Still Not There: The Continued Invisibility of Female Athletes and Sports in the New Zealand Print Media

Abstract

This research examined parity for female athletes compared with male athletes in the level of coverage received in the New Zealand print media in a year that did not contain either the Commonwealth or Olympic Games. Using content analysis, 562 sport news articles from the New Zealand Herald and the Dominion Post were analysed. The findings revealed that female athletes received 6.1 per cent of coverage compared with male athletes, who received 73.6 per cent; articles related to female athletes/sports had an average length of 432 words compared with 461 words for articles related to male athletes/sports. These data are a stark illustration that, even in a country where women led the world in achieving suffrage, continuing cultural change is not guaranteed.

A new sporting horizon: a content analysis of Super Netball newspaper coverage

“…However, it was evident that the female national game of netball (McLachlan, 2016;Pippos, 2017) was not a high priority in terms of story placement or news values, and there was a continued preference for men's sports such as rugby league, AFL, rugby union and cricket. These findings support Fink (2015) in that a major women's sport is not treated in the media in an equal -or even a comparable -way to men's sport, and contribute to coverage which can often be viewed as marginal or underrepresented (see Caple et al, 2011;French, 2013;Jones, 2005;Lumby et al, 2010;North, 2012;Sherry et al, 2016).…”

“…Stories about the Super Netball season were covered predominantly like other sports, with a focus on tactics, analysis and injuries, and written almost always in a professional way. However, there remains a need for print newsrooms to pay greater attention to a sport that has such a large footprint across the country, especially with the broad reach of the media outlets' cross-platform publishing in newspaper and digital spaces, and the importance of print titles to society (French, 2013;Roy Morgan, 2018b;Watkins et al, 2017). This was a key conclusion from RQ1, with netball comprising less than 5% of total sports coverage during its peak season.…”

“…As a result, this pilot study advances the broad scholarship on women's sport by providing a unique overview of reporting on netball, which was part of major changes in the female sporting landscape in Australia in 2017. In examining the amount, prominence and tone of content published in newspaper sports sections, it follows French's (2013) call for further research into women's sport and provides critical findings for industry and scholarship into the state of newspaper reporting of a major women's sport. Crucially, this study examines a sporting event that has not been analysed previously in this way, and contributes to an area that has often been overlooked (see McLachlan, 2016).…”

“…Australia is also successful at an international level, with the national team the reigning World Cup champion. Despite the popularity of sports such as netball, there has been a great disparity in the amount of broadcast coverage and media reporting on women's sport, both in Australia and overseas (French, 2013;Jones, 2005;Lumby et al, 2010;Phillips, 1997). While national championship matches were contested as far back as 1928, netball has been largely absent from broadcast coverage, which began on the ABC with the Mobil Super League in 1991and continued until 2006Taylor, 2001b).…”

Newswork, News Values, and Audience Considerations

“…Research has consistently found that the volume of women’s sports media coverage is less than men’s sports (Bernstein, 2002; Cooky, Messner, & Musto, 2015; Fink, 2014; French, 2013; Godoy-Pressland, 2014). Media content analyses have offered crucial perspectives regarding the ways in which women’s sports are represented; however, content analysis alone offers little insight into the institutional structures that govern the process of news production from the viewpoint of those who produce it: journalists and editors.…”