Winning coverage - News media portrayals of the women's movement, 1969-2004

Contemporary feminist scholars and activists often criticize the women's movement for focusing on a narrow agenda that does not represent the true needs of American women. Yet a review of the agendas of women's movement organizations reveals a broad concern for many of the issues that they are criticized for ignoring. What explains this disconnect? The authors argue that the news media plays a crucial role in shaping the perceptions of social movements by choosing to cover some agendas and not others. Analyzing coverage of women's movement organizations in television and print news media, the authors find that reporters have exercised a great deal of discretion over which women's movement issues they have chosen to report on during the past three decades. In particular, this has led to overrepresentation of the abortion issue in news coverage of women's movement organizations and an underrepresentation of issues that women believe should be more of a priority for the movement. The authors' findings underscore the importance of the news media not only for bringing attention to social movements, but also for how they portray the issue agendas of these movements.