Atlanta 1996 Paved the Way for Modern Coverage of Women's Sports

(ATR) The Atlanta Sports Media Consortium held on Feb. 19 highlighted the effects of the 1996 Summer Games on the way journalists covered women’s sports.

The all-day program began at 8:30 a.m. at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce overlooking Centennial Olympic Park, a hot spot during the Games and a lasting tribute to the legacy of the event.

The event featured a keynote by United States women’s soccer goalkeeper Briana Scurry who made the game-saving stop in the 1999 World Cup that set up her teammate Brandi Chastain for the chance to take home the gold with an iconic penalty kick. However, it was the Olympic soccer tournament in 1996 that set the stage for the memorable World Cup three-years later.

Scurry detailed to a crowd of 100 journalists how those Games paved the way for women athletes to get more media coverage for their premier events. She said that at the onset of the Games no one believed many people would come out to watch the women’s soccer matches but the pressure to win was still there.

"We have the first Olympic soccer in the Olympic Games and it’s in the United States – we better win," she said.

The perception that people wouldn’t support women’s soccer in the United States quickly changed for the team with each match they played.

"We realized that every match we had tens of thousands of people at our games that were played states away [from Georgia]. People couldn’t believe that people would show up for women’s soccer."

The U.S. women’s team would go on to capture the gold against China at the University of Georgia in front of more than 75,000 fans, all of whom came to see the women play because there was no men’s match to compliment the game. Scurry said the win shattered many people’s expectations of female athletes and that she and her teammates realized that they were part of a much larger paradigm shift in women’s sports.

"That Olympic Games after we won that final we realized we were not the only ones making change happen. USA women’s basketball won, synchronized swimming won, softball won, a lot of different women’s teams won that Olympics. It became the Olympics of the women. We were glad to be a part of that."

The momentum continued into the 1999 Women’s World Cup, also played on U.S. soil.

"The most amazing moment of that World Cup besides winning, the biggest thing to happen off the pitch was taking the bus from the hotel to the first game and we saw all this traffic on the way to the Meadowlands. We realized all these people were here to see us do well and they were supporting women’s soccer in the United States," she emphasized.

"We were changing the culture for not only sports but women’s sports and our sport in particular in this country."

Scurry’s recollection of her career highlights were reinforced by a panel of sports journalists that described other ways in which the 1996 Games changed the perceptions of women athletes and the way women’s events were covered.

Prior to the Games, USA Today columnist Christine Brennan described how only women covered women’s sports events, particularly outside of the Olympics.

"The Olympics and women’s tennis were getting great coverage but women’s golf and the coverage of women’s basketball is nowhere near the same as the men’s," she said.

"The default for a sports editor was to have a woman cover it because these sports aren’t as important so let the women cover it," said seasoned Olympic journalist Phil Hersh. "I decided I would spend as much of my time covering women’s sports as possible because they were badly under covered."

The panelists say this began to change after and even during the Atlanta Olympics. Word spread quickly that host broadcaster NBC was not showing the final of the women’s soccer tournament on television which caused an immediate reaction.

"People heard they weren’t showing it and it got around that NBC did not televise it. It became a big story because of NBC’s failure to grasp what was going on," says Brennan.

Kevin Blackistone of the Washington Post says that although coverage of women’s sports improved after the Games, women athletes were often objectified by those covering them. He described the differences in attire in the women’s and men’s beach volleyball players. Men could wear baggy shorts and tank tops but women were required by the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) code to wear bikinis.

He says the camera angles of the sport were also changed as a result to show the athletes from behind, displaying the hand signals behind the backs of the athletes and more importantly their backsides.

"Those kinds of things came out of the realization of selling women athletes as sexual athletes for television out of the ‘96 Games," says Blackistone.

It wouldn’t be until the London 2012 Olympics that the FIVB would change the rules to allow women to be fully clothed if they desired. However, another sport at the London Games tried to make female athletes wear different attire than the males.

"The boxing federation said we want women to wear skirts ahead of London but Irish boxer and three-time world champion Katie Taylor said ‘no that is not happening’," said moderator and University of Georgia professor Vicki Michaelis. "So you did have a strong woman who said no we’re not doing that and they conceded because she was their highest draw."

Hersh says this objectification of female athletes will not end soon, pointing to the discrepancies in endorsement deals between top tennis star Serena Williams and another great player Maria Sharapova.

"Maria Sharapova is great but why is she so popular and why does she make more money in endorsements? She’s beautiful and she’s blonde. That sexualization marketing sadly is not going away very soon," he says.

Brennan says this type of marketing won’t end until women have a higher representation at the top of networks and other decision-making entities.

"We need women at the top of networks in order to make these changes and make decisions to change it away from the male gaze," she says.

Written by Kevin Nutley

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