An unusual form of what appears to be broadcast sexism surfaced this week during the coverage of the California primaries and Hillary Clinton’s bid to become the first woman to ever clinch a major party presidential nomination.
An extensive Media Research Center analysis released Wednesday finds the “Big Three” broadcast networks organized their coverage to ensure that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was almost entirely reported by women correspondents, while the GOP race was largely reported by male correspondents, according to Rich Noyes, research director for the conservative press watchdog.
Analysts reviewed 950 weekday and weekend evening news stories that were aired on ABC, CBS and NBC about the presidential campaign from Jan. 1 to June 7. On-air correspondents were almost equally divided between male and female: Men reported 487 stories, women correspondents reported 463 stories.
But the subject matter determined who covered what.
Eighty-three percent of the stories about the Democratic primaries and Mrs. Clinton — 245 reports — came from women correspondents, compared with just 50 assigned to male reporters. Coverage of presumed GOP nominee Donald Trump and the Republican primaries was nearly the reverse: Men reported 374 of the GOP stories, or 68 percent), while women reported 173 of them (32 percent).
“TV coverage of Hillary’s ’historic’ candidacy was dominated by women reporters,” Mr. Noyes concluded in his analysis.
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
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