Tag: December

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Women’s Sports Broadcasting: Four Decades Behind by Audrey Bennett

The number of women athletes has steadily increased in the years since the passing of Title IX in 1972. However, TV and media coverage of women’s athletics has failed to keep up. Shockingly, a 20-year-long USC study of ESPN and other Los Angeles sports coverage outlets revealed that only 3.2% of airtime is dedicated to women’s sports, which is less than the reported 5% in 1989. Readers of prominent newspapers encounter a similar dismal ratio of women’s to men’s athletics coverage. While there is plenty of space for a thorough story on various jersey numbers that are possible for a NFL player (an article featured in an October 2016 New York Times paper), coverage of the WNBA finals is virtually nonexistent. The sort of unequal coverage perpetuates stereotypes and conformity to gender roles while marginalizing the dynamic social changes that have occurred over the last 25 years. Significantly increasing attention to women’s sports through broadcasting, newspapers, and magazines would positively affect the way women feel and the way women are treated in society.

Only 3.2% of airtime is dedicated to women’s sports, which is less than the reported 5% in 1989

Media and news coverage, often referred to as the “fourth branch of government,” holds a unique position of power in the US. With this power comes great responsibility. These news outlets, whether it be Sports Illustrated, ESPN, or even the local paper covering high school sports stories, have a moral obligation to strive for fair and equal coverage. USC sociologist Mike Messner notes that “news programs are supposed to be a window to the world and there is a journalistic responsibility to reflect that.” However, these news outlets have repeatedly failed to accurately represent the true demographic of athletes and fans. A 2014 USC study led by Mike Messner and Cheryl Cooky examined three Los Angeles network affiliates and found that they collectively ran 60 stories on the March 2009 men’s NCAA basketball tournament. Zero stories were featured on the women’s NCAA tournament of that year.

There seems to be hardly enough time for depth and breadth of coverage for women.

Completely ignoring the parallel women’s tournament demonstrates the preferential treatment that men’s sports receives on a daily basis. Although there are more ticket sales for the men’s tournament, a 60:0 ratio disregards the thousands of fans of the women’s teams. Also, it is not as if crucial topics of men’s sports dominate every moment of airtime. While there is plenty of time for marginal stories about where former Lakers player Kendall Marshall will find a good burrito in Milwaukee (a story featured in a July 2014 release from USA Today), there seems to be hardly enough time for depth and breadth of coverage for women. However, if we generate sports coverage of equal quality and quantity between the sexes, young girls will grow up with more visible female athlete role models, and both boys and girls will see that athletic pursuits are not merely for males.

What’s more, during that small percentage of air time devoted to women’s sports, the quality of coverage is not even equal. Researchers of Messner’s USC study noted that broadcasters relate the news of women’s sports in a more stoic and humorless approach, which suggests that viewers and broadcasters alike must brace themselves and endure a short segment on women before returning to the joyful and joke-filled coverage of men’s sports. As children and adults listen and read to this type of reporting, they come to unconsciously accept it as truth. By diversifying coverage, the fight for equal treatment for both sexes would benefit. The current state of broadcasting perpetuates long-held prejudices that women and women’s athletics are somehow inferior and unworthy of our attention.

By consciously using about 97% of airtime to cover men’s athletics, broadcasting stations seem to think that men’s sports are the only type of sports that will attract viewers.  Many news outlets would defend their decisions as purely economically based, perhaps only reflecting ticket sales of WNBA to NBA games to attract the largest demographic of viewers. However, it is the fault of circular reasoning if broadcasting outlets and newspapers blame popularity for their biased coverage. Sports teams gain popularity through media coverage, yet broadcasting groups repeatedly refuse to fairly feature women’s sports teams because they are not popular enough. How will women’s sports gain comparative popularity to men’s if they only get minimal coverage? Also, studies demonstrate that the interest and participation in women’s athletics is quite respectable. In fact, in the women’s 2015 soccer World Cup, 3.311 million viewers tuned it, making it the most-watched soccer match on FoxSports1. While some stations claim that their job is to reflect interest of the current audience rather than generating new audiences, Cheryl Cooky, the associate professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at Purdue University, points out that “that is in one sense a false logic because the interest is there … [and] that particular logic lets sports media off the hook. Displacement of blame onto the audience or consumer removes any sort of accountability on their part…” Thus, if sports channels and newspapers are truly trying to reflect their interest groups, the coverage of women’s sports would be much greater.

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972 that prohibited sex-based discrimination in federally funded activities, the number of women in high school, collegiate, and professional level sports has sky-rocketted. The Women’s Sports Foundation reminds us that in 1971, the number of high school girls involved in interscholastic sports was about 294,000. Today it is closer to 3.1 million, which is significantly closer to the 4.4 million boys that play such sports. According to Running USA, there are now more women runners than men (10.7 million women participating in running races compared to 8 million men).

Just as African Americans had to fight for equal treatment and respect even after the necessary legislation was passed, the battle is still being fought for female athletes.

Some would argue that at this steep rate, women’s sports do not need additional support or coverage because they seem to be thriving under these circumstances. However, while the participation in women’s athletics has increased rapidly, the respect and treatment it receives has failed to catch up. The predominantly male sports broadcasters (only about 5% of sports anchors are women according to the 2014 USC study) still believe that this boom in interest in women’s athletics is not worthy of airtime. Women’s sports are still decades behind in the treatment and pay they receive. Just as African Americans had to fight for equal treatment and respect even after the necessary legislation was passed, the battle is still being fought for female athletes.

This battle transcends the world of sports broadcasting.

Media plays a key role in this battle. A different approach to women’s sports coverage could begin to shift expectations, gender roles, and persistent sexism that women athletes around the world face every day. However, this battle transcends the world of sports broadcasting. The simple demand for equal treatment and respect for women still faces resistance in the workplace, in politics, and in the home. If men’s and women’s sports eventually  receive equal coverage, perhaps it influence our perceptions of gender and its role in determining one’s worth in society.

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Give It a Shot by Sarah Lamp

Children are inherently vulnerable to a wide variety of dangers. No one knows this better than a parent, and certainly, almost any parent would agree with the statement that they would do anything to protect their child. However, in some cases, people may disagree about whether something is helpful or in fact harmful; one such case is vaccines. Although a majority of parents happily vaccinate their children and themselves, others refuse vaccines for their children on the grounds that vaccinations supposedly harm mental abilities. Unfortunately, by doing this they are in fact making their children, and the children around them, vulnerable to many terrible diseases. There is no irrefutable scientific evidence linking vaccines to an increased risk of disease or disabilities in children, meaning that parents who do not vaccinate their children gain nothing but risk a great deal. Perhaps the most significant reason that many distrust vaccines is chronic misinformation, as incorrect findings are distributed as facts and convince parents that vaccines are dangerous, thereby leaving children more exposed and vulnerable to disease than they otherwise would be. Parents are supposed to protect their children: vaccines are just one more way to do this.

For a parent, this is not just about facts and figures: it’s about the life of their child.

While the parents may think that they are doing what is best for their kids, proof that vaccines cause diseases such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is oftentimes thin and based on circular reasoning or manipulated data. However, many parents are not given the breadth of information necessary to make an informed decision. On the website of the non-profit advocacy organization Voices for Vaccines, one mother, Chrissy, reveals her experiences with both the pro- and anti-vaccine movements, making a critical point regarding how medical professionals can spur parents into a panic over vaccines by misdiagnosing young children with developmental delays as being autistic. This can send already-anxious parents into a frenzy. In her article, Chrissy writes that “At first I was relieved because my worries had finally been validated. Then I was angry and convinced that my child had been damaged by the vaccines he had gotten,” clearly expressing the emotional turmoil that surrounds the vaccine debate because, for a parent, this is not just about facts and figures: it’s about the life of their child. Vaccines provide an opportunity to save lives and stave off disease – imagine what a difference a vaccine would have made during the Spanish Influenza epidemic a hundred years ago, how many lives could have been saved. When there is an opportunity to have a slightly higher chance of  preventing a disease and keeping their children healthy, parents have an unspoken obligation to always seize it, or to at the very least make sure to understand what it entails.

Still, the facts and figures are important. Statistics alone prove that it is unspeakably foolish to leave children unprotected from horrific diseases: all one needs to do is look back at the time before vaccines, when even the President of the United States was not safe from polio. According to an article by Dina Fine Maron for the Scientific American in 2015, the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that “among children born in the past two decades vaccinations will prevent more than 20 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths,” figures which highlight the dramatic difference vaccines can make.

To not vaccinate is a very selfish decision, as it affects not only one’s own child but also other children around them: to have one child unvaccinated is to potentially expose an entire school to a disease. Vaccines are developed for the very purpose of protecting people, and are designed to be safe for children; exhaustive clinical trials and tests are required by the CDC for the very purpose of ensuring that the drugs are as safe as is possible. While it is true that genetic variation and immune deficiencies can sometimes result in a bad reaction, the chance of a child beings diagnosed with a disease or disability as a direct result of a preventative vaccines is far lower than the risks of infectious disease an unvaccinated child faces. It is unfortunate that facts such as these are often misinterpreted or excluded from anti-vaccine forums, as positive, correct, information plays an important role in lessening the stigma around vaccines and convincing parents.

Furthermore, no government organization nor laudable scientific community has, as of yet, put forth any proof showing that vaccines, nor any ingredients in vaccines (specifically the mercury-based preservative thimerosal) cause autism; in fact, the CDC soundly refutes any claims to that effect, asserting on their website that “since 2003, there have been nine CDC-funded or conducted studies that have found no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ASD, as well as no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and ASD in children.” Despite this, in a 2011 article titled “Straight Talk about Vaccination,” Matthew F. Daley and Jason M. Glanz share the troubling results of a survey over 1,500 parents, in which “one quarter […] [believed] that vaccines can cause autism in healthy children, and more than one in 10 had refused at least one recommended vaccine.” The reason for this level of ignorance is that parents have been consistently offered false information via the internet or personal anti-vaccination campaigns, or have not been corrected by medical practitioners. It is for this reason that a mandatory forum is needed to educate all new parents about vaccines, such as a  required, government-sponsored, information session about vaccinations which can address any and all fears. The problem is never that parents do not want to help their children: it’s that they are no longer sure what is best.

A mandatory forum is needed to educate all new parents about vaccines.

Yet, in the face of what is oftentimes irrefutable evidence, some anti-vaccine advocates persist in denouncing vaccines not just as causes of disabilities but also as a way for large pharmaceutical companies to exploit parents. According to this sector of the population, Image B, which was posted to an online forum titled “Diabolical Pro-Vaccination Campaign”, is just another example of coercive techniques designed to trick parents into poisoning their children. This reasoning, already weak, pales considerably when Dina Fine Maron reminds the world again in the Scientific American that the physician who was initially responsible for spreading the idea that vaccines are linked to autism was “barred from practicing medicine due to ethical lapses,” something which is often glossed over by devotees of the anti-vaccination movement, along with the fact that “more than a dozen studies [by expert organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM)] have added to the body of evidence that this link does not exist.” Until there is definite proof showing the connection between vaccines and autism or other diseases, the idea that vaccines are always harmful is based on nothing more than pseudo-science and speculation.

Until such time as there is quantifiable evidence clearly showing that vaccines do cause more harm than good, parents have a duty to vaccinate their children.

The claims of the anti-vaccine movement have no scientific validity. Nonetheless, there is still the potential for real tragedy as a result of simple ignorance, and the culture of misinformation that has grown around vaccines.  Parents are trying to do the best they can for their children, but without having all the correct facts, it is difficult to make an informed decision. It is a situation that is unfair to everyone, but most so to the children themselves, both those who are vaccinated and yet are at risk from the unvaccinated, and the unvaccinated themselves, who are exposed to potentially life-threatening diseases. To help combat this, the government and healthcare practitioners should  step up efforts to reach and educate people, especially parents, who are wary about vaccines, as vaccinations are currently the best way to combat diseases and help improve general health. Ultimately, until such time as there is quantifiable evidence clearly showing that vaccines do cause more harm than good, parents have a duty to vaccinate their children. If they are truly not swayed by statistics alone, perhaps they should consider whether it would be better to have a living child with autism as a result of a vaccine, or a child who has died as the result of a disease for which they were not vaccinated.