Continued apathy by sports media toward women’s sports "an essential journalism failure"

Eric Deggans of the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center describes why "Continued apathy by sports media toward women’s sports a bigger problem than first meets the eye". I'm quoting this section at length because I think it makes his claim clearest:

"Such lines remind me of similar observations made on coverage featuring people of color, especially regarding crime. Journalists realized long ago how easy it is to pass along assumptions about racial minorities in news coverage, spending lots of time thinking about ways to break down and subvert those dynamics in the interest of fairer more accurate reporting. Don’t women in sports deserve the same effort?

The study offers some recommendations on solutions; hiring more female journalists and encouraging sports organizations to pitch female athletics better, for instance.

But the gap won’t really improve until sports journalists see the disparity as an essential journalism failure – a continuing and worsening inequality that is distorting how sports fans see female athletes and women in general, continuing a cycle that intensifies their marginalization in a vibrant marketplace.

How can any of us stay apathetic facing a possibility like that?"

This goes back to my point about the coverage of the UConn women's basketball team -- at some point, these type of things are not about social responsibility but a #JournalismFail.

I do agree with other commentators that have noted it's as much a cultural problem as a media problem. Nevertheless, Deggans does make a compelling argument that it's a failure of journalistic accuracy to omit women's sports on such a large scale.

almost 2 years ago Nate Parham 0 comments 0 recs |