The Choreography of Exclusion Gender Division of Sources and Practices in Journalistic Work

• In Event: How to Enter the Dance: New Perspectives Upon Journalist-Source Relations

Abstract

Based on reconstruction interviews with 108 reporters from 13 different media channels in Israel,reconstructing 850 individual news items, this study offers a quantitative gender analysis of the relations between reporters and their sources. Findings show that when the source is male, it is he who takes the lead; when the source is female, it is the reporter. In an attempt to explain the roots of this phenomenon, two theoretical explanations are examined – the endogenic explanation, which attributes the weakness of women as sources to the patriarchal values that exist within the field of journalism. The second is the exogenic explanation, according to which the exclusion of women as sources stems from their limited presence in centers of power outside journalism. The findings support the exogenic explanation, and reveal how under a supposedly gender-blind cloak of "the journalistic value of the source" a clear gender structure has nevertheless developed.

Authors

• Yifat Naim Girafi, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Hagar Lahav, Sapir Academic College

• Zvi Reich