Media Coverage Of Women's Sports

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Is there less coverage of women’s sports on TV than men’s? In short, yes; it’s an unquestionable fact. You can turn on any sports channel and there is a good chance you’ll hear sports caster after sports caster talking exclusively about men’s sports. It doesn’t even matter how popular they are: football, baseball, auto racing, hockey, and college sports; it’s all men. So, if this is common knowledge then why isn’t it being questioned more? In this study, I will be arguing what the correct balance between covering/airing men’s and women’s sports should be, specifically on ESPN? According to a new study by Michael A. Messner and Michela Musto of USC, and Cheryl Cooky of Purdue University, “women athletes are actually covered less in media now …show more content…
“More people watched the women’s FIFA World Cup on TV than ever before… (Bianco, 2015).” “The final game, U.S. against Japan, drew the highest metered market rating ever for a soccer game in the U.S. airing on a single network [Fox Sports], with a total audience of 20.3 million viewers (The Tucker Center for Research in Girls & Women in Sports Scholars, 2015).” If 12million people tuned in to watch the women’s World Cup on Fox Sports, one would think that ESPN would want to jump on the bandwagon and cover it more, but instead the majority of their coverage took place on espnW, a branch of the ESPN website that is dedicated to women’s sports. The first step to media literacy is having access to the information, but if ESPN isn’t providing this access then technically they’re not media literate nor are they providing their audience with all of the necessary tool to …show more content…
“In a June 26, 2015 Washington Post piece, sports reporter Liz Clarke told readers that when it comes to women's sports, "people [are] long on opinion, even if they're short on knowledge." It is therefore no surprise that "women's sports are mired in misinformation." (The Tucker Center for Research in Girls & Women in Sports Scholars, 2015).” The first myth that Clarke busted was the fact that ESPN and other sports networks believe that they don’t need to report on women’s sports because they are less popular in comparison to men’s sports, but as illustrated by the number of people that viewed the women’s World Cup this year, that is a not true. Another myth is that the sports media have to cover what their fans are most interested in, and that just isn’t women’s sports, but “according to Clarke, the so-called lack of interest in women's sports is simply the result of market-driven forces where, once again, if you look at ratings for women's vs. men's sports, the "clamor for more coverage doesn't appear to be a clamor at all." (The Tucker Center for Research in Girls & Women in Sports Scholars, 2015).” For example, the ratings of the WNBA don’t match those of the NBA because women play in the summer with a shortened 34-game season (NBA plays 82 games), and these things put them at a disadvantage. People tend to be busier doing
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