Year: 2011

Gender Check: 2/23/11 Northeast

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*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.

Website: The New York Times

On The New York Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 4 p.m. EST on Feb. 23 was titled “U.S., In Shift, Sees Marriage Act as Violation of Gay Rights.” Its subject was the U.S. Justice’s Department announcement that they see discrimination against gay and lesbian people in all cases as presumptively unconstitutional.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Authors: Male and Female (shared byline)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male – attorney general (as paraphrased from a letter to Congress)

2. Male – law professor

3. Male – president (as paraphrased from previous statements)

Notes/analysis: Most of the story is based on the letter written by the attorney general as well as past court cases and background information.

Website: ProPublica

On ProPublica, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 4:30 p.m. EST on Feb. 23 was titled “Cheat Sheet: What’s Really Going On With Wisconsin’s Budget.” Its subject was the ongoing standoff in the Wisconsin government over budget deficits and the future of union rights.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male – state governor (as quoted from public statements)

2. Male – director of the Fiscal Bureau

Notes/analysis: This story took more of an analysis approach than original reporting, and as such relied on the commentary and reporting of several other news outlets.

Gender check: 2/22/11 – West

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.

Website: Seattle Times

On the Seattle Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 2 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, Feb. 22, was titled “U.S: Seattle couple, 2 other Americans killed by pirates.” Its subject was the deaths of four Americans (two male and two female) who were taken hostage and killed by pirates while sailing on their yacht off the coast of East Africa.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: AP and Seattle Times staff (with a male and a female contributor mentioned at the end)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female, niece of the one of the female victims

2. Female, victim (via an e-mail sent before Valentine’s Day)

3. Male, animal shelter director who worked with one of the male victims

4. Male, monsignor (speaking of couple)

5. Male, professor, friend of one of the male victims

6. Male, general of U.S. Central Command

7. Male, pirate

8. Male, head of Dryad Maritime Intelligence

Notes/analysis: Sources speak on three of the four people killed as individuals. One of the females is only referenced as part of a couple with her husband whose background is described. She is named twice — with a different first name each time (Jean vs. Jane). Based on other news sources, her name appears to be Jean.


Website: Seattle P-I

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 2 p.m. (MST) Tuesday, Feb. 22, was titled “Up to 6 inches of snow possible by Thursday.” Its subject was a winter storm watch issued for the Seattle area and a large part of Western Washington.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male (with a male contributor)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male, department of transportation spokesman

2. Male, meteorologist (via his weather blog)

Women make up 27.6% of sources in first month

Jasmine R. Linabary1 Comment

We completed our first month’s worth of Gender Checks last week and the results were, well, not terribly surprising.

Our findings are close to being in line with other studies that have been done on gender representation in the news, and, though the results aren’t encouraging for women, they do tell us that our process seems to be working.

Before we fill you in on the results we’d like to remind our readers that this is just a single month’s worth of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you understand the limitations of this data, however telling. We’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research is needed to verify any validity across the board.

Jan. 18 – Feb. 18, 2011

We reviewed 38 articles, two in each Gender Check. Each geographical region had five Gender Checks, with the exception of the South, which had four (We missed one week).

For each Gender Check, we looked at two websites — one associated with a newspaper and one that was online-only. We recorded information such as the gender of the author and the breakdown of the genders of the human sources referenced in the articles among other details.  (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Overall, these were the findings:

Sourcing

The articles contained 144 male sources and 55 female sources, which put women at about 27. 6 percent of the human sources referenced in these articles. This is a slightly higher percentage of female sources than the Global Media Monitoring Project found in 2010 — approximately 23 percent of the news subjects on the 84 websites monitored were women.

Here’s how it broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 29 males, 17 females (Women at 37 percent)
  • Northeast: 65 males, 19 females (Women at 22.6 percent)
  • Midwest: 34 males, 10 females (Women at 22.7 percent)
  • South: 16 male, 9 female (Women at 36 percent)

And, as an additional aspect we’re interested to study over time, here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 66 males, 31 females (Women at 32 percent)
  • Online-only: 78 males, 24 females (Women at 23.5 percent)

As we did our Gender Checks this month, we tried to provide context as we could when the gender gap in the sourcing was particularly stark — such as the number of women in that profession (like this one on female judges) or in that political arena (like this one on women in the Missouri Legislature) — because sometimes that becomes a factor in source selection. It’s an aspect of this issue that we’ll continue to look at in the future.

Authorship

Overall, 11 articles were written by an individual woman and 19 by a single man. In addition, three articles had a shared byline with a man and a woman, four were shared bylines by men, and one was written by three men and one woman. If we just look at the articles written by a single author, women made up 36.7 percent of the authors — roughly what the GMMP in 2010 found.

Here’s a look by geographic region:

  • West: 5 by an individual woman, 4 by a man, 1 by a man and a woman
  • Northeast: 1 by a woman, 6 by one to three men, 2 by a man and a woman, 1 by three men and one woman
  • Midwest: 2 by a woman, 8 by men (one of which was by two men)
  • South: 3 by a woman, 5 by men (one of which was written by two men)

And, here’s the look by news website association:

  • Newspaper website: 8 by a woman, 8 by a man or multiple men, 3 by a man and a woman
  • Online-only: 3 by a woman, 15 by a man, 1 by three men and one woman

When looking at the gender gap in the authors, we’ll also need to keep in mind the make-up of the individual news website’s staff and who is on duty to publish to the web on the day we do our Gender Checks each week. Those factors could play a role in our final results and are elements we’ll be looking into in the future.

We’ll be posting our results like this on a monthly and quarterly basis. As time goes by, we’ll be looking for other trends, including the subjects featured as lead articles on these news websites and what kind of correlation that may have to the gender of the author and the sources. We’ll also be seeking out and sharing the existing explanations on why we see the trends we do.

This is only the beginning of the data we hope to gather here at The Gender Report. Stay tuned for our weekly Gender Checks from each region. Additionally, we’ll be exploring other ways of looking at gender representation in the news in coming posts.

We’re also interested in your feedback. How are we doing? What information are you interested in when it comes to gender representations in online news? Share your thoughts in the comment section below or e-mail us at genderreport@gmail.com.

Journalist’s sexual assault brings attention to larger issues of cultural norm of harrassment

Joy BaconLeave a comment

On Tuesday, CBS news issued a statement saying “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan had sustained “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.” As the news organization’s chief foreign correspondent, Logan was in the midst of the jubilation in Tahrir Square after former President stepped down. Logan was hospitalized upon her immediate return to the United States and is currently recovering in her Washington D.C. home, according to a CBS update.

After the story broke on several broadcast, print and online news organizations, controversy came from several different areas.

NYU Fellow and freelance journalist Nir Rosen tweeted that Logan was just trying to outdo CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper and she fabricated the assault. He posted apologies that added to public outrage, tweeting “ah f*** it, i apologize for being insensitive, its always wrong, thats obvious, but i’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she will get.”*

Rosen resigned from his NYU fellowship soon after. The Poytner Institute also reported other media mishandlings of the story, including a reader’s poll that asked if Logan was to blame for her own assault.

Logan’s assault and resulting news coverage finds us looking at several different aspects of this story: the cultural norm many women in Egypt experienced long before the assault, different media policies on covering a sexual assault and the treatment of female journalists on foreign assignments.

The Associated Press (as printed in the Washington Post) interviewed Egyptian women about their own experiences during the protests. Many women reported a “new Egypt” in which they were seen as equal participants in the political demonstrations, free to smoke, wear jeans and mingle in mixed sex groups. The Gender Report commented before on the critical role women were playing in the developing protests.

However, some women feared this norm would not last. A 2008 survey by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights found that 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women in Cairo said they had been harassed – while 62 percent of men admitted to harassing.

CNN’s American Morning aired an interview with Egyptian columnist Mona Eltahawy, who since the assault has used her Twitter page to discuss women’s rights in the Arab world. Eltahawy said as a woman and as a journalist who has been groped and harassed on several assignments, she wanted to open the discussion up to women in both Egypt and the U.S. who shared their own experiences with harassment and assault.

Ms. Magazine posted similar sentiments, saying,  “The people of Egypt, including women, know their power. I hope their next revolution will be to end gender-based harassment and assault. And I know that many there hope for the same.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists commented that they currently did not have good data on the sexual assault, rape or harassment of women journalists because the cases are rarely reported or the women ask that their stories not be made public. However, the site did review cases from the Congo, Columbia, Mexico, Pakistan in which journalists were attacked, kidnapped, or sexually assaulted. The story quoted journalist Franchou Namegabe Nabintu’s 2009 report to CPJ regarding sexual assault:

“Sexual violence against journalists will remain underreported until the stigma is removed. While that’s certainly true in principle, we also recognize that the decision to discuss sexual violence is a very personal one. We will continue to document incidents of sexual violence as they are brought to us, but always with the consent of the journalist involved.”

The Poynter Institute also reported information regarding the coverage of sexual assault cases. After it become a referenced piece in early articles about Logan’s attack, the Columbia Journalism Review reposted its 2007 article that looked at foreign correspondents and sexual abuse.

As best I can tell, the Associated Press (as published in the Washington Post) was the only news organization to formerly comment on the use of Logan’s name, saying “The Associated Press does not name victims of sexual assault unless the victim agrees to be identified.” Most news organizations follow a similar policy.

Read other commentary on this story:

  • Fox News, criticizing Rosen’s tweets
  • The Daily Beast, on harassment experiences of women in Egypt
  • The Atlantic, on Rosen’s tweets and the role of Twitter in journalism and public opinion

*Actual tweet used full spelling of profanity

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Update: We follow the same standards as news sites with our comment section, which means no personal attacks, threats or victim blaming will be allowed. If you do any of those, your comments will be deleted.

Gender Check: 2/18/11 South

Joy BaconLeave a comment
*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.

Website: The Miami Herald

On the Miami Herald, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 3 p.m. (EST) on Friday, Feb. 18 was titled “Accused Child Abusers’ Granddaughter Also A Victim.” Its subject was the developing legal case involving alleged abuse of a grandparents’ adopted children as well as their biological granddaughter.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Female

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Female – mother of the victim

2. Female – judge

3. Female – child welfare lawyer (as quoted from court documents)

4. unknown- group of unidentified prosecutors

Notes/analysis: No male sources were directly quoted in the article. Both the male and female grandparents are being charged with attempted murder. Both male and female victims were targeted.


Website: Patch (Seminole Heights)

On Patch of Seminole Heights, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 3:30 p.m. (EST) on Friday, Feb. 18 was titled “Early Voting for Tampa Election Begins Saturday.” Its subject was a basic summary of information for voters in the upcoming municipal election.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

1. Male – county supervisor of elections

Notes/analysis: For this election in Tampa, 1 of the 5 mayoral candidates is female, and 8 of the 28 city council candidates are female. Tampa currently has a female mayor and 3 of 7 city council members are female.