Initial study results show possible link between female journalists and gender bias

Dianne Bystrom (Iowa State University photo)

The first part of a lengthy study comparing coverage of presidential hopefuls in two newspapers — one in Iowa and one in New Hampshire — is complete, and the statistics it unearthed should give female journalists pause.

The study, which compares newspaper coverage of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards leading up to this year’s first two presidential nominating contests, found that 57 percent of the stories that focused on Clinton were written by female journalists, and that more of the coverage Clinton received was negative as compared to Obama and Edwards.

Titled “Gender and U.S. Presidential Politics: Early Newspaper Coverage of Hillary Clinton’s Bid for the White House,” the study remains a work in progress for Dianne Bystrom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. But Bystrom presented an initial report to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association based on her work thus far, and she agreed to speak with the Iowa Independent about her findings.

“When I’ve talked with one of my reporter colleagues about [women being more likely to cover Clinton], he claimed that was because a lot of female reporters asked to cover Hillary Clinton,” Bystrom said. “And that could very well be the case.”

Women journalists often want to cover female candidates, but also often over-compensate against perceived biases in their reporting.

“In looking at past research, one of the things that we’ve found is that women reporters are harder on women candidates than male reporters are,” Bystrom said. “What we theorize about that is that women don’t want to be charged with going easy on a woman candidate. At the same time, we think that male reporters are fearful of being charged with sexism if they go hard on a woman candidate.”

In November, Bystrom will present an updated version of the study to the National Communications Association. She hopes to offer that organization more of a comparison piece of the coverage in the two states, based on her analysis of reporting from The Des Moines Register and Concord Monitor.

“One of things I’m interested in looking at, for example, is if Clinton was portrayed as less viable by The Des Moines Register than the Concord Monitor because of the different results in those two states. … I also want to look at the male and female reporters’ coverage of the candidates in terms of issues and negativity in coverage,” Bystrom said.

“Although this is just hypothesis, and may or may not be a part of our results, it could be that Hillary Clinton’s coverage in those papers is more negative than that of the males because it is mostly women covering her and the female journalists are feeling the need to go hard on her. That could be a factor.”

Initial Study Results

To prevent a personal bias from corrupting data, two undergraduate students coded the newspaper articles collected from the Monitor and Register. A graduate student then entered the collected data and ran the statistical tests. In all, 137 articles from the New Hampshire newspaper and 126 stories from Iowa newspaper are represented in the study.

From the pool of 263 news articles, Clinton was the primary candidate focus of 51 and received the most overall primary news coverage. When looking at the two papers separately, however, Clinton received slightly less coverage than Obama and Edwards in The Des Moines Register. A total of 18 articles in the Iowa paper focused on Clinton, while Edwards and Obama each had 20. A significant amount of coverage — 13 percent in New Hampshire and 10 percent in Iowa — focused on the Clinton versus Obama candidacies.

Of those 51 articles focusing on Clinton, however, 22 percent were coded as negative. Comparitively, just one story, or 2 percent, of the 41 articles focusing on Obama was considered negative. None of the 31 articles focusing on Edwards were coded as negative.

While 66 percent of the news articles focused on Obama and 61 percent of those focused on Edwards were considered to be positive, only 33 percent of Clinton’s articles were coded as positive.

It’s All About Image

“One of the good news things is that I really was expecting more image coverage of Clinton in those two newspapers,” Bystrom said. “And really — at least on the overall theme of image — there were not significant differences.”

While on the surface the trend of less statistical difference between male and female candidates in terms of image coverage appears to be a good thing, Bystrom said it is likely an indication of men garnering more image coverage.

“It’s not that women are being covered less in terms of their image, but what’s happening is that men are being covered more in terms of their image, which basically takes the statistical difference away,” she said. “So, it’s not that papers are covering a woman’s image less, but that they are covering a man’s image more. It makes the statistics appear more equitable.”

There is little doubt that image continues to be a media focus for women candidates and, according to Bystrom, the entrance of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin into the national mix has brought the issue once again into the forefront.

“I haven’t done any studies on Sarah Palin, so anything I say would just be based on my personal observations,” she said. “although I’m also sure there will be a lot of studies on her candidacy. People will argue that the media is talking about her children because she’s putting them on center stage, or that the media is discussing her family because she put her family out there. But Joe Biden has told fairly provocative stories about his family, about how he lost his wife and raised his two sons. Although I remember that being discussed in the media, I don’t recall it being the focus of his coverage. I do think that Palin is also being covered a lot in terms of her appearance.”

Bystrom said that a female reporter recently contacted her for comment on an article about Palin.

“A reporter from a large, respected newspaper that was not in Iowa sent a request wanting political science experts to contact her because she was doing on a story on how we would make-over Sarah Palin,” Bystrom explained. “Would we give her a new haircut? Would we change her glasses? Would we change her wardrobe? Although I didn’t respond, what I wanted to respond was how we might wish to make-over Joe Biden. Or, what about John McCain? Or even Barack Obama?”

A different female reporter wanted to know about Clinton’s color choice.

“Another time I was being interviewed by a woman reporter from a respected newspaper and the focus was on Hillary Clinton,” she said. “We were talking about the research, about how woman are often covered based on appearance. This reporter said, ‘This research is all very interesting, but do you think that Hillary Clinton is trying to telegraph to voters different things by her choice of color of pantsuit?’”

Women candidates, according to Bystrom, are told the same things that men candidates are told about color. “Wear what is comfortable and in a color that looks good on camera,” she said. “Clinton and other candidates aren’t telegraphing things to voters with their color choices. They are doing what we train candidates to do — wear colors that look good on you and look good on camera. It’s the same reason you see male politicians sporting red and ice blue ties.”

Of course it’s difficult to write about how the media reported on Clinton’s image without mentioning the now infamous news report about her lower-cut shirt.

“There was the long story in the Washington Post about Hillary Clinton’s cleavage and what she might be trying to tell voters with it,” Bystrom said. “We would just be appalled if there was a story about a man and a part of his body and what he might be trying telegraph to voters. Like if a man wore tight pants. What does that mean to voters?”

Doesn’t Clinton = Negativity?

It’s commonplace for Bystrom to be asked if negativity in the media is focused more on Clinton as an individual than it is on women in general.

“Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton,” she said. “She’s going to get some negative coverage just because she is Hillary Clinton and has been in the public eye for as long as she has been. But she’s gotten equitable and good media coverage when she ran for U.S. Senate, even in 2000 when she first ran. She received even more positive coverage in 2006.

“Another reason that I say this is not just Hillary is because of the media coverage Elizabeth Dole received when she sought the Republican nomination. This was at a time when women were receiving much more equitable coverage whether they were running for governor or for senate. We were seeing trends of more equitable coverage, beginning in 1998. But then we looked at Elizabeth Dole. She got less media coverage, more negative coverage and more image-related coverage than all of her male counterparts — even those who were polling below her.”

That leads to the hypothesis that when women seek the highest office, they are going to be treated in stereotypical ways.

“It’s disturbing trend because we’ve taken a step back,” she said. “What we’re seeing is the type of coverage that women were getting in the 1980s and early 1990s when we look at Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. And I think we’re going to see the same type of thing with Sarah Palin.

“I’ve studied Hillary Clinton’s media coverage since she was First Lady. What I can tell you is that Hillary Clinton is capable of getting good media coverage. Where she gets negative media coverage is when she was First Lady and when she runs for president. My theory on that is that we, as a society, have become more accepting of women running for legislative and statewide executive offices. But it seems to be that when someone like Hillary Clinton doesn’t behave in a way that we think a First Lady should behave, or she is running for the nation’s top office, that she gets more negative coverage.”

Bystrom says that study after study has shown the Clinton was treated differently by the media.

“I think Clinton’s campaign was covered in every city, including my own, differently than her male opponents,” she said. “Every single study I’ve seen — be it newspapers, be it television, be it radio, be it magazines — has concluded that Clinton was covered differently than her male opponents, with most studies focusing on the difference between her coverage and Obama’s. The thing that stands out is that she was covered much more negatively than Obama. Of course, that wasn’t the only factor in her race — but it did affect her race. I would say that one of the factors that hurt Hillary Clinton throughout her candidacy was her media coverage.”