Gender in Sports Coverage of American and Spanish Online Newspapers

Abstract

The differences in how the media treat information about women and men provoke a deficit in the information that girls and female adolescents receive about sports. The purpose of this study was to determine the difference in sports coverage in relation to gender in online newspapers in two western countries, Spain and the United States. All articles (N = 1,977) with athletic content from the online newspapers usatoday.com and elmundo.es were analyzed during 2-week spans in October 2003 and February 2004. The variables registered were gender, placement of article in the newspaper, number of words per article, and photographs. Results show that women’s sport received less coverage than men’s sport in total number of articles as well as in front-page stories, article length, and number of photographs. Additionally, there were 15 articles about men only for every 1 article about women only in the two newspapers.