Women aren’t principal news sources on women’s issues, 4th Estate analysis finds
Men have long been the predominant sources for the news media on issues such as the economy, politics and the military. And a new analysis of campaign coverage found that women arent even the principal news source on a topic they would presumably know best: womens issues.
Major news outlets, print and TV, turn mainly to male sources for their take on abortion, birth control and Planned Parenthood, according to a study by 4th Estate, a research group that monitors campaign coverage.
Women dont even rate as the most common sources for reports about womens rights, a catch-all category that excludes reproductive issues, the group said. Women accounted for less than a third, or 31 percent, of the sources in these reports, with men in the majority, 52 percent, and institutions and organizations comprising the balance.
On some topics, such as abortion, men were four to seven times more likely as women to be the ones offering an opinion, according to 4th Estate, an offshoot of Global News Intelligence, a company that monitors media sources for government agencies and companies. It concluded: The gender gap undermines the medias credibility.
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