Massive gender imbalance in television sports news reporting

You can’t be what you can’t see. Young girls are not seeing women represented in television sports news.

I’ve often observed the lack of women’s sports being reported when I watch news. Last week I recorded how many sports stories were reporting on male and female sports and for how long on 10 News First.

It’s a very small sample but is a trend repeated across news. There is comprehensive research to back it up. I’ll cover that later in this blog.

Result

On Monday there was one story on women’s sport covering netball. It got 20 seconds compared with two stories on UK men’s football that got almost two minutes. American men’s gridiron got 33 seconds of coverage.

On Tuesday the one story covering women’s sport was a negative story about bad culture in the Hockeyroos.

On Wednesday there were no stories covering women’s sport. There was over five minutes on men’s AFL and two men’s golf stories that took over 2 minutes.

On Thursday there were no stories covering women’s sport. But we did get 25 seconds of men’s US basketball.

On Friday we also had no stories covering women’s sport. But there was a 27 second item on European football.

Three days out of five with zero women’s sport reported. Not acceptable.

What I found isn’t unique. Back in 2015 the ABC reported on a Australian Sports Commission study that found coverage of male sport made up 81 per cent of television sports news coverage, compared to women at 8.7 per cent.

It seems nothing has changed since then. Perhaps it’s time people in positions of influence such as the Minister for Women – Hon Marise Payne, and Minister for Sport – Hon Richard Colbeck, intervened to level the playing field.

They can be contacted at senator.colbeck@aph.gov.au and ministerforwomen@pmc.gov.au