The real reason America has never had a female president

The Northeastern University School of Journalism analyzed 200 articles, focusing on the five most-read news websites according to Amazon’s Alexa: The Washington Post, The New York Times, HuffPo, CNN, and Fox News. Researchers looked at the percentage of positive words used to describe 2020 presidential candidates. The candidates by media sentiment from highest to lowest, were: Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Notice a pattern here?

Words used to describe the female candidates more frequently have to do with their requisite “scandals” — which might not have been such huge “scandals” if they were men. The most egregious example of this is that the top words for Gillibrand are “sexual,” “harassment,” and “Franken,” echoing the misogynistic refrain that she somehow threw former Sen. Al Franken “under the bus” when she called for him to resign. As a reminder, Franken had eight credible accusations of sexual harassment against him, there were other senators calling for his resignation, and he chose to resign himself.

The misogyny in political coverage is made worse by the fact that 70% of political coverage overall and 74% of election news at online news outlets is done by men, according to a new report from the Women’s Media Center. It’s made even worse when you consider that they seem to exist within an echo chamber: Male political reporters retweet other men three times more than their female colleagues. It’s all but guaranteed that most people who tweet this article will be women, when it’s the male reporters who need to read it most.