A new study shows that cable networks overwhelmingly assigned female reporters to cover Hillary Clinton and her Democratic primary opponents.
In order to conduct the analysis, the Media Research Center “reviewed all 950 ABC, CBS and NBC weekday and weekend evening news stories about the 2016 presidential campaign from January 1 to June 7.”
According to the breakdown, 547 stories were focused on the Republican race, 295 were focused on the Democrats and 108 featured equal coverage for both parties.
While male reporters did produce more GOP-centric stories compared to their female counterparts, women dominated the coverage of the Democratic field.
Media Research Center
MRC notes that 245 of the 295 Democrat-focused stories were reported by women, compared to only 50 reported by men.
Additionally, the analysis showed female reporters covering the Democratic campaign took up 520 minutes of airtime, compared to just 108 minutes from their male counterparts.
Back in 2015, Politico’s Hadas Gold acknowledged the gender-disparity in election coverage, but claimed it was purely a coincidence.
“No editors interviewed for this story acknowledged assigning reporters to Clinton based on their gender, and none of the reporters said they were chosen because they were women,” she stated. “But many said they felt it was important nonetheless to have women covering a female candidate.”
Gold noted several factors that contributed to women dominating Democratic coverage, including a “younger generation of talented reporters… coming of age just as Clinton pursues the presidency” and the “history-making potential” of covering the first female president.
