Do Women Write More About Women? The Impact of Journalist Gender on the Media Visibility of Female and Male Politicians

The representation of women in politics and political journalism remains disproportionately low. This paper argues that these disparities are interconnected, as individual journalists exhibit a same-gender preference when deciding who to cover. Since journalists are key gatekeepers in the selection and dissemination of news, gender-based differences in reporting can contribute to the limited media visibility of female politicians. Drawing on more than 500,000 news articles, this study investigates how the gender of journalists (n = 2,315) influences coverage of female and male politicians (n = 1,087) across 17 U.S. news outlets from 2010 to 2020. Using several metrics of media visibility and Bayesian multilevel models, we estimate the effects of journalist gender while accounting for unobserved characteristics of articles, individual reporters, media outlets, and temporal context. The results indicate that journalist gender is a small but consistent factor in shaping gendered media visibility. Articles by female journalists were more likely to include at least one female politician, mention them more frequently, and feature them more prominently. However, these differences varied significantly across media outlets, suggesting that individual journalistic decisions are shaped by organizational context. Longitudinal analyses show that the observed gender bias has remained stable over time. By highlighting the impact of journalist gender on political news coverage, this study shows that inequalities in newsrooms may contribute to imbalances in media content.