Intersectionality in Sports Journalism

Abstract

Journalism was for a long time considered a man's business. But while this has changed significantly in the last few decades, the sports department, whether in a newspaper, on the radio, or on TV, remains one of the last male bastions, still characterized by a system of hegemonic masculinity. The few quantitative surveys that are available on sports departments show that only about one in ten sports journalists is a woman. If other criteria such as race and ethnicity and sexual orientation are taken into account in addition to gender, then one quickly reaches the perceptual limit: sports departments are still male, White, and heterosexual. This is expressed in the macho culture of sports departments, in male‐coded journalistic routines, and in the treatment of non‐White, homosexual, or intersex athletes. The few qualitative studies that have been published on intersectionality on sports departments to date paint a complex, contradictory, and ambivalent picture. Male, White, heterosexual journalists lack self‐reflection and an awareness of the unequal treatment of women or people of other races. Citing workplace professionalism, they reject measures to promote equal treatment in the sports department. They also believe that female or Black sports reporters enjoy extra advantages. With regard to reporting about homosexual athletes, sports reporters have a don't ask don't tell culture . In this way, male and female sports journalists uphold gender dualism and heteronormativity through a latent homophobia in sports reporting. A change in the entire sports‐media complex is therefore not supported by sports journalism.