“I’ve never really thought about it”: the process of news construction and perception of underrepresentation of women’s sport media coverage by editors-in-chief in mainstream Polish media

Abstract

In recent decades, a lot of work has been dedicated to gender bias in sports media coverage. However, there have been far fewer studies on gatekeeping processes in sports media. Using 11 in-depth interviews, this study analyses the information selection process to see if and how section processes influence sports media coverage on women’s sport in the Polish media. The study showed that for the participants the superiority of men’s sport was a given and editors did not feel obliged to promote women’s sport, despite being involved in the promotion of other disciplines or coverage in the media. Furthermore, the way of producing information in the Polish sports media depends on the personal beliefs of editors-in-chief. The ideology of the superiority of male sports adopted by the participants makes coverage on women’s sports biased, despite the journalists’ conviction about the objectivity of media coverage.

Keywords:

• Sports media
• women’s sport coverage
• gatekeeping theory
• Poland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Faculty of Physical Education, Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw. Grant number: DM-55 “Gender inequalities in sports media coverage”.