The Difference Between Media Coverage Of Men And Women At The Olympic Games

In MacArthur’s paper, “The Canadian State of Mind: Coverage of Men and Women Athletes in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Prime Time Broadcast of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.” MacArthur studied the difference between media coverage of men and women at the games and the way commenters speak about women. MacArthur says, Broadcast teams that are primarily male can be found to express differences between men and women in sports. Men are more likely to receive praise for the bumps in the road they overcome while women will be commented on their failures.

The method for this study is done by viewing the fully 72 hours of the broadcast and examining the percent difference between coverage of both sexes. Davis and toggle deduce that equal air time for men and women is essential as societal views on women as athletes are enhanced. Billings describes that not only is the air time favored towards men; women are spoken about differently as to their counterparts. MacArthur agrees with Corsset in the fact that women have always been second class citizens when it comes to broadcasting in sports. Davis and Tuggle found that sports that are considered more feminine they get a more equal share of the broadcast time. The way they conducted the method is a single person went over the entire broadcast and documented the percentages of men and women coverage during prime time.

MacArthur found that women contributed 39.6 percent of the total air time. MacArthur showed that men received over 61 percent of the total mentions during primetime broadcasting as opposed to the less than 29 percent of mentions for the women. 65 percent of the top 20 most mentioned athletes during the Olympics were men. Women were more likely to receive positive comments based on their background in the sport compared to men who got comments about being successful based on their skill. Comments surrounding male failure wetr directed towards their lack of intelligence compared to women. Comments towards women body parts were greater than males.

MacArthur concludes that even though women in sports are making a significant push in the number of athletes that are representing Canada, earn a significantly less amount of air time. Canadian networks have not showed that equal broadcast time between male and female athletes is a top priority. Intelligence has a greater chance of being brought up whether the athlete fails for succeeds. MacArthur state, outgoing personalities are more prone to be associated with men rather than women. MacArthur state that broadcast analysis could explain how the different athletes are portrayed while the broadcasters are speaking about them on a sport by sport level rather than the big scale of the Olympics.