National Basketball League
No major sport in America has grown to be such a success so quickly as the National Basketball Association (NBA). Though it first started in 1946, it has become known as the best basketball league in the world. It also can boast that it's the only league that has a true counterpart for women to play in, the WNBA. While other sports, mainly hockey, have women's leagues, none of them run as smoothly as the WNBA. However, that doesn't mean that basketball is without its faults. For the WNBA, it's unequal pay and promotion of the sport, and for female sports broadcasters, it's breaking through the barriers that have kept them from reporting on the sport since its' inception. While both of these things are gradually changing, here's the current landscape of which genders are broadcasting among the major four broadcasting networks and NBA.TV.
Current Landscape
As the infographic shows, there are only seven women among all five networks broadcasting solely on the NBA. While NBC and CBS don't employ anyone (as they don't hold the rights), the two biggest anomalies are ESPN and NBA.TV. ESPN acts as the largest network employing reporters to cover the NBA, and with 6 women on their staff, it's clear that there's a push towards making the genders more balanced. However, NBA.TV, which is dedicated to only showing NBA games, has one woman on their staff as a reporter. This is a travesty because there are so many capable women, both those who have played in the WNBA and just fans, who are capable of working for the company. As with many sports broadcasters, the ones that receive the highest profile jobs are typically the men who played the game; however, to have such a vast pool of women who have played the game at the same level as men being overlooked for these jobs is an injustice to female sports reporters and to NBA fans.
Treatment of Women
To highlight how male and female reporters are treated differently when covering the NBA, I turned to an article by The Independent, a United Kingdom news site, that looked at how progressive the league actually appears compared to the English Premier League. In the article, entitled "Big, bold and unapologetically brash: what can the English Premier League learn from America's NBA?", the author looks at the NBA's strengths and weaknesses and recommends how they could be implemented (or learned from) to make the Premier League more successful. The relevant point the article makes for women reporters is that the NBA is doing a far better job of hiring women to cover its' league than the Premier League. In a quote from an ESPN host Sage Steele, she states: "I don't see as much negative talk as far as whether or not a woman belongs there. I think it's been accepted in most ways. There's still work to do in every area but it's so much different." Steele, who works as one of the six female reporters for ESPN, sees a trend towards women getting more positions like hers, especially for basketball; however, the numbers still don't show that. Although when comparing it to the Premier League it might seem progressive, it's still not enough. Steele might be an authority on this, as she is currently employed in the field, but her recognition of things improving makes it seem like there's been progress that far exceed what the numbers of basketball, and the other three major sports, boast. While obviously there has been an effort to bring more women into roles like hers, by acknowledging there's been a positive change, it allows viewers and executives to believe that immediate changes aren't needed.