Structural sexism mars the news from Rio

Olympic Games: Female and male athletes in international TV news, August 8-22, 2016

Zurich, August 24, 2016. Journalists in the U.K. and in Germany have come under attack for sexist language when reporting about female athletes in Rio. While depreciating remarks clearly should have no place in journalism, there are more profound problems: Women remain under-represented in Olympic sports news. The share of female athletes in the news is only 38% compared to a share of 45% of all athletes competing in Rio. This shows the latest analysis of the Media Tenor International institute. This news comes in a time of rising media criticism of the International Olympic Committee, which experienced negativity comparable to that for FIFA during the Rio Games.

Complaints about sexist language in sports coverage range from an undue pre-occupation with the outward appearance of the women to unnecessary comparisons with male athletes, reports Claire Bates in BBC News Magazine (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37037050). This sounds rather tame compared to the live comment by German ARD reporter Carsten Sostmeier, who charged eventing rider Julia Krajewski of cowardice. “Looking only at individual reports mask the basic issue: Mass media do not cover the role of women adequately”, says Dr. Christian Kolmer, who is doing gender research at Media Tenor. “Actually, political and business journalists do much worse than their colleagues from the sports departments. In business news only one in ten managers is a women.”

Further evidence of this structural deficit is evident from the fact that top female athletes enjoy a comparable visibility to that of their male colleagues, with women topping the volume ranking in Germany, Italy and France. However, men still dominate the top ranks. But there is some change: Over the longer term the visibility of women in Olympic sports news is increasing, as their share went up from 33% in London 2012. There are large differences between European news programs with regard to the visibility of women in the news from Rio, to some extent related to the differing popularity of Olympic disciplines. Swiss Tagesschau stands out among the other programs with a 56% share of women, driven by the success story of the Swiss women tennis team.

While the Olympic host earned mixed reviews, overall sports coverage remained strongly positive. The tone for women were covered even more enthusiastic than for men. But not only winners get headlines. Missing expectations in combination with strong visibility can trigger negativity, as Germany’s discus champion of 2012, Robert Harting, had to realize: After his seething criticism of Thomas Bach before the Games, he dropped out before the finals. His bad performance was top news in Germany.

Media Tenor has analyzed all 13,869 reports about protagonists on 10 international TV news during the Rio Olympic Games for this report. Since 1994, Media Tenor’s mission has been to contribute to objective, diverse and newsworthy reporting by bringing together the diverse parties who impact and are affected by the news.

Contact: Dr. Christian Kolmer, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.