A brief look at a critique of USC's "Gender in televised sports" report

I greatly appreciate dialogue on any issue and looking at things from more than one side, so I found Christina Hoff Sommers' critique of USC's "Gender in televised sports" report in The American quite interesting.

Personally, I think it's worth a read before we blindly accept the findings in the USC report, but I have a few points of contention.

First, she made an interesting claim about the ratio of coverage to attendance.

Take Back the Sports Page? — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
Nyad and the USC study authors demand that television cover women’s sports "fairly and equitably," but the study never once mentions the word "attendance." Shouldn’t fan interest in the games drive the media stories? Economist Mark Perry, my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, looked at the numbers. For the 2009 season, the NBA got 92.3 percent of the total attendance for pro basketball (NBA plus WNBA), while the WNBA got only 7.7 percent of the total attendance (see chart below). But according to the USC study, the WNBA received 22.2 percent of the coverage. Perry’s conclusion: "So women’s pro basketball got a hugely disproportionate share of media coverage. Total attendance at NBA games was 12 times greater than attendance at the WNBA games, but media coverage was only 3.5 times greater for men than for women."

Fair enough, except for one minor detail: total attendance at NBA games is total attendance in 30 cities and 41 home games. Total attendance at WNBA games is based upon 13 cities (in 2009) and 17 home games. Given that there is no evidence that national coverage of the WNBA  -- major media outlets, cable networks, Sportscenter highlights, etc -- comes anywhere near that of the NBA, without even looking we can say that those coverage numbers are likely primarily local (please correct me if I'm incorrect on this).

So looking at attendance in local cities might be more appropriate:

2009 attendance

NBA: approximately 17,110.

WNBA: 8,039

No, the WNBA is not threatening to become one of the big four (or five if MLS continues growing) pro sports, but talking in terms of total attendance and coverage given that the WNBA is a smaller league that relies heavily on local coverage skews things a bit. So 22% of the coverage -- often local -- actually becomes a bit less disproportionate if we consider proportions per city. That's not even to mention the fact that the NBA and WNBA are not direct competitors for coverage either, which always makes these comparisons a bit awkward.

Nevertheless, that leads to a second point.

I actually agree with Sommers that it's reasonable to claim that fan interest should drive media stories, but only as long as we also acknowledge that media outlets simultaneously play a role in directing people's attention and enhancing or enabling fan interest with their coverage (e.g. if you grant LeBron James an hour long television special, people will talk about LeBron James).

The paradox is that if a sport doesn't get coverage it becomes difficult to increase interest which then reinforces the notion that there's no fan interest. So as described by Eric Deggans of the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center, what the lacking coverage of women's sports amounts to is "an essential journalism failure" (I suggest reading Deggans' article as well).

Given the numbers, especially locally, it's fair to claim that the WNBA does deserve a bit more coverage than it currently gets. Perhaps we could even say it deserves about 45% as much locally if we're going to stick with an attendance proportionality argument. That's not a coverage equality argument but an equity argument.

So third, the problem to overcome, as described by Deggans and others, is a cultural problem of apathy. First, as Mechelle Voepel describes, if the sports world "remains very much a machismo culture in which denigrating women in general" then certainly women's sports will continue to remain a minor priority. But second, as Marie Hardin described, if the "powerful, unquestioned association of sports with masculine value" drives coverage decisions under the guise of "interest" then the cultural problem becomes institutional. In other words, if media outlets regard women's sports as secondary, so will writers, and ultimately covering them with the same effort as men's sports becomes laughable.

As an example, at an event I attended this summer, I introduced myself to a media member and did the typical small talk.

"What sport do you cover?" he asked.

"Women's basketball, mostly pro but some college," I responded.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he replied with a chuckle.

Before we dismiss the guy as a complete jerk, let me contextualize his comment by paraphrasing relative bits of the rest of our conversation. As an experienced reporter, he would have been insulted by being placed on a women's sports beat 10 years ago, but he remarked that now he "would take anything." Talking even further, there was a clear hierarchy in his mind of what was important -- he regarded football and men's basketball as favorable sports to cover while also made derisive remarks about cross-country and soccer for either gender. Women's basketball was just at the laughable bottom of the hierarchy. 

The way in which he regards women's sports is as much a result of the institution he works within as anything else.

So yes, there is a cultural problem of disrespect toward women, but I would also suggest that if "non-revenue sports" -- in college that would be everything except football and men's basketball -- are granted less respect by media outlets themselves, then it follows that reporters would adopt the same attitudes and put exactly as much effort into women's sports as respect gained from women's sports by their employer. If non-revenue/women's sports are regarded as beats worthy of less respect, then the sports themselves will garner less respect from the very people who cover them.

I'm hardly suggesting that rookies should be put on beats for the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Lakers. However I am suggesting that there's a systemic problem when there is a hierarchy of value attached to these sports that systematically disadvantages women's sports.

So again, I turn to Deggans on this matter of characterizing the problem with women's sports coverage.

Continued apathy by sports media toward women’s sports a bigger problem than first meets the eye

So clearly time constraints don’t tell the full story on the disparity of coverage; even when spare minutes exist, they are often filled with coverage cut from the same myopic mindset. Again, it seems a question of journalism values; accuracy, fairness and completeness of coverage.

...

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.

As long as media outlets continue to marginalize women's sports, people will continue to regard them as second-class endeavors, and the disparity in coverage will persist. That's not to say that the WNBA would certainly double attendance and rival the NBA if it just got more coverage -- not to say it would never happen, but right now it's just highly unlikely. Following Deggans, I suggest the coverage of women's sports is a matter of journalistic integrity and until the imbalance is corrected it is fundamentally "an essential journalism failure", not a matter to quickly dismiss as the sole cause of "sports feminists" to take up on the basis of "social responsibility" to girls and women.

There are plenty of things that people have preferred over time that are not always helpful for them, sometimes misleading, and occasionally harm other human beings. Without enumerating the numerous cases over the last decade when that principle media reporting strictly catered to people's preferences at a given point in time ended up going horribly awry, I would argue with others that I respect as thoughtful journalists that journalism should hold itself to a higher standard that includes some manner of disciplined judgment about when reporting what people want to hear isn't necessarily what they need or should hear.