Filtering the female: Television news coverage of the 1993 Canadian leaders' debates

This article uses televised news reports of the 1993 Canadian leaders' deba tes to examine gendered mediation in the coverage of women politicians. By assessing the preponderance of interpretive versus descriptive coverage for the male and female debate participants we show that coverage of female po litical leaders is more filtered than men's. A comparison of actual debate behavior and sound bite coverage also reveals that political coverage tends to marginalize women when they fail to conform to traditional masculine no rms of political behavior but will over-emphasize the behavior counter to t raditional feminine stereotypes when they do behave combatively. As a resul t, the women's soundbites focused disproportionately on aggressive verbal b ehavior and gestures.