JOU 220 - Response to Tracking the News

The results I received in analyzing the media for sensitivity to particular categories was interesting. I noticed a huge discrepancy in the categories of "male" and "female", and also the number of official titles for each category. There was a prevalence of males in the business and sports sections, as well as many sources and names mentioned had more official company positions, including CEO, etc. There are exceptions, such as the P&G article that focused on one particular woman, Susan Arnold, but the common trend reflected in the data I collected showed that there are more women featured as spokeswomen and others. I did not seem to find any real specific references to ethnicities, religions, or other cultural labels. This was especially surprising in a featured article running about the death of a 13-yr.-old in the Blue Ash area. Given the sensitive and horrific nature of the subject, there could be some specification as to particular physical attributes that could identify the killer or victim and add bias, but there were none, and the story was covered several times throughout the week. I was taken aback by the overwhelming numerical contrast between the number of times women were featured in sports articles compared to that of men. Very often, the same article appeared regarding the women's NKU basketball team, but there would be at most two articles covering women's sports, while the number of sports articles that featured men (results include all articles regarding scores and statistics of players) vastly outnumbered those of women.