Sexism remains a problem for female sports reporters

Women who cover sports no longer have to contend with the overt hostility they faced some 40 years ago, but a condescending comment this week by an NFL quarterback to a female reporter is a sign that sexism is still a problem in the industry, says a Concordia University journalism professor who broke the gender barrier in the 1970s.

Linda Kay, who was the first female sports reporter at the San Diego Evening Tribune, says conditions have improved significantly for women in sports media since she cut her teeth, which is why she was surprised to hear Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers mock a female reporter when she asked a question about the routes taken by receiver Devin Funchess.

“It’s funny to hear a female talk about . . . routes,” Newton said during a news conference Wednesday. “It’s funny.”

Reporter Jourdan Rodrigue said in a statement she was “dismayed by his response, which not only belittled me but countless other women before me and beside me who work in similar jobs.”

“It’s always one step forward, two steps back,” Kay said in a phone interview Thursday.

“I started in the late ’70s, early ’80s, and that’s the kind of reaction I got then.”

Kay said the culture of sports reporting can be less welcoming to women than other fields.

“When I was a general assignment reporter, I was very well accepted by everyone in the newsroom,” she said. “But when I went into sports, there were men who would not speak to me.”

She recalled the paper’s sports department as a hostile and antagonistic environment where she had little or no support from her colleagues.

“The first few years when women entered the field ... it was almost a sabotage situation,” she said. “They didn’t want you to succeed.”

In the 1980s, Kay moved to the Chicago Tribune, where she was also the first woman in the newsroom to cover sports.

Her colleagues there were much more supportive, she said, but that attitude didn’t always extend to the athletes she covered.

The behaviour of its players does reflect on the team and the NFL, said Laurel Walzak, assistant professor of Sport Media at Ryerson University.

She would like to see Newton make a public apology — as of Thursday afternoon he hadn’t, despite losing a major sponsor (Dannon), who called the comments “sexist and disparaging.”

But Walzak also said both the Panthers and the NFL bear some responsibility for allowing a culture where his attitude is tolerated.

The NFL did call Newton’s comments “just plain wrong and disrespectful to the exceptional female reporters and all journalists who cover our league,” adding that they don’t reflect the thinking of the league.