The journalist, the housewife, the citizen and the press

Abstract

The use of sources in news narratives is an extremely important part of not only the story's construction but also of its orientation and, ultimately, the point of view being supported in a given story. The sly deceit concealed within journalists' use of sources as apparently independent and authoritative commentators enables the journalist to masquerade as a mere conveyance of others' perspectives while actually peddling a particular viewpoint by the choice of speaker and the choice of quote. This study interrogates the content of three English regional newspapers over a 10-week period, up to, during and after the British general election in 2005, in order to identify gender differences in the sources used. It argues that, as with the national press, men are more than twice as likely as women to be quoted as sources and that women journalists are no more likely to source women than male colleagues. It concludes that a newsroom culture which privileges elite and other (white) male voices appears to exert a greater influence and conformity over who `counts' as an authoritative voice than any individual newsworker's proclivities to more accurately reflect their views of the diverse local community.

It's a Man's World: A Qualitative Study of the (Non) Mediation of Women and Politics onPrime TimeDuring the 2011 General Election

“…The representation of Irish women's engagement in politics is constituted through four dominant frames. Firstly, women are marginalised by literally being 'framed out' of the political picture (Ross & Carter, 2011), secondly, they are framed through a visual gendering of politicians which presents women in a limited manner (Lundell & Ekström, 2008), thirdly the source-frame is not applied equally to men and women on Prime Time (Ross, 2007) and finally, women are framed as participants only in a limited set of topics for discussion (Heldman et al, 2005).…”

“…Scharrer (2002) found that in newspaper reports, the more Hilary Clinton was framed as politically active and more certain to run for office, the more the tone of the story was negative. Men are more likely to be presented as expert sources (Armstrong, 2004;Ross, 2007) and so their views are presented as more important and legitimate (Kim & Weaver, 2003). As Ross puts it 'If what we see and read and hear are men's voices, men's perspectives, men's news (then) women continue to be framed as passive observers rather than active citizens ' (2011: 19).…”

“…In the international news media, men are still more likely to be quoted as sources than women (Ross, 2007). A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (2005) in the USA examined 16,800 news stories, across 45 outlets, during 20 randomly selected days, over 9 months, and found that more than three quarters of all stories contained male sources, while only a third of stories contained a single female source.…”

Aproximación a los porqués del bajo nivel lectura de prensa de las mujeres

“…The use of women as sources, compared to men, is one of the chief aspects for determin ing the image of women created by the media, more so than their presence as such. There is a considerable volume of academic literature devoted to this issue 5 : Ross (2007) and Armstrong (2004 and. As Gans states, journalists choose their sources precisely for their suitability, credibility and relevance.…”

“…However, some studies argue that "news is news and the journalist's gender does not influence the selection criteria Lavie and LehmanWilzig (2003) 7 , while oth ers, such as Ross (2007), and Rodgers and Thorson (2003) 8 clearly show that at least when the problems concern women, then the approaches may be tackled in very dif ferent ways. For example, the study carried out by Altés, Gallego, Bach et al (2000) on the follow up of information on the Beijing Conference in 1995, showed that un questionably, the approaches varied according to whether the reports were written by men or women.…”