Despite rising numbers of women in the workforce and in journalism schools, the news of the day still largely comes from a male perspective, according to a new study of press coverage.

A broad look across the American news media over the course of nine months reveals that men are relied on as sources in the news more than twice as often as women, a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism has found.

More than three quarters of all stories contain male sources, while only a third of stories contain even a single female source, according to the study, which was drawn from an examination of 16,800 news stories across 45 different news outlets during 20 randomly selected days over nine months.

The disparity, moreover, holds true across newspapers, cable, network news and the online world.

The findings may strike some observers as ironic given the efforts of many news outlets to increase their audience by reaching out to women—and particularly to younger women, a group that generally is under represented as news consumers.

Among the findings:

• In every topic category, the majority of stories cited at least one male source.
• In contrast, the only topic category where women crossed the 50% threshold was lifestyle stories.
• The subject women were least likely to be cited on was foreign affairs.
• Newspapers were the most likely of the media studied to cite at least one female source in a story (41% of stories). Cable news, despite all the time it has to fill, was the least likely medium to cite a female source (19% of stories), and this held true across all three major cable channels.
• On network TV, the morning news programs, which often cover lighter fare, relied more on female sources. The evening newscasts were somewhat less likely, but still did so more than cable.
• The sports section of the newspaper stood out in particular as a male bastion. A mere 14% of stories on the front page of the sports section cited a woman, versus 86% that contained at least one male source.

The study by the Project, a research institute affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, examined 16 newspapers from a range of circulation categories, four nightly newscasts (commercial networks and PBS), three network morning news shows, nine different cable programs, and nine Web sites studied at four different times during the day. The study counted all sources whose gender could be determined by their appearance, a typically female name, self-identification, or some other form of positive identification. A source is defined as anyone providing information to the report, be it through a direct quotation, indirect quotation, or as the person to whom data or other information is attributed.

The numbers suggest that the representation of women as sources in the news has a significant distance to go towards reflecting their role in American society generally. Women account for 52% of the country’s population and roughly 47% of the employed civilian workforce, according to 2000 data from the U.S. Census. What’s more, their presence in management positions is not far behind—42% of those working in management, business and financial operations are women.

Their representation in politics is relatively strong as well. For instance, a full 44% of press secretaries in the U.S. House of Representatives, the staffers to whom reporters often speak, are women, and they account for 51% of House staffers overall.(1) On the other hand, when it comes to elected officials women are still behind. They hold only four of 21 presidential cabinet seats and only 69 seats in the House of Representatives out of 440.

In the news, however, the numbers come closer to reflecting those of elected officials than the American workforce. Looking across all media, three-quarters (76%) of the stories studied contained at least one male source. Just a third (33%) contained a female source.

The gap between the genders grows even larger if we raise the bar to two or more sources. Reporters were more than three times as likely to cite two or more males within a news story as to cite at least two females (55% versus 14%). This suggests that the orientation toward males goes beyond the primary source in a story. Finding a male as the best first source does not apparently lead a journalist to look for a female as the second or third source.

There is no suggestion here that journalists should seek gender balance in every story. Certainly in some stories the most appropriate sources might be male just as in others they might be female. Instead, the study was designed to look across a wide spectrum of news coverage and media to get a basic idea of gender representation in the news.

The dominance of male sources over female exists in all media, though in some more heavily than in others.

(1) “2004 House Staff Employment Study,” U.S. House Committee on House Administration, 2004, http://housenet.gov.

Not only were newspapers more than twice as likely as cable news to cite even one female source, they were also more likely than other media to cite two or more.

The study examined all news stories found on page A1, the front page of the metro section and the front page of the sports section for 16 different newspapers across four circulation size categories—6,589 stories in all. (1)

Overall, 41% of print stories contained at least one female source, and 19% reached the higher threshold of citing two or more. One such story ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 10, 2004. The A1 piece about remarks Mrs. Laura Bush made about stem-cell research quoted both Mrs. Bush and Mary Rachel Faris, a hematologist at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania.

Nevertheless, print stories were still half as likely to contain a female source as a male source (88% cited at least one male source). Even the stem-cell story in the Inquirer cited four male sources.

The type of newspaper story also made a difference. Wire service stories were less likely to cite females than were reports written by the newspaper’s own staff members. Staff-written stories were about twice as likely as wire service stories to contain a female source (47% versus 25%). Stories that were a combination of staff and wire copy fell in between (37%).

It is not simply that wire stories use fewer sources. The same kind of gap did not occur with male sources. Here staff written pieces and wire copy were roughly equal. A full 91% of staff written stories cited at least one male as did 87% of wire copy and 89% stories that combined staff and wire material.

The size or circulation of a newspaper also seemed to make a difference. Bigger papers included more female voices (46% of stories in the largest papers versus 43% in midsize and 33% in the smallest). Smaller papers also tended to carry more wire service reports than did large papers, perhaps accounting for some of the disparity.

Another difference emerged in the various sections examined: Page A1, the metro section-front and the sports section-front.

The front of the metro section was the most inclusive of women—citing them in more than half of its coverage, 57% of all stories. Page A1 was slightly behind at 50%. But on the front-page of the sports section, a mere 14% of stories included a female voice. This was the mirror image of male sources, who were cited in 86% of stories and not cited in 14%. Even in the era of Title IX and the push for women’s sports, the sports section-front stands out for its lack of female voices.

(A separate study by Terry Adams and C.A. Tuggle suggests similar disparities may exist on cable sports programs. Their 2002 study found that women were the subjects of less than 5% of coverage on ESPN’s SportsCenter. (2))

(1) Please see the Methodology section at the end of the report for the full list of papers.

(2) Terry Adams and C.A. Tuggle, “ESPN’s SportsCenter and Coverage of Women’s Athletics: ‘It’s a Boy’s Club,” Mass Communications & Society, 7 (Spring 2004), pp237-248.

Has the 24-hour news culture been more inclusive of women? Hardly. Females fared worse here compared with any other medium studied. Of the roughly 6,550 cable stories examined on CNN, FOX and MSNBC, just 19% cited a female source.

The 20-day study spread across nine months of the year included three program types from each network representative of three distinct parts of the cable day: daytime programming, the closest program to a traditional newscast and the highest-rated prime time talk show on each channel. These criteria resulted in the following programs: The 11-12 o’clock hour at each network; CNN’s “Newsnight with Aaron Brown” and “Larry King Live”; FOX’s “Special Report with Brit Hume” and “The O’Reilly Factor”; MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”

Past research has found that cable news stories tend to cite fewer sources overall than do other news media. (1) This was borne out in the examination of gender as well. Indeed, cable stories were less likely than other mediums to even cite a male source (53% on cable versus 63% on network evening news and 88% in newspapers).

Nevertheless, the gap between male and female sources stood out. While most mediums were roughly twice as likely to cite a male as a female source, cable stories were nearly three times as likely (19% female versus 53% male.) The gap was so great on cable that these stories were even more likely to have two or more male sources (21%) than to have just one or more female sources.

On three different nights of MSNBC’S interview-style program “Hardball with Chris Matthews” (April 15, May 4 and June 16, 2004), every single guest on the show was a man. The segments ranged from the Iraqi prison scandal discussed with members of Congress, journalists covering the story and former military personnel, to a discussion with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about his new book, to the role of religion in politics, to election advertising strategies of the Bush and Kerry.

In one segment, Matthews ran a video clip of the wife of a solider accused in the prison scandal. Otherwise, every single source on these three nights—guest or other—was male.

Cable Channel Similarities

Looking more closely, the three cable channels appear quite similar when it comes to the gender of sources. Females were cited in just 15% of stories studied on MSNBC, 21% on CNN and 19% on Fox. Conversely, at least 50% of the stories on each of the three networks cited a male source.

Among the three program types examined, the prime time talk shows were the most inclusive of women (especially “Larry King Live”). Among these talk shows, 28% of the segments cited at least one female source.

The 11 A.M. live news hour was the least inclusive program type. Just 11% of stories during this daytime period cited a female source—less than a third of those that cited a man (37%).

The evening cable newscasts had more sourcing, but the ratio of female versus male sources was not much different. Stories on these programs were also about three times as likely to cite a male as a female (58% male versus 19% female) and were even more likely to cite two or more male sources than to cite a single female source (34% contained two or more male sources).

(1) The Project for Excellence in Journalism, The 2005 Annual Report on the State of the News Media, Cable Content Analysis.

Traditional commercial broadcast television news did a good deal more than cable in finding women sources. The three commercial evening newscasts—on ABC, CBS, and NBC—were nearly 50% more likely than cable to have female sources, but still only about half as inclusive as newspapers. Just over a quarter (27%) of evening news stories cited a female source, versus 63% that cited a male. This was more than cable stories overall (19%) and also more than the cable newscast programs such as “Brit Hume” or “Aaron Brown” that most closely resemble network nightly newscasts (the cable evening newscasts also cited women just 19% of the time).

When it comes to broadcast news, women are most likely to find themselves on the network morning shows. Looking at the first hour of morning news on each network, which tends to be the segment most devoted to traditional hard news coverage of events of the day, roughly a third of stories (34%) cite at least one female source. This is still significantly less than those that cite one or more male sources (55%), but morning news is the only medium—print or cable—where males have less than a 2:1 advantage.

In addition, morning news programs tend to cover lighter news topics such as The Today Show’s story about how “The Vagina Monologues” promotes awareness of violence against women. The Project’s 2005 Annual Report on the State of the News Media found morning shows devoted half as much time as their evening counterparts to foreign affairs (7% versus 14% for commercial evening news) and also less time to government affairs (20% versus 27%). (1) When they do cover issues like the war in Iraq, the morning shows often do so from a more human-interest angle such as interviewing men or women soldiers on the home front as opposed to battle results.

(1) The 2005 Annual Report studied the same universe of content as this study. Please fine the full report online at www.stateofthenewsmedia.org .

One striking finding in this examination of gender is the scarcity of female sources on the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” With a gap of 42 percentage points, stories are roughly three and a half times more likely to include a male source as a female source on the signature evening PBS newscast. Just 17% of stories on the “NewsHour” cited at least one female source versus 59% that cited at least one male. This puts the “NewsHour” second only to MSNBC in its lack of female sources.

These data paint a complex picture of the “NewsHour.” For one, the Project’s 2005 Annual Report (which studied the same content) found that the program devoted more of its content than any other medium—even newspaper front pages—to foreign affairs, the topic where women were the least likely to be found.

In addition, the “NewsHour” tended to cite more sources in its stories than other kinds of television news and share more information about the background, expertise and potential biases of those sources. Almost a quarter of its stories (23%) had the highest level of transparency, four or more fully identified sources, versus 18% on commercial evening news and 11% on morning news segments.

Looking deeper, with the addition of gender, it turns out that while PBS excelled at having multiple sources in its stories they were almost always male. The program, for instance, stood out for having four or more male sources in a news story. Nearly a quarter of its stories (24%) contain four or more male sources versus 17% on commercial evening news and 9% on morning news.

But when it came to female sources, PBS was less likely than commercial or morning news to include one, two, three or four.

A March 8 th 2004 story about Iraq’s new constitution, for instance, relied on five male sources and not a single female source. Reporter Gwen Ifill (a woman) began with sound bites from Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi governing council, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Iraq’s grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Ifill then entered into a panel discussion with Feisal Istrabadi, an advisor to the governing council and Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan. While the story was in depth and well-sourced, Ifill’s was the only female voice aired.

And how does the newest medium, online, do when it comes to gender? According to this study, at least, the websites of traditional news outlets surpass broadcast and cable and are only slightly behind newspapers.

The 20-day sample examined the lead 5-7 stories each day of eight news sites: ABC News (www.ABCNEWS.com), AOL (news section front page), Bloomington Pantagraph (www.pantagraph.com), CBS 11 TV – Dallas (www.cbs11tv.com), CNN (www.cnn.com), Fox News (www.foxnews.com), MSNBC (www.msnbc.com), Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com), Yahoo! (http:dailynews.yahoo.com). (Please see the methodology for selection criteria)

The reporting here most closely resembled that of newspaper stories—more sourcing overall and more female sources. Still, female voices trail far behind men’s voices. Just over a third, of online stories 36% contained a female source while 89% cited at least one male voice.

Across media, are women more likely to be cited in some story topics than in others? To a certain degree the answer is yes, but still at levels much behind that of men. In fact, the only topic area where women were cited in more than half of the stories was lifestyle stories such as one on the CBS “Early Show” about what to do if someone sees a child getting into a car with an intoxicated adult. Beyond lifestyle, the other topics most inclusive of women sources were government (44%), crime (39%) celebrity/entertainment (38%) and accidents (38%).

Even among these, though, male voices still dominate. In all five topic categories, at least one male is cited in more than half of the stories. Celebrity/entertainment stories were the least likely to use a male source but still, 56% cited them. (The only category with a lower percentage (45%) is that of miscellaneous stories which do not fit into one of the main topic areas.

Where are male voices most likely to emerge? In the more traditional categories of government (86%), campaigns and elections (84%), foreign affairs (80%) and defense and military (76%).

Differences Among Media

Newspapers’ relative strength in including female voices carries through across most topics. At least one female voice was cited in the majority of stories studied in seven out of the twelve topic categories in print. Across all media combined, only one topic category cited a woman in at least 50% of stories—and that was lifestyle.

In print, lifestyle was again the topic most likely to cite women (66%), followed by domestic affairs (61%), election stories (57%), and government stories (56%). The greatest divergence from other media came in election coverage. Across all media, it came in seventh in its use of female sources (tied with science and technology at 34% of stories) versus third within newspapers.

Even in some of these stories, though, the female voice was far from dominant. A New York Times story from March 19 reported on Senator McCain’s comments about John Kerry’s defense record. Times journalist Todd S. Purdum first quoted Mr. McCain, Bush spokesman Terry Holt, and DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera. It was not until the last three paragraphs that a female voice was brought in, that of Victoria Clarke, a former press secretary for both McCain and later the Pentagon.

Online news coverage was similar to print in its overall reliance on women sources, but differed in the tendencies within story topics. Five topic categories cited a woman in at least half the stories, but they differed from the newspaper topics. The “Miscellaneous” grouping—stories which have little connection to other current events, was the most common (68%). This was followed by lifestyle stories (61%) such as one on CNN.com about snowboarding that included remarks from snowboarder Tricia Byrnes. Next came accidents (57%), celebrity (57%) and business (51%).

On commercial network evening news, just three topic categories included a female voice in half or more of the stories. At the top were celebrity/entertainment stories (58%) and lifestyle stories (58%), though these are also among the least common story topics on commercial evening news, (accounting for just 7% of the coverage studied). On February 23 rd, 2004, for example, ABC “World News Tonight” closed with a story on the final episode of “Sex in the City,” a show about city women looking for Mr. Right. The piece by David Wright quoted the show’s creator, Candace Bushnell, and a number of fans, most of whom were women. The next most popular category for women was the “miscellaneous” category, where women appeared in 50% of the coverage.

On morning news, where celebrity and lifestyle stories make up a greater portion of content, they are again the most likely places to find female voices. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of lifestyle stories and 55% of celebrity stories offered a woman’s perspective. No other topic category reached the 50% threshold.

On the PBS “NewsHour” and on cable news, not a single topic area included a female voice in at least 50% of the stories. The two top categories on the “NewsHour” were coverage of defensemilitary issues and sciencetechnology (40% for both). Cable, on the other hand, followed the pattern of its commercial network counterparts, giving women the most voice in celebrity (32%) and lifestyle (26%) stories. Just 19% of government stories on cable and 15% of defense and military stories cited at least one female voice.

The War in Iraq and The 2004 Election

In the two big stories of 2004, the international war on terrorism and the 2004 elections, journalists’ use of women as sources differed somewhat. In the roughly 6,300 stories about the war against international terrorism studied, women were even less likely to be a source than in the news coverage overall. A mere 20%, just two-in-ten of these stories, included a female source. Male sources, on the other hand, were cited in 79%. Journalists were slightly more likely to draw on women sources in stories about the 2004 elections (37%) though they were still more than twice as likely to offer a male perspective (88%).

What other elements seemed to make a story more or less likely to include a female voice?

According to this data, at least, story length and the number of viewpoints offered makes a difference. Longer stories and more viewpoints raise the level of sourcing overall, increasing the use of female sources as well as male sources.

Print and online stories over 1000 words were twice as likely to contain a female source as were stories under 500 words (52% versus 24%). They were also nearly twice as likely to contain a male source (97% of stories over 1000 words and 59% of stories under 500).

Similarly, stories that offered a mix of viewpoints were 20 percentage points more likely to cite a female than those with just one viewpoint (47% versus 27%). The advantage was slightly less for male voices, 14 percentage points (94% versus 80%).

Another possible element to consider is the gender make-up of our newsrooms. Past research suggests that female journalists tend to use more female sources than do male journalists. A study of three newspapers of different circulation sizes found that 24% of all the sources females reporters used were females. Just 16% of the sources male reporters used were female. (1) This was most evident at the smallest paper (201,000 circulation) where women were also more likely to rely on ethnic sources than were males.

Women journalists, then, may help diversify the source list, but in most newsrooms they are still a minority. Roughly 38% of print journalists in the U.S. are women, according to data collected by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and 35% of supervisors.(2) In television, just 24% of American producers, writers, and directors are women, reports Media Awareness Network.(3) And looking at top executives of American media, telecommunications and e-companies, a 2001 study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found just 13% are female. (4)

Whether the starting point is a pool of sources more dominated by males or a pool of journalists more inclined to seek out males, there do seem to be some steps one could take to create more opportunity for female voices to emerge.

(1) Rodgers, S., & Thorson, E. (2003), “A socialization perspective on male and female reporting,” Journal of Communication, December, 658-675

(2) Newsroom Employment Census, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Table M, April 6, 2005, www.asne.org

(3) “Women Working in the Media,” Media Awareness Network, www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_working.cfm

(4) “Progress or No Room at the Top? The Role of Women in Telecommunications, Broadcast, Cable and E-Companies,” Annenberg Public Policy Center, 2001

SAMPLING AND INCLUSION

Two distinct categories of media were studied as part of the 2005 PEJ Media Report Card project.

The first, text-based media, included newspapers and Internet news sites. Princeton Survey Research Associates International conducted coding for those media.

The second, electronic media, included both broadcast network and cable network news. The School of Journalism at Michigan State University conducted coding for Broadcast Network News. The Institute for Communication Research of the College of Communication & Information Sciences at the University of Alabama conducted coding for Cable Network News. Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri School of Journalism conducted the statistical and methodological work for the report and put forth the original idea for this examination of gender.

Print, broadcast network and cable were each subject to a specific methodological approach regarding sampling and selection and coding. In all, the study examined some 16,800 stories. This included 6,589 newspaper stories, 1,903 online stories, 1,768 stories from network television and about 6,550 stories on cable news (the cable news study included two parts, a 20 day sample and a five day sample, in which some stories overlapped).

I. TEXT-BASED MEDIA

NEWSPAPERS

Newspaper Selection

Individual newspapers were selected to present a meaningful assessment of the content that is widely available to the public. Selections were made on both a geographic and a demographic basis, as well as diversity of ownership.

First, newspapers were divided into four groups based on daily circulation: Over 750,000; 300,001 to 750,000; 100,001 to 300,000, and 100,000 and under.

We included four newspapers over 750,000: USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. (The Wall Street Journal, which also falls in this category, was excluded as a specialty publication.)

Four newspapers were chosen in each of the remaining three categories. To ensure geographical diversity, each of the four newspapers within a circulation category was selected from a different geographic region of the U.S. Regions were defined according to the parameters established by the U.S. Census Bureau. 1

The newspapers in circulation groups two through four were selected through the following process:

First, using the Editor and Publisher Yearbook, we created a list of every daily newspaper in the U.S. Within each category, newspapers were selected at random until all categories were filled. To be eligible for selection, a newspaper was required to a) have a Sunday section, b) have a daily sports section, c) have its stories indexed in a news database, to be available to coders, and d) not be a tabloid. Newspapers not meeting those criteria were skipped over. In addition, an effort was made to ensure diversity in ownership.

Circulation Group 1

Los Angeles Times, New York Times , USA Today, Washington Post

Circulation Group 2

Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sacramento Bee

Circulation Group 3

Albuquerque Journal, Asbury Park Press, Kansas City Star, San Antonio Express-News

Circulation Group 4

Bloomington ( Illinois ) Pantagraph , Hanover ( Pennsylvania ) Evening Sun, McAllen ( Texas ) Monitor, Vacaville ( California ) Reporter

Newspaper Study Operative Dates, 2004

Random sampling was used to select a sample of individual days for the study. By choosing individual days rather than weeks, we hoped to provide a broader look at news coverage that more accurately represented the entire year. To account for variations related to the different days of the week, the 28 days that were sampled included 4 of each day of the week. Dates were chosen from January 1 to October 13, a span of 286 days. October 13 was made the cutoff date to allow time for coding. Omitted dates included those of the Olympics and the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

The following dates were generated and make up the 2004 sample.

January- 13, 16, 23
February- 2, 13, 23rd, 29th
March- 8, 12, 13, 14, 19, 24
April- 8, 15
May- 1, 4, 20
June- 8, 9, 16
July- 19, 25
August- 10, 12
September- 4, 22, 26

Story Procurement, Selection, and Inclusion

Stories were procured via hard copies of daily publications, supplemented by a combination of electronic databases (DIALOG, FACTIVA, and NEXIS).

All stories with distinct bylines that appeared on a particular newspaper’s front page (Page A1), on the first page of the Local/Metro section, or on the first page of the sports section were selected for analysis. Each year the Annual Report rotates the third section-front examined. The 2004 study examined the style section-front.

INTERNET NEWS SITES

To select the Internet news sites to be coded, the Nielsen/NetRatings top 20 news sites list was consulted to determine the most prominent sites. The list contained four basic types of sites: news aggregators, 2 newspaper sites, network news sites, and cable news sites. Two sites were chosen for each of those categories. For aggregators, AOL and Yahoo were selected; they were the only two aggregators in top 20 list. For network news outlets, two sites were randomly chosen from among ABC, CBS, and MSNBC. (MSNBC appeared on both the network and cable lists because it is the news site for both NBC News and the MSNBC cable channel.) For cable sites, CNN and Fox News were chosen, since MSNBC had already been chosen from among the broadcast networks. For newspapers, the first site was chosen randomly from the four newspapers in Circulation Group 1, and the second was chosen randomly from the 12 newspapers in Groups 2 through 4. To be selected the newspaper had to have an active daily Web site. In addition, a local-TV news site was chosen. The market for local TV was chosen by randomly selecting one of the 15 markets from the newspaper sample and then randomly choosing among ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.

The following sites were included in the 2004 study:

ABC News (www.ABCNEWS.com), AOL (news section front page), Bloomington Pantagraph (www.pantagraph.com), CBS 11 TV – Dallas (www.cbs11tv.com), CNN (www.cnn.com), Fox News (www.foxnews.com), MSNBC (www.msnbc.com), Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com), Yahoo! (news.yahoo.com)

Internet News Sites – Operative Dates 2004

The 2004 Internet study had two components. The first was a twenty-day sample that matched the dates of the newspaper sample, Mondays through Fridays. Weekends were not included for Internet, broadcast or cable sites. Again, the eligible dates ranged from January 1 to October 13, a period of 286 days.

The following dates were generated and constitute the 2003 Internet News Site sample.

January- 13, 16, 23
February- 2, 13, 23, 29
March- 8,* 12, 13, 14, 19,* 24
April- 8, 15
May- 1, 4, 20
June- 8, 9, 16*
July- 19, 25
August- 10,* 12*
September- 4, 22, 26
*Multiple Download Dates

In addition to the main sample, we conducted an additional study of five of those days in order to replicate the freshness variable studied in 2003. Among the 20-day sample, one day for each weekday was randomly selected.

Story Procurement, Selection, and Inclusion

For the main 20-day sample, each site was visited once a day. The download time rotated each day among four different hours: 9:00 A.M., 1:00 P.M., 5:00 P.M. and 9:00 P.M , ET. The order in which the sites were visited was also rotated for each capture time. Each download took approximately twenty minutes.

For the five-day sample, each site was visited four times on each day – 9:00 a.m. ET , 1:00 p.m. ET , 5:00 p.m. ET , and 9:00 p.m. ET – to download stories. The order in which the sites were visited was rotated for each capture time. Each download took approximately twenty minutes.

Each time, the following method was used to determine which stories to capture:

On the news home page of each of the sites, we identified featured stories. A story at the top of a page tied in to a graphic element – commonly a picture of an event or person – was counted as a featured story and captured for study. Multiple stories on the page relating to the same graphic element were also captured as featured stories. Pages with more than one graphic element were considered to have more than one featured story, and all such stories were studied.

After the featured stories, we included the next three most prominent stories without graphics starting from the top and moving down. Those stories were recorded as non-featured.

The following rules were put into place in selecting stories:

• For the sample, the following were omitted from study: video, audio, charts, maps, background/archival information, news tickers, chat and polls.
• Any headline that linked to an outside Web site was also omitted. (But stories attributed to other outlets but present on the site being studied were counted.)
• Links to secondary stories about the same topic were counted as unique stories for the non-featured-stories category.
• A graphic attached to a non-story item (i.e., video, audio, charts, maps, background/archival information, “complete coverage,” chat and polls) was not counted as a story.
• If there were no stories associated with a graphic, then only the top three stories were coded and none were considered featured.
• If there was no graphic present, then no story was considered as featured, and the top three stories were counted as non-featured.
• When news headlines with the same font and type size appeared in side-by-side columns, stories were prioritized in a left-to-right, line-by-line zigzag pattern.

Text-Based Media Coding Procedures

General practice called for a coder to work through no more than seven days/issues from any newspaper outlet during a coding session. After completing up to seven days/issues from one publication, coders switched to another text-based-media outlet, and continued to code up to seven days/issues.

All coding personnel rotated through all circulation groups, publications/sites, with the exception of the designated control publications. A control publication was chosen in each category of text media. The designated control publication/date was initially handled by only one coder. That work was then over-sampled during intercoder reliability testing.

Intercoder Reliability

Intercoder reliability measures the extent to which two coders, operating individually, reach the same coding decisions. The principal coding team for text media comprised four people who were trained as a group. One coder was designated as a general control coder, and worked off-site for the duration of the project. In addition, one newspaper was designated as a control source.

At the completion of the general coding process, each coder, working alone and without access to the initial coding decisions, re-coded publications originally completed by another coder. Intercoding tests were performed on 5% of all cases in connection with inventory variables, and agreement rates exceeded 98% for those variables. For the more difficult content variables, 20% of all publications/sites were re-coded, and intercoder agreement rates were as follows:

Topic: 92%

Female Sources: 98%

Male Sources: 97%

II. BROADCAST NETWORK NEWS

The ability to make direct comparisons between newspaper and broadcast network findings was a project design goal, so the weekday sample dates for those two news categories are identical. Because of preemptions and schedule changes, weekend network news broadcasts do not always appear in all markets, so Saturday and Sunday broadcast network news programs were excluded from the study.

On a handful of the sample dates, special events pre-empted the evening newscasts. In such instances an alternate date for the same day of the week was selected at random. The final dates were as follows:

January- 13, 16, 23
February- 2, 23
March- 8, 12, 19, 24
April- 8, 15
May- 4, 20
June- 8, 9, 16
July- 19
August- 10, 12
September- 15, 22
June 9 commercial network newscasts were not used because the programming was preempted by the ceremonies remembering President Ronald Reagan. NewsHour was studied on this date. September 15 was used as a substitute for June 9 for the network newscasts.

BROADCAST NETWORK MORNING NEWS PROGRAMS

( 7:00 a.m. – 7:59 a.m. Eastern Time Airings)

ABC Good Morning America , CBS The Early Show, NBC The Today Show

BROADCAST NETWORK EVENING NEWS PROGRAMS

(Full program as broadcast in New York market)

ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, PBS NewsHour

Program Procurement and Story Selection and Inclusion

The morning and evening broadcasts were procured through both transcripts and video tape. Transcripts were obtained through the Nexis electronic database. Videotaped programs were captured live in the New York City market by ADT Research. For the evening newscasts, that represents each day’s 6:30 P.M. East Coast feed. PBS supplied the Project with tapes of the NewsHour.

In the mornings, the following content was analyzed: stories read by the newscaster in the half-hourly news blocks; feature and interview segments outside of the news blocks; banter between members of the anchor team whose import was other than to tease coming segments in that day’s program or to promote the network’s programming at some later time. One-fifth, 20%, of the sample was coded for teasers and promos and analyzed separately. Excluded from the analysis were the content of the weather blocks, local news inserts, commercials, and other content-free editorial matter such as logos, studio shots, openings and closings.

In the evenings the same rules applied, but because the content of the newscasts is less variegated, concerns about news blocks, banter, weather blocks and local news inserts were not applicable.

Broadcast Network Coding Procedures

Faculty and graduate students in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University conducted this part of the project. The two faculty members who supervised the project have more than 40 years of combined social-science experience in conducting such studies, and are two of the most published academic researchers in the field. Two students in the mass-media Ph.D. program at MSU, one a third-year student and the other a second-year student, coded most of the stories, assisted by a master’s-degree graduate of the MSU Department of Communication. In addition, two current master’s-degree students in the School of Journalism coded parts of the newscasts. Coding was done independently, working from the protocol, without consultation among the coders.

The coding protocol was provided by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Inter-Coder Reliability Testing for Broadcast Network News

A coder reliability assessment for each completed network was then conducted with a random sample of dates taken from those supplied by the State of the Media project. This usually consisted of one or two days used in the assessment from the total of days sampled, resulting in a sample of 5% to 10% of the total stories coded.

Percentages of agreement calculations were made to assess the coding for each of the variables requiring categorical choices among variable values.

Fifty-three stories from the evening newscasts and 69 from the morning newscasts (a total of 122 stories, or 7% of all stories) were used to test reliability. All of the variables used in the State of the Media analysis presented here achieved at least 90% inter-coder agreement, except story topic. The original story-topic coding scheme involved more than 300 subcategories, and reliability was below 80%. But when the coding was collapsed into the 12 categories used in this analysis, the inter-coder agreement reached 83% for all stories.

The content categories used in this analysis and their inter-coder agreement were: big story, 95%; story topic, 83%; female sources, male sources 98%.

III. CABLE NEWS

Cable News Programming – Outlet Selection and Operative Dates 2004

As with the online sample, the 2004 Cable study had two components. The first was a twenty-day sample that matched the dates of the newspaper sample on Mondays through Fridays. Weekends were not included for the Internet, broadcast or cable. Again, the eligible dates ranged from January 1 to October 13, a period of 286 days. On a handful of the sample dates, special events pre-empted the evening newscasts. In such instances an alternate date for the same day of the week was selected at random.

The following dates were generated and make up the 2004 cable news sample:

January- 13, 16, 23
February- 2,* 23
March- 8, 12, 19,* 24h
April- 15
May- 4, 20
June- 8, 9, 16
July- 19
August- 5, 10, 12
September- 22

Story Procurement and Inclusion

To assess the nature of the 24-hour news cycle as presented on cable news programming, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC were selected because they were the three most-viewed cable news channels in 2003.

For the twenty-day sample, we selected three program types to study at each network: Daytime programming, the closest thing to a traditional newscast, and the highest-rated prime time talk show. The following programs were captured and analyzed:

DAYTIME PROGRAMMING

The 11-to-12 o’clock hour for each network

NEWSCAST/NEWS DIGEST PROGRAMS

CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, FOX’s Special Report with Brit Hume, MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann

PRIME-TIME TALK PROGRAMS

CNN’s Larry King Live, FOX’s O’Reilly Factor, MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews

All cable programming was procured through both videotape and transcripts, although transcripts were not available for the Fox News programming at the 11:00 a.m. hour. Transcripts were obtained through the Nexis electronic database. Videotaped programs were captured live in the Washington , D.C. market. In some instances tapes were provided to us by VMS, a commercial third-party monitoring service.

Cable News Coding Procedures

The cable news coding was conducted by faculty members, graduate students, and research staff people affiliated with the Institute for Communication and Information Research at the University of Alabama . Six coders were involved throughout the coding process. All coders worked independently, without consulting one another regarding specific coding decisions.

Cable News Inter-coder Reliability Testing

As noted, three program types were studied for each of the three cable news networks. To assess reliability within and across program types, we randomly selected six of the 60 hours of daytime programming, six of the 60 hours of news-digest programming, and six of the 60 hours of prime-time talk programming. In other words, the reliability sample was stratified by program type.

The reliability sample was also stratified by network. Within the six hours for each program type we included two hours from each of the three networks.

This 18-hour sample represents 10% of the 180 hours of programming included in the study; the 6-hour sample for each program type represents 10% of the 60 hours dedicated to each of the three program types.

Percentages of agreement calculations were made to assess the coding for each of the variables requiring categorical choices among variable values.

All of the variables used in the State of the Media analysis presented here achieved at least 88% inter-coder agreement.

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