Filtering the Female: Television News Coverage of the 1993 Canadian Leaders' Debates
In: Women & politics, Band 21, Heft 4, S. 105-131
ISSN: 0195-7732
This article uses televised news reports of the 1993 Canadian leaders' debates to examine gendered mediation in the coverage of women politicians. By assessing the preponderance of interpretive vs descriptive coverage for the male & female debate participants, we show that coverage of female political leaders is more filtered than that of men. A comparison of actual debate behavior & sound bite coverage also reveals that political coverage tends to marginalize women when they fail to conform to traditional masculine norms of political behavior but will overemphasize the behavior counter to traditional feminine stereotypes when they do behave combatively. As a result, the women's soundbites focused disproportionately on aggressive verbal behavior & gestures. 5 Tables, 49 References. Adapted from the source document.