The future of women in sports media
By ANNIE MORENO, SARAH RIDENOUR & SARAH THOMPSON
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers
What this story covers
Female sports journalists — from beat writers to anchors to sideline reporters — face far more online harassment on social media than their male counterparts.
Why it matters
As an increasing number of women are becoming sports journalists, the problem of vitriolic online comments is becoming magnified. Some high-profile female journalists have publicly pushed back against online trolls.
Tessa Peloso, an intern for Towson Sports Network, the official broadband channel of Towson athletics, has heard from her male friends all the reasons she will not be able to make it in the sports media profession.
She’s too short. She doesn’t have a good broadcast voice. She doesn’t know anything about sports…because she’s a woman. Peloso said even her family has questioned whether she’ll be able to get a job in sports media because it’s competitive.
Peloso has persisted despite concerns about entering an industry in which people are often openly hostile to women. Two of her role models, Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson, face constant backlash that men tend to avoid.
Peloso said that Andrews faces criticism about her looks on social media because she is tall, thin and blonde. Andrews is commonly told that she is only there for her good looks and knows nothing about sports.
Fox Sports broadcaster Thompson spoke out after someone stole and leaked her nude photos online.
“It makes me nervous to become the next Erin Andrews, but it is all about having thick skin and a strong mind,” Peloso said. “If I have confidence in myself, I can accomplish anything”
The unrelenting criticism that women in sports media face was the subject of a 2016 video from two female sports journalists, ESPN’s Sarah Spain and The Cauldron’s Julie DiCaro. The video, part of the #MoreThanMean campaign, reached more than 3.7 million views on YouTube and received widespread news coverage. In the video, men sat next to the two female sports journalists, wincing as they read aloud condescending social media comments.
That video prompted us to ask male Towson students to read vitriolic messages sent to women in sports media. See how they responded:
A widespread problem
Online harassment targeting women is a widespread problem that goes beyond sports. A December 2018 study by Amnesty International, a human rights organization, found that women are disproportionately targeted by online harassment and smear campaigns. The study found that
- One percent of tweets sent to the women in the study were “problematic” or “abusive”. This amounts to 1.1 million tweets mentioning 778 women across the year, or one every 30 seconds.
- Women of color, (black, Asian, Latinx and mixed-race women) were 34 percent more likely to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets than white women.
- Black women were disproportionately targeted, being 84 percent more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets.
- Online abuse targets women from across the political spectrum — politicians and journalists faced similar levels of online abuse.
The solutions are complicated, but many believe that it is the job of the social media platforms — or news outlets if comments are made on their sites — to control cyber-bullying and create a safe space for women. Christine Brennan, a longtime sports columnist and commentator, supports this solution.
“Unfortunately, social media gives everybody a voice,” Brennan said. “Social media is only an issue if you make it an issue. Social media needs to do its job. Let them take care of their responsibility in controlling what goes out there.”
Brennan said that young women looking to go into the field should not spend any time looking at their mentions on Twitter or any social media platform. She said she faces criticism because of the controversial issues she decides to report on, not because she is a woman. Brennan said that criticism from an editor, beloved friend or family member may be worthwhile, but not comments on Twitter.
“Block them, mute them, and move on with your life,” Brennan said.
George Solomon, a former sports editor and columnist at The Washington Post and the first ombudsman for ESPN, agrees with Brennan and believes that young women hoping to go into the field should not waste time thinking about criticism via social media.
Solomon stresses that there are so many factors that go into having a career as a sports journalist, and so it is best to only worry about the opinions that matter, like the opinion of an editor or others who can help advance your career.
Solomon said that women in the field are often criticized on and off social media because people assume that they cannot possibly know as much about sports as men do.
“Both men and women should be as professional as possible, know their subjects, and be as well informed as they can,” Solomon said.
Marcia L. McCormick, a professor of law and director of the Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University, told Richard Deitsch, a sports media podcast host, that news organizations need to step up to protect their employees.
“Maintaining a workplace free from harassment on the basis of sex for both men and women is part of that legal responsibility,” McCormick told Deitsch.
McCormick said in that interview that one of the challenges is news organization cannot control sources or people outside of their own organization. She said women are sometimes penalized by what others say about them.
“The possibility of harassment has been used to limit opportunities for women to cover men’s sports, which means fewer opportunities in general for women to be sports reporters or reporters of any other predominantly male field,” McCormick said.
Lisa Olson, a female sports journalist who reported being sexually harassed by New England Patriots players in the team’s locker room while working at The Boston Herald in 1990, wrote an article, The #MeToo movement comes to sports, a reckoning long overdue.
In Olson’s article, Lisa Guerrero, an American sports anchor and investigative journalist, said having an open conversation about harassment facing women in media is a good first step.
“There’s one saving grace in all of this,” Guerrero said in the article. “We’re finally talking about it. That’s the only way to bring about change.”
Justin Lord, the pitching coach for the Frederick Keys minor league baseball team, said that most of the criticism that he hears against women in the field is based on the misperception that they do not know as much about sports as men do. Lord believes that the solution is for women to work hard to prove that they know the game and have done their research.
As a minor league baseball coach who is also a former player for the Orioles, Lord has been interviewed by many female sports journalists.
“They have to go in there knowing their subjects, knowing all the information, knowing their facts, being dressed professionally, and to not go into the interview laughing with, or being too casual with, the players as if they are talking to their brother’s best friend,” Lord said.
The path forward for women in sports media
Brennan was the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins beat for the Washington Post in 1985. She was one of the founders and the first president of the Association for Women in Sports Media in 1988. Brennan has also covered a multitude of Olympic games.
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She said women have more opportunities to get into sports media than ever before. She pointed to the fact that an increasing number of women are top sports anchors, and that The Washington Post recently had women covering nearly all of its major sports beats.
Yet a 2019 study by the Women’s Media Center found that only 31 percent of U.S. media workers are women. In sports journalism, specifically, 86 percent of sports coverage credits went to men and 14 percent to women.
Brennan encourages young women to go into the field despite the online criticism they may face.
“Today is a great day for women in sports media,” Brennan said. “Tomorrow will be an even better day, and then the next day will be even better than that.”
Thinking about their future
Olivia O’Kane, a University of Maryland senior and aspiring sports broadcaster, said online bullying of women in sports media makes her nervous about her chosen line of work.
“It is kind of discouraging when I think about it, and it makes me insecure in certain ways,” O’Kane said. “I feel like I have to look a certain way and talk a certain way. If I wear too little clothing I’ll get called a ho, but if I wear too much I’ll be too boring to look at. You can’t win.”
O’Kane, who is a sports reporter at Prince George’s Community Television, also gets mixed reactions from people when she tells them she wants to work in sports.
“I’ve had so many people say to me, ‘oh yeah well you’re a pretty face, so you’d look good on camera,” O’Kane said. “It mostly comes from older generations though, and maybe it’s just because they don’t realize how much work really goes into it. I try not to take it too personally, but it still affects me.”
Rachel Colbert lights up as she recalls her second day working at her new job at ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption. She got to meet the hosts, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon, and watch a live taping.

Colbert is now a sports journalism intern on ESPN’s Highly Questionable, a daily sports talk television program on ESPN that premiered in 2011.
Colbert says that women in the field need to work harder than men to prove themselves.
“Women in this field should really know what they are talking about because it is a very male-dominated industry and it is easy for the girls to get overlooked,” Colbert said. “It might be harder for women to have a voice because people are so used to seeing men in the roles, but it is definitely not impossible.”
Colbert said that she has never felt uncomfortable at her job.
“I do think men have the advantage in this field of work,” she said. “But with that being said, I think there are way more males that apply at all. I have seen no sign of guys singling out women, or being mean to them, or wanting to make things hard for them. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that not a lot of women apply for these positions. There is much more male interest in sports.”
Growing up, Peloso was always surrounded by sports. She was a cheerleader her whole life, surrounded by football. She hopes to be around it the rest of her career.
“I fell in love with the game and all sports and athletics,” Peloso said.“Sports bring people together. I love everything about the sports industry and that is why I want to pursue a career in it.”
For more statistics on women and minorities in sports media, view the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) Racial and Gender Report Card.