Media Coverage

Media coverage of athletics continues to reinforce the ongoing division between men and women. Media is a powerful factor, which can affect our beliefs, attitudes, and the values. Men’s sports always are used as a topic of on-going media and journalism curiosity. TV stations, newspapers and magazines usually do more coverage of men's sports than women’ sports. When we turn on TV screen, there’s a high probability that a men’ sports game will be on at a sport channel than women’s. If women are as important as men are. There should have equal coverage in television, newspaper and magazines. In fact, men get most coverage of media in many areas.

On the other hand, the coverage of female athletes in the media is always framed within conventional discourse of the sexualized body because men don’t like female sports,but they like to see female athletes' bodies. “Within the frame of the media, the bodies of female athletes are understood and legitimated first and foremost as being about femininity rather than athleticism. [For example, ] the controversies around three-time Olympic veteran Amanda Beard’s choice to pose along with other Olympians on the 2004 cover of FHM magazine wearing only a white bikini, where critics claimed she was denigrating the sport, were about the apparent incompatibilities between the sexualized body and the athletic body.”(Bryant, P487)

A female athlete always is recognized first as a woman, second as an athlete. People pay more attention on their feminine bodies and feminine beauty more than their athletic skills. “Most media discourses surrounding coverage of female athletes are shaped around the connection between athletic recognition and legitimate femininity.” ((Bryant, P491) For example, most female tennis players still wear skirts instead of shorts because skirts are more feminine, even though shorts are more comfortable.

A. Raney Jennings Brant. “Handbook of Sports and Media”. Mahwah,NJ Lawrence Eelbaum Associates Publishers, 2006.

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