Friday, May 2, 2008

Coverage of Women in Sports on FOX Sports website

It is 5:30pm Friday May 3, 2008.
Here I am browsing through the net looking for ideas to blog, all I see from this link: http://msn.foxsports.com/?MSNHPHTN is dashing and masculine looking male athlete images. I scroll down further and finally a doll-face female pops up, I said: finally someone cares enough to include female sports news. Oh, wait a second, it's FOX Funhouse. The topic this week is: Babe of the Week. Yea, she's looking fine alright, after all, we only care about how good the men are in the sports.
First, I believe we all agree the home page of a website contents what the chief editor thinks of most valued headlines. I suppose there isn't any female playing sport this week, or those news are just simply not as important as to male's.
The media, as we discussed in class are mostly owned by wealthy upper class white males. The news layout is and always will be in favor of theirs.
Another point I would like to bring up is the sexually provocative images of female in media. My side of the panel was pro to female athlete posing in sexually provocative ways, and I can counter argue all the points which support our side. It is the most damaging way to degrade all the female athletes who work hard to get to where they are today, both physically and socially.
FOX Sports is just a typical example of imbalanced media coverage of female and male in sport.

Chihling Chang
KIN 338i Section 7
TTH 2-3:15

1 comment:

Kerrie Kauer said...

The reason you will find a babe of the week on foxsports.com is beacause it is a site targeted for men. We like looking at good looking women just like women appreciate looking at an attractive male. If you go to womenshealthmag.com you will find a man they are featuring for that month. Secondly, I would like to address the lack of female coverage on this page. Men typically don't care much for women playing sports and fox sports is trying to appeal to their audience. The object is to make money here. People are going to go to ESPN.com or SI.com instead if foxsports does not appeal its fans. The issue is not that women do not get enough coverage, it is that they cannot compete with men in the popular sports in America. Sport is about competition and people want to see the best human athlete on the, court or field. Unfortunatlety for women, men's bodies are typically better suited for sport.

Ryan Herald
Kin338
tu/th 9:30am