Media Coverage and Athletes Research Paper

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Gender Bias in TV Coverage at the Olympics

International Olympic Committee figures reveal that the latest Olympics at Rio had a record 4,700 female athletes competing -- which makes up nearly 45% of all participants. Many countries including the U.S. and Australia broke records with regard to female participation -- the former nation's delegation included 292 female athletes, which is the greatest number of women ever, from a single nation, to have participated in any Olympics, whereas the latter's delegation had more women competitors than male (Hunt, 2016). Despite this progress in women participation, numerous instances can be found during the Rio Olympics when commentators have been slammed for the use of sexist language when referring to female athletes. Sarah Grieves -- Cambridge University Press's language researcher -- recently completed a research which reveals that this issue is graver than mere commentating blunders. Several viewers have raised this issue on social media and criticized commentators. For instance, immediately after Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu's 400m individual medley world record, the camera switched over to her husband and coach, Shane Tusup (NPR, 2016).

Sportswomen have continually been considered less serious and athletic compared to sportsmen. The first two days of Rio 2016 witnessed female competitors being subject to gender-based ridicule. NBC, Chicago Tribune, and other broadcasting giants also faced censure for their remarks on female athletes. The latter newspaper was condemned in media circles for its infamous remarks on trap shooting Bronze Medalist, Corey Cogdell-Unrein. The daily's tweet and article on Unrein's achievement bore the following headline: "Wife of Bear's lineman wins a Bronze medal today in Rio." The article's contents included praise for her footballer husband, rather than Unrein's own remarkable achievements (VP, 2016)

Despite the aforementioned headline not exactly giving direct credit to the Olympian's husband, the issue here is the newspaper's failure to focus mainly on her accomplishment. While there was no mention at all, of the event in which she earned an Olympic bronze, the Tribune did not forget to mention her husband's professional football team's name. However, the worst sexist remark in the Games' media coverage came from NBC, whose commentator made the following remark about female gymnasts awaiting their performance: They "... might as well be standing in the middle of a mall." The above statement shows that the world does not take female sportspersons seriously, despite their events being equally, or sometimes more, challenging compared to the events male athletes compete in. Female athletes deserve just as much respect as the males, as they too compete and win at extremely high endurance levels. One will never hear such a remark, as the one above, on Michael Phelps or other male athletes (VP, 2016).

Brief History of Sexism in Olympic Games' TV coverage

Differences observed by University of North Carolina (UNC) researchers would be expected in the Summer Games, which is characterized by a wider collection of sports, more skin exposure, totally different outfits, and more examples of athletic skill and femininity views coming into contact.

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In his 2008 TV and New Media article on all Olympic Games that took place from 1996 to 2006 (3 Winter Games and 3 Summer Games), researcher Billings stated an interesting discovery of his, that: all sporting events wherein female athletes enjoyed maximum coverage involved leotards or swimsuits as outfits. (Billings was also the co-author of the 2002 Games-related research). However, following the above analysis of 6 Olympic Games, the researcher discovered that the Winter Games witnessed starker gaps in female and male athletes' broadcast coverage. In terms of total clock time for females and males, the gender gap was 5 times greater in case of the Winter Games, as compared to the Summer Games (Feeney, 2014).

The 2002 Winter Games witnessed men's events receiving over 6.5 hours of more coverage than female events. In figure skating, which received maximum media coverage for females as well as males, the latter's events enjoyed about 66% of the total figure skating coverage. Also, whereas men's luge was given prominent media coverage, women's luge was not covered at all. Research scholars, who also looked at national and ethnic bias as part of their analysis, claim that the most significant and conspicuous discovery of this research was the huge gap in male and female athletes' clock time -- a huge regression from prior Olympic broadcasts' balanced coverage. If particular athlete populations fail to receive a fair amount of media coverage, they will naturally be accorded 'second-class participant' treatment in all other kinds of analyses. The attainment of equality requires constant effort, and the above research highlighted just as many regressions as progresses, within the latest coverage by NBC (Feeney, 2014).

Akin to the numerous Olympic Games before it, the Beijing Olympics also saw male athletes and events enjoying greater screen time. Although the total share of female competitors rose to 42% of all competitors in the Beijing Games, their media coverage declined. University of North Carolina's 2012 research on the subject proved that although the medal count of U.S. female athletes rose to 48% of the nation's total medal count, NBC's coverage of female athletes dropped to 46.3% of airtime (a 2-point fall). While small differences in percentage might not appear to be a big deal, high concentration of female athletes' coverage is witnessed only in some events. Research works dated as early as the eighties reveal the fact that female athletes' media coverage concentrates heavily on "socially acceptable" or "feminine" sports, like golf or tennis. The UNC research discovered comparable trends in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Sixty percent of the total primetime coverage enjoyed by female athletes was devoted to gymnastics, diving, and swimming -- events described by prior studies as acceptable or feminine (Feeney, 2014).

Scarce coverage of female accomplishments bolsters sportsmen's stereotypical dominance. Researchers claim this makes female athletes appear unimportant or even almost invisible. Additionally, numerous examples of UK-based researches are cited, which revealed that little girls who actively participated.....

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