is supposed to work as a moderating variable on news values of news factors in sports reports. The content analysis of seven German sports news programs reveals whether the same news factors are treated unequally with regard to women's and men's sports in TV news coverage. The results show that women's sports are presented as less newsworthy than men's sports, although news factors do not differ significantly by gender. However, the moderation effect of gender does not cause lower newsworthiness. That means, e.g., sports women's successes are equally emphasized as the success of male athletes in sports news on TV, and gender does not lower the credits female athlete's success receive in any given news stories. Instead, the results suggest that gender works as a news factor of its own, reducing not the news value of certain news factors but the overall newsworthiness of women's sports in TV coverage. Thus, the results demonstrate that gender inequality in sports media does not necessarily come from journalists perceiving female athletes’ performance as inferior but from presenting women's sports less often and in a far less prominent way than men's sports.

Keywords

gender media sports journalism news factors content analysis

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aiken

West

(1993) Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions. Newbury Park, Calif. u.a.: Sage.

Beck

(2013) Switzerland. In: Horky

Nieland

J-U

(eds) International Sports Press Survey 2011. Norderstedt: BoD Books on Demand, pp. 81–97.

Bernstein

Kian

(2013) Gender and sexualities in sport Media. In: Pedersen

(ed) Routledge Handbook of Sport Communication. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp.319–327.

Billings

Angelini

(2007) Packaging the games for viewer consumption: Gender, ethnicity, and nationality in NBC’s coverage of the 2004 summer Olympics. Communication Quarterly 55(1): 95–111.

Billings

Angelini

Duke

(2010) Gendered profiles of Olympic history: Sportscaster dialogue in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 54(1): 9–23.

Burroughs

Malik

Johnson

, et al. (2021) Content analysis of biological sex-specific media coverage of sport: The case of National Collegiate Athletic Association athletic department home webpages. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 4(1): 101269022110296.

Coche

(2021) A new era? How the European ESPN covered the 2019 Women’s World Cup online. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 8(2): 101269022199224.

Cooky

Council

Mears

, et al. (2021) One and done: The long eclipse of women’s televised sports, 1989–2019. Communication & Sport 9(3): 347–371.

Cooky

Messner

Hextrum

(2013) Women play sport, but not on TV. Communication & Sport 1(3): 203–230.

10.

Cooky

Messner

Musto

(2015) “It’s Dude Time!”: A quarter century of excluding women’s sports in televised news and highlight shows. Communication & Sport 3(3): 261–287.

11.

Duncan

Messner

(2005) Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlights Shows, 1989-2004. Los Angeles: Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles.

12.

Eastman

Billings

(2000) Sportscasting and sports reporting. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 24(2): 192–213.

13.

Field

(2018) Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage.

14.

Fredericks

Keim

(2013) South Africa. In: Horky

Nieland

J-U

(eds) International Sports Press Survey 2011. Norderstedt: BoD - Books on Demand, pp. 187–205.

15.

Fretwurst

(2015a) Lotus manual: Reliability and accuracy with SPSS. Version 1.0 2015. Available at: https://www.iakom.ch/Lotus/LotusManualEng.pdf (accessed 6 January 2021).

16.

Fretwurst

(2015b) Reliabilität und Validität von Inhaltsanalysen: Mit Erläuterungen zur Berechnung des Reliabilitätskoeffizienten ‘Lotus’ mit SPSS. [Reliability and validity of content analyses: With explanations for the calculation of the reliability coefficient 'Lotus’ with SPSS]. In: Sommer

Matthes

Wettstein

Wirth

(eds) Qualitätskriterien in der Inhaltsanalyse: [Methods and Research Logic in Communication Science. Quality Criteria in Content Analysis]. Köln: Herbert von Halem, pp.176–203.

17.

Fry

Goh-Leong

(2013) Singapore. In: Horky

Nieland

J-U

(eds) International Sports Press Survey 2011. Norderstedt: BoD - Books on Demand, pp. 220–225.

18.

Galtung

Ruge

(1965) The structure of foreign news. Journal of Peace Research 2(1): 64–90.

19.

Gerbner

Gross

Morgan

, et al. (2002) Growing up with television: cultivation processes. In: Bryant J and Zillmann D (eds) Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 43–67.

20.

Godoy-Pressland

(2014) ‘Nothing to report’: A semi-longitudinal investigation of the print media coverage of sportswomen in British Sunday newspapers. Media, Culture & Society 36(5): 595–609.

21.

Greer

Hardin

Homan

(2009) “Naturally” less exciting? Visual production of men’s and women’s track and field coverage during the 2004 Olympics. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 53(2): 173–189.

22.

Hair

Anderson

Tatham

, et al. (1995) Multivariate Data Analysis with Readings: With Readings. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

23.

Horky

(2009) Was macht den Sport zum Mediensport? Ein Modell zur Definition und Analyse von Mediensportarten. [What turns sports into media sports? A model to define and analyze types of media sports]. Sportwissenschaft 39(4): 298–308.

24.

Horky

Nieland

J-U

(2013) Comparing sports reporting from around the world - numbers and facts on sports in daily newspapers. In: Horky

Nieland

J-U

(eds) International Sports Press Survey 2011. Norderstedt: BoD - Books on Demand, pp. 22–41.

25.

Ihle

(2018a) Im Abseits oder aus der Tiefe des Raumes - Wie vielfältig berichtet das Fernsehen über regionales Sportgeschehen? Eine Analyse der Sport-Magazinsendungen in MDR, NDR und WDR [The diversity of sports journalism on regional television in Germany. A content analysis of German television sports newsmagazines of three publicservice broadcasting television channels]. Publizistik 63(1): 97–123.

26.

Ihle

(2018b) Sport in den Fernsehnachrichten: Ergebnisse einer Inhaltsanalyse der Sportberichterstattung in den deutschen Hauptnachrichtensendungen. [Sports in television news shows: Results of a content analysis of sports coverage in German prime-time news programs]. Media Perspektiven 10: 486–495.

27.

Jakubowska

(2013) Poland. In: Horky

Nieland

J-U

(eds) International Sports Press Survey 2011. Norderstedt: BoD - Books on Demand, pp. 98–112.

28.

Kaiser

(2018) Women’s and men’s prominence in sports coverage and changes in large-, medium-, and small-city newspapers, pre- and post-Title IX. Communication & Sport 6(6): 762–787.

29.

Kepplinger

(1998) Der Nachrichtenwert der Nachrichtenfaktoren. [The news value of the news factors]. In: Holtz-Bacha

Scherer

Waldmann

(eds) Wie die Medien die Welt Erschaffen und wie die Menschen Darin Leben: Für Winfried Schulz. Opladen: [How the media Create the World and how People Live in it]. Westdeutscher Verlag, pp.19–38.

30.

Kepplinger

Bastian

(2000) Der prognostische Gehalt der Nachrichtenwert-Theorie. [The prognostic substance of the news values theory]. Publizistik 45(4): 462–475.

31.

Kepplinger

Ehmig

(2006) Predicting news decisions. An empirical test of the two-component theory of news selection. Communications 31(1): 25–43.

32.

Kian

Vincent

Mondello

(2008) Masculine hegemonic hoops: An analysis of media coverage of march madness. Sociology of Sport Journal 25(2): 223–242.

33.

Lapchick

Bowman

Ewing

, et al. (2020) The 2021 Sports Media Racial and Gender Report Card: Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE). Available at: https://www.tidesport.org/_files/ugd/138a69_e1e67c118b784f4caba00a4536699300.pdf.

34.

Le Clair

(2013) Canada. In: Horky

Nieland

J-U

(eds) International Sports Press Survey 2011. Norderstedt: BoD - Books on Demand, pp. 163–177.

35.

Loosen

(1998) Die Medienrealität des Sports: Evaluation und Analyse der Printberichterstattung. [The media Reality of Sports: Evaluation and Analysis of Coverage in Print media]. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag.

36.

Loosen

(2001) „Das wird alles von den Medien hochsterilisiert“: Themenkarrieren und Konjunkturkurven der Sportberichterstattung. [Topic careers and cyclical curves in sports reporting.]. In: Roters

Klingler

Gerhards

(eds) Sport und Sportrezeption. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp.133–147.

37.

Loosen

Ravenstein

(2000) Sportberichterstattung im Fokus der Nachrichtenwertforschung: Fußball-WM '98 und Sport in der Printmedienberichterstattung. [Sports coverage in the focus of news value research: World cup '98 and sports in print Media coverage]. In: Schorr

(ed) Publikums- und Wirkungsforschung: Ein Reader. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp.191–204.

38.

Maier

(2003a) Analysen deutscher Fernsehnachrichten 1992-2001. [Analyses of German television news 1992-2001]. In: Ruhrmann

Woelke

Maier

Diehlmann

(eds) Der Wert von Nachrichten im Deutschen Fernsehen: Ein Modell zur Validierung von Nachrichtenfaktoren. [The Value of News on German Television. A Model for the Validation of News Factors]. Opladen: Leske+Budrich, pp. 61–98.

39.

Maier

(2003b) Operationalisierung der Inhaltsanalyse. [Operationalization of the content analysis]. In: Ruhrmann

Woelke

Maier

Diehlmann

(eds) Der Wert von Nachrichten im deutschen Fernsehen: Ein Modell zur Validierung von Nachrichtenfaktoren. [The Value of News on German Television. A Model for the Validation of News Factors]. Opladen: Leske+Budrich, pp.51–98.

40.

Maier

Ruhrmann

Klietsch

(2006) Der Wert von Nachrichten im deutschen Fernsehen: Ergebnisse einer Inhaltsanalyse 1992 - 2004. [The Value of News on German Television: Results of a Content Analysis 1992–2004]. Düsseldorf: Landesanstalt für Medien Nordrhein-Westfalen (LfM).

41.

Meân

(2017) Sport as gender/feminist studies. In: Billings

(ed) Defining Sport Communication. New York, NY: Routledge, pp.92–106.

42.

Messner

(2002) Taking the Field: Women, men, and Sports. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

43.

Östgaard

(1965) Factors influencing the flow of news. Journal of Peace Research 2(1): 39–63.

44.

Petrica

Ilincescu

(2013) Romania. In: Horky

Nieland

J-U

(eds) International Sports Press Survey 2011. Norderstedt: BoD - Books on Demand, pp. 129–147.

45.

Pfister

(2010) Women in sport – gender relations and future perspectives. Sport in Society 13(2): 234–248.

46.

Ramon

Rojas-Torrijos

(2021) Public service media, sports and cultural citizenship in the age of social media: An analysis of BBC sport agenda diversity on Twitter. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 39(7): 101269022110439.

47.

Rehbach

Ihle

Nieland

J-U

(2016) Olympische Prinzipien und gesellschaftliche Werte in der Printberichterstattung: Ausgewählte Befunde einer Pilotstudie. [Olympic principles and social values in print reporting: Selected findings from a pilot study]. In: Schürmann

Mittag

Stibbe

Nieland

J-U

Haut

(eds) Bewegungskulturen im Wandel: Der Sport der Medialen Moderne - Gesellschaftstheoretische Verortungen. [Changing Cultures of Movement. Sports in “Mediale Moderne” - Socio-Theoretical Positionings]. Bielefeld: Transcript, pp.225–249.

48.

Ruhrmann

Woelke

Maier

, et al.2003) Der Wert von Nachrichten im deutschen Fernsehen: Ein Modell zur Validierung von Nachrichtenfaktoren. [The Value of News on German Television. A Model for the Validation of News Factors]. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.

49.

Schulz

(1976) Die Konstruktion von Realität in den Nachrichtenmedien: Analyse der aktuellen Berichterstattung. [The Construction of Reality in the News media. Analysis of Current Coverage]. Alber: Freiburg im Breisgau.

50.

Tuggle

Huffman

Rosengard

(2002) A descriptive analysis of NBC’s coverage of the 2000 summer olympics. Mass Communication and Society 5(3): 361–375.

51.

Vincent

(2004) Game, sex, and match: The construction of gender in British newspaper coverage of the 2000 Wimbledon championships. Sociology of Sport Journal 21(4): 435–456.

52.

Wenner

(2015) Communication and sport, where art thou? Epistemological reflections on the moment and field(s) of play. Communication & Sport 3(3): 247–260.

53.

Zubayr

Gerhard

(2016) Tendenzen im Zuschauerverhalten: Fernsehgewohnheiten und Fernsehreichweiten im Jahr 2015. [Trends in viewer behavior: Viewing habits and TV ratings in 2015]. Media Perspektiven 3: 142–155.