Media Bias In Municipal Politics

Likewise, Wagner believes that the way women are presented in the print media depends on the “variations in circulation, publishing frequency, and newsroom size” of the different newspapers (2010:39). According to her, these factors necessarily have an impact on the way politics is covered, which is something that Bashevkin doesn’t take into consideration (Wagner, 2010:39). Through her research, Wagner has discovered that “major-circulation daily newspapers”, like the Edmonton Journal, tend to portray female politicians in a negative light more often than other newspapers (2010:46). Also, according to her, they are more likely to talk about women’s emotional state (Wagner, 2010:46). Wagner still believes that municipal media express doubts

However, Angelia Wagner found that “not all types of women politicians get the same media reception when campaigning for office” depending on where the elections take place (2010:44). By studying the case of the 2007 civic election in Alberta, Wagner noticed that journalists made more reference to a male candidate’s gender, age, appearance, family background and emotions than it did to women (2010:44). Indeed, journalists would comment on a man’s appearance in 5% of the articles compared to only in 1.1% of cases when it came to women (Wagner, 2010:44). In comparison, it has been found that, in the federal elections that have taken place since 1975, female candidates’ gender, sexuality, and age, amongst other categories, were more often talked about in the Globe and Mail (Trimble et al., 2013: 467-9). In fact, references to a female politician’s appearance were present in 8.8% of articles compared to 4.3% for male candidates (Trimble et al., 2013: 469). In brief, Wagner believes that women are more likely to face a media bias at the municipal or provincial level than in national politics