Pantsuits, lipstick, and the oval office: The role of reporter's gender differences in the media's portrayal of female political candidates campaigning for president of the United States

This study used a framing content analysis to examine the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in order to explore whether a reporter's gender has an impact on the relationship between media bias and the framing of news stories regarding female political candidates running for a nationally elected office. News articles from five major U.S. daily newspapers were selected through a LexisNexis keyword search from January 20, 2007, to June 7, 2008 and from August 29, 2008, to November 4, 2008. The unit of analysis was the news article, and newspaper content such as opinion columns, editorials, letters to the editor, and political cartoons were excluded. A total of 181 randomly selected news articles were coded for journalist's gender, politician discussed, type of frame, tone present, and occurrences of masculine language. Cohen's kappa was used to calculate reliability. This study found that female reporters used the horserace coverage frame a greater percentage of the time compared to male reporters; yet, male reporters used the issues frame more than female reporters. Female reporters were found to be more positive in their reporting of female candidates compared to male reporters, whereas male reporters were more negative in tone than female reporters. Additionally, male and female reporters statistically differed in their use of masculine language. Male reporters were found to use masculine language almost twice as much per news article, on average, compared to female reporters.