Article published in:
The Mediated Communication of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Politics
Edited by Angela Smith and Michael Higgins
[Journal of Language and Politics 19:1] 2020
► pp. 125–143

Gender matters in questioning presidents

| University of California, Los Angeles
| University of California, Los Angeles
| University of California, Los Angeles
This paper traces the increasing prominence of women in the White House press corps over the latter half of the 20th century, and considers how this trend toward greater gender balance has impacted the questioning of presidents. Modest gender differences are documented in the topical content of questions, with women journalists slightly favoring domestic policy and private-sphere topics relative to men. More substantial differences are documented in aggressiveness, with women journalists asking more adversarial questions, and more assertive questions at least in the earlier years of the sampling period. The topical content differences are broadly aligned with traditional conceptions of gender, but the stronger differences in aggressiveness run contrary to such conceptions.
Keywords: Gender, gender roles, sex roles, presidents, news conferences, press conferences, journalism, questions
Published online: 15 January 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19087.cla
References

References

Alfahad, Abdulrahman
2015 “Aggressiveness and Deference in Arabic Broadcast News Interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 88: 58–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, C. L.
2004 “The Influence of Reporter Gender on Source Selection in Newspaper Stories.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81(1): 139–154. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Beam, R. A., & Di Cicco, D. T.
2010 “When Women Run the Newsroom: Management Change, Gender, and the News.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 87(2): 393–411. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Rodney
2004 “Bringing the Sociology of Media Back In.” Political Communication 21(3): 275–292. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cann, David J. and Philip B. Mohr
2001 “Journalist and Source Gender in Australian Television News.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 45(1): 162–174. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., Marc N. Elliott, John Heritage, and Laurie McDonald
2006 “Historical Trends in Questioning Presidents 1953–2000.“ Presidential Studies Quarterly 36: 561–583. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., John Heritage, Marc N. Elliott, and Laurie McDonald
2007 “When Does the Watchdog Bark?: Conditions of Aggressive Questioning in Presidential News Conferences.” American Sociological Review 72: 23–41. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., Marc Elliott, John Heritage, Megan Beckett
2010 “A Watershed in White House Journalism: Explaining the Post-1968 Rise of Aggressive Presidential News.” Political Communication 27: 229–247. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 “The President’s Questioners: Consequential Attributes of the White House Press Corps.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 17(1): 100–121. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E.
2017 “The Micropolitics of Legitimacy: Political Position-Taking and Journalistic Scrutiny at the Boundary of the Mainstream.” Social Psychology Quarterly 80(1): 41–64. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Correa, T., & Harp, D.
2011 “Women Matter in Newsrooms: How Power and Critical Mass Relate to the Coverage of the HPV Vaccine.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 88(2): 301–319. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Craft, S., & Wanta, W.
2004 “Women in the Newsroom: Influences of Female Editors and Reporters on the News Agenda.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81(1): 124–138. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
D’Alessio, Dave and Mike Allen
2000 “Media Bias in Presidential Elections: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Communication 50: 133–156. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Desmond, R. & A. Danilewicz
2010 “Women Are On, But Not In, the News: Gender Roles in Local Television News.” Sex Roles 62: 822–829. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ekström, Mats, Göran Eriksson, Bengt Johansson, and Patrik Wikström
2013 “Biased Interrogations? A Multi-Methodological Approach on Bias in Election Campaign Interviews.” Journalism Studies 14(3): 423–439. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ekström, Mats and Marianna Patrona
2011 Talking Politics in Broadcast Media: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Political Interviewing, Journalism, and Accountability. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gilligan, Carol
1993 In a Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1977 “The Arrangement Between the Sexes,” Theory and Society 4(3): 301–331. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hanitzsch, T., & Hanusch, F.
2012 “Does gender determine journalists’ professional views? A reassessment based on cross-national evidence.” European Journal of Communication 27(3): 257–277. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John
2002 “The Limits of Questioning: Negative Interrogatives and Hostile Question Content.” Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1427–1446. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John and Steven E. Clayman
2013 “The Changing Tenor of Questioning Over Time: Tracking a Question Form Across U.S. Presidential News Conferences 1953–2000.” In Marcel Broersma, Bas den Herder, and Birte Schohaus (eds.) The Changing Dynamics Between Journalists and Sources, special issue of Journalism Practice 7(4): 481–501.Google Scholar
Higgins, Michael
2010 “The “Public Inquisitor” As Media Celebrity.” Cultural Politics 6(1): 93–110. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie
1973 “A Review of Sex Role Research.” American Journal of Sociology 78: 1011–1029. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huls, Erica and Jasper Varwijk
2011 “Political Bias in TV Interviews,” Discourse and Society 22(1): 48–65. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss
1976 “The Impact of Hierarchical Structures on the Work Behavior of Women and Men.” Social Problems 23(4): 415–430. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Komarovsky, Mirra
1950 “Functional Analysis of Sex Roles.” American Sociological Review 15(4): 508–516. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Meeks, Lindsey
2013 “He Wrote, She Wrote: Journalist Gender, Political Office, and Campaign News.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 90(1): 58–74. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 “Thank You, Mr. President: Journalist Gender in Presidential News Conferences.” International Journal of Communication 11: 2411–2430.Google Scholar
2018 “Questioning the President: Examining Gender in the White House Press Corps.” Journalism 19(4): 519–535. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schudson, Michael
1994 “Question Authority: A History of the News Interview in American Journalism, 1860s–1930s.” Media, Culture, and Society 16(4): 565–587. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2000 “The Sociology of News Production Revisited (Again).” Mass Media and Society 3: 175–200.Google Scholar
Sherman, Susan R. and Aaron Rosenblatt
1984 “Women Physicians as Teachers, Administrators, and Researchers in Medical and Surgical Specialities: Kanter Versus “Avis” As Competing Hypotheses.” Sex Roles 11(3–4): 203–209. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stahl, Leslie
1999  Reporting Live. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Tolson, Andrew
2012 ““You’ll need a miracle to win this election” (J. Paxman 2005): Interviewer Assertiveness in U.K. General Elections 1983–2010.” Discourse, Context, and Media 1: 45–53. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, David H., Lars Willnat, and G. Cleveland Wilhoit
2019 “The American Journalist in the Digital Age: Another Look at U.S. News People.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 96(1): 101–130. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman
1987 “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1(2): 125–151. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bruce A. and Michael X. Delli Carpini
2011 After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zeldes, Geri Alumit and Frederick Fico
2005 “Race and Gender: An Analysis of Sources and Reporters in the Networks’ Coverage of the 2000 Presidential Campaign.” Mass Communication and Society 8(4): 373–385. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zeldes, Geri Alumit, Frederick Fico, and Arvind Diddi
2007 “Race and Gender: An Analysis of the Sources and Reporters in Local Television Coverage of the 2002 Michigan Gubernatorial Campaign.” Mass Communication and Society 10(3): 345–363. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Di and Pamela J. Shoemaker
2014 “Foreign Reporters’ Aggressiveness and Chinese Officials’ Openness at News Conferences: Influences on Foreign Media Coverage of the Chinese Government.” Chinese Journal of Communication 7(1): 106–125. CrossrefGoogle Scholar