Full Court Press

Sports broadcaster Lindsay McCormick on her sexist NFL Network interview.

When sports journalist Lindsay McCormick walked into her job interview with the NFL Network, she thought she was prepared for any professional question they might ask.

After all, she has broadcast for NBC, CBS Sports, ESPN, and Comcast SportNet, so McCormick hoped she was on her way to a new gig, when the head of editorial at the station asked her a simple but unexpected question. He motioned to the office television which showed a pregnant woman and asked point blank, “You don’t plan to get knocked up like the rest of them, do you?”

McCormick didn’t know what to say. After years of hard work and preparation this chance at her dream job was evaporating due to one person’s view of an entire gender.

It wasn’t the first time a female sports journalist experienced something like this and it won’t be the last. Throughout history, women have had to fight for every yard they’ve gained in the sports media field and most remain from the end zone.

The Women’s Media Center 2019 report found that women are more underrepresented in sports coverage than any other journalistic field. Just 10 percent of journalists are women. In the next closest category, technology and media coverage - which are not exactly known for gender diversity - journalists are more than three times as likely to be female.

Across the board, women are substantially underrepresented in multiple platforms of sports coverage. One in three assistant sports editors are women, one in five are copy editors/designers, just one in six women are columnists and for every 10 sports editors, only one is a woman.

Former Lakers radio producer Sheron Bellio on the different attention women in sports media recieve.

Despite these low percentages, Sheron Bellio knows that women have come a long way in the sports media industry. Recently, there was a ten percent increase in female assistant sports editors in the last year.

Bellio started her career in 1987 at KYBG 1090 AM, the first all-sports stations west of the Mississippi River. She later became a radio producer for the Los Angeles Lakers.

There were times early on she recalls when athletes would answer her questions and she could sense her male colleagues getting upset that athletes prioritized her questions because she was a woman. “From the getgo I’m getting attention because of being a woman,” Bellio says “But I’m also being disrespected because I was a woman.”

During her time with the Lakers, Bellio worked with television producer Susan Stratton for the team and it was comforting knowing there was another woman there.

Bellio started her career thinking she would become a reporter or anchor on TV, but admits she felt intimidated by aspects of her job.

“You just hear people commenting about the women who were doing it,” she said. “They would say I don’t want to hear my sports from a woman.”

As time went on, Bellio saw improvements for women in her industry. There are now more opportunities for women, but that the necessary qualifications for getting such jobs are a little different. “It’s not just enough to be good looking anymore,” Bellio said. “Now you really got to know your stuff.”

The Naked Truth

Another change for female journalists, she said, involves access to locker rooms for postgame interviews.

For years women weren’t allowed the same access to the locker room as their male colleagues over fears about what President Trump has referred to as “locker-room talk,” nudity and harassment. After New York Times reporter Robin Herman broke barriers and was allowed inside a locker room in 1975, the debate over female reporters’ presence in the dressing room has continued.

Los Angeles Chargers radio sideline reporter Shannon Farren has first hand experience in this debate.

When Farren started her career in sports journalism covering the San Francisco 49ers in the 1990s, she encountered naked ballplayers strutting around the locker room.

Since her return to sports media to cover the Chargers a few years ago, the Chargers locker room is visibly different.

“The Chargers for instance won’t have females in their locker room after the games unless they’re clothed,” Farren says. “I think it’s better for all the parties involved when you think about professionalism.”

Women in the Digital Jungle

Journalist and author Molly Knight on the pay disparity.

Molly Knight started her career in sports journalism writing for ESPN the magazine. She went on to write a book about the 2014 Los Angeles Dodgers that made the New York Times best seller’s list. Her research required her to travel with the team for two seasons.

Covering the Dodgers, there were times she felt players treated her as though she was disposable because she was a woman. On the flipside, some players seemed more willing to open up to her about their feelings and what was going on with them.

Working in the Internet and social media era, Knight has developed coping techniques to deal with harassment and abuse from fans that often targets her over her gender. She doesn’t Google herself and she rarely reads or engages with people who tweet at or about her.

She recalled the reaction when Sports Illustrated writer, Robert Klemko, broke a major sexual misconduct story on football star Antonio Brown that led the Patriots to release him. Furious fans sent Klemko vile messages online.

After reading Klemko’s Twitter posting of hostile screenshots of those messages , Knight almost responded to highlight that is the sort of abusiveness that she has to deal with on a regular basis, but decided not to.

“Dude I get flack like that on a Tuesday,” she says. “He got it because he broke one of the biggest stories of the year. I get it because I’m a woman who has an opinion.”

Fox Sports Radio host Deb Carson on not being intimidated by other men in sports media.

McCormick, like Knight, started her sports broadcasting career when the Internet just taking off. She was one of the first digital hosts for ESPN and during her time with the Sunday Night Football team, she was also in charge of running all the social media accounts.

When she started the ESPN.com show, she says, she received the most crude and misogynistic comments yet. Criticism of her appearance never bothered McCormick; it was the ones about her performance that stuck with her.

Deb Carson, a national anchor and on-air talent for Fox Sports Radio has had a different experience on the internet.

She joined Fox Sports in 2006 and quickly made a name for herself as a TV host, anchor, and reporter. She was a co-host on the argumentative/bombastic/conflict-loving Stephen A. Smith’s nationally syndicated morning drive show and she now works with radio hosts Dan Patrick and Colin Cowherd.

Carson believes she hasn’t endured sexist online encounters with abusive fans because she established herself in the sports world before the Internet and social media blew up. Part of that, she says, is that she never allowed herself to feel intimidated by the men she worked with.

For her, this is about over-preparing for every situation because she wants to always be able to go head to head with her male co-hosts.

Changing the Game

In the six decades since women began to play a formal role, women have opened many doors that were long shut. That may be particularly true at one of the most prominent sports media companies.

One of the networks making the most influential change to their staff is ESPN.

“The opportunities for women at ESPN have probably never been better,” according to Shelley Smith, a reporter for the station for nearly three decades. “There’s things you can do besides being a reporter.”

Smith acknowledges that there are few women in top positions of power, but she doesn’t suggest such jobs because they spend their time stuck in meetings.

Smith is a reporter and journalist because she wants to be and she believes that if she wanted to do something else at the company, she’d be able too.

Often when Smith covers an event, like the recent NBA All-Star game, She works with all-female crews and she doesn’t even realize it - until she sees a group photo of the coverage team.

“Nobody thought twice about it. ‘Oh we have too many women’ — nobody thinks like that anymore,” Smith said. “It’s about who’s qualified, and best for the job.”

Not everyone thinks like Smith. There are still people who treat women sports journalist differently.

Just this week, the Houston Astros assistant general manager was accused of taunting female reporters during the team’s ALCS post-game celebration as he yelled favorably about a player who had been arrested for domestic violence.

So while there’s been a lot of progress over the years, there’s still a long way to go.