Hillary Clinton made history last night, becoming the first woman to ever clinch a major party’s presidential nomination. Now a new study says the story of that rise has been told mostly by women, at least on TV.
Media Research Center says that broadcast networks assigned mostly women reporters to cover Clinton and 83 percent of all stories about the Democratic race were reported by female correspondents.
The study claims that analysts reviewed “all 950 ABC, CBS and NBC weekday and weekend evening news stories about the 2016 presidential campaign from January 1 to June 7.”
We have reached out to all three networks, but none has immediately replied to TheWrap’s request for comment.
The results indicate that networks gave their male and female correspondents nearly equal airtime. Male reporters covered 487 stories, totaling 1,070 minutes of airtime, while female correspondents reported 463 stories, totaling 1,017 minutes.
The GOP received 547 stories compared to 295 for the Democratic race. The gap is likely due to presumed nominee Donald Trump’s propensity to grab headlines with bracing statements and personal attacks.
The study also points to a gender gap along the Democratic/Republican coverage divide.
According to MRC analysis, women reported 245 out of the 295 Democratic stories that were broadcasted on ABC, CBS and NBC in 2016.
The easy explanation is that the three networks sent highly respected, veteran journalists, who just happened to be female, to cover the Clinton campaign. ABC’s Cecilia Vega, CBS’s Nancy Cordes, and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell represented their respective networks for the majority of the campaign.
Meanwhile, men reported 374 out of the 547 stories pertaining to the GOP. ABC’s Tom Llamas and CBS’s Major Garrett are responsible for the majority of the stories. But NBC’s Katy Tur is a prominent female on the Trump beat.