An Original Analysis from Be Clear.
We knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any less of a gut punch. Reading that headline — “Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights” — just hurt. I wanted to scream. I wanted my mom. I wanted a drink. I wanted to open Twitter, but I also really didn’t want to open Twitter.
I was grateful to be part of a progressive communications firm and for the organizations we are fortunate to support in their work to reform the Court and protect abortion access. I felt lucky to live in Colorado where state leaders enshrined abortion access into law, voters reject abortion bans, and organizations like Cobalt create safe havens for women in state — and now, increasingly, women driving from Texas.
I turned on the news, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do — or how else to let this sink in. I realized I was holding my breath, thinking, “please at least let it be women on TV explaining how bad this is.”
Our team at Be Clear had previously conducted a report which showed that women are less likely than men to be seen discussing politics on local TV in battleground states, with consequences for how voters view women candidates. And I wanted to know: Who would be talking about the end of Roe on TV? Would this impact how seriously we saw this attack on our bodies, on our rights?
Would it change what happens next if the story is told by the people who can actually get pregnant?
Thanks to our stellar new team members — Rachel Needham and Julian Wright — we set out to find out. For one week following the leak of the draft opinion, we tracked all guests across all primetime news segments (from 8-11pm) on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. These networks broadcast 44 of the top 50 Nielsen-rated shows on cable television. If people were turning on their TV to learn more about what was happening, they were probably hearing it from one of these shows.
Key Findings: Fox News is bad; Everyone has more work to do
Here’s what we found:
On CNN and MSNBC, women made the majority of guest appearances in segments about the Dobbs draft.
In our last report, “Battleground Voters Twice As Likely to See Men Discuss Politics on Local TV” we found there is a massive gender gap in guest appearances on local political shows. Although this remains a systemic problem, CNN and MSNBC featured more women than men as guests during segments about the draft Dobbs opinion between May 3-10. This is good!
Unsurprisingly, Fox News is bad.
Not really a new finding, but true yet again. Fox News continued the trend of inviting more men to comment on this issue than women. And these weren’t just any men, the majority were anti-abortion men. Not their bodies, just their choice?
This represents a huge threat to our country. Fox News was far and away the most watched cable news network between May 3-10 with an average of 2.29 million viewers. Compare that to 996,000 for MSNBC’s primetime coverage and 605,000 average viewers for CNN (according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data). That’s a lot of people getting their news about abortion in a bubble made up of people who can’t even have an abortion.
Women of color were underrepresented across all three cable networks.
Although women of color are disproportionately affected by the potential outcome of this case, they were outnumbered by all other guests during our period of research. Women of color make up 36.8% of all women in the United States, a much larger percentage than their level of representation on CNN and Fox News. On MSNBC, the percentage of guests who were women of color was nearly proportionate to the national percentage.
Women who identify as Hispanic or Latina were severely underrepresented.
Roughly 36.8% of women in the U.S. identify broadly as women of color, and 18% of women in the U.S. identify as Hispanic or Latina. Despite being among the most deeply affected by the Supreme Court’s decision, Hispanic and Latina women were nearly absent from segments about the draft opinion from May 3-10. In fact, only one female guest on one network that entire week identified as Latina.
What comes next
We wanted to do this study now while there’s still time to make changes when the opinion is officially issued. This leak represented a chance to see how networks will do on representation in their coverage when the news comes down. CNN and MSNBC did well ensuring the story is told by women — but they can do so much more to ensure the story is told by the women most impacted, especially featuring Hispanic women.
Fox News won’t change, so we all need to all get louder.
The official ruling ending abortion access is expected in the coming month — and we can fight back. We can elect more Democrats who will end the filibuster, enshrine Roe into law, and expand the Court.
But even before then, let’s call for the people who most understand the stakes to tell the story.
Methodology
To collect this data, we combed through hours of transcripts available on the websites of CNN and MSNBC. Fox News does not provide transcripts, so we analyzed actual recordings of nightly broadcasts to collect the same information. Over the course of the week, a total of 153 guests appeared across all networks. In our analysis, we included repeat guest appearances if they occurred on different nights. To determine each guest’s gender and racial identity, we spent a great deal of time researching each guest to find self-identified data.