Media Insider: TV News Viewing Soars, Journalism’s Gender Gap Persists, Vice Media to Launch in Middle East

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s round-up of media stories from the week.

Photo by mroach, used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

MEDIAPOST | WAYNE FRIEDMAN
TV News Viewing Soars, Cable Rises

TV news viewing is on a high, despite the vast availability of digital news sources and general weakening of the broader television business. MediaPost reports that viewing is up 28% for the three largest news networks — Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC — which accounted for 55% of national cable news consumption in 2016. For the most recent week, ending March 26, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “Fox and Friends,” and “Anderson Cooper” garnered the most person-viewing hours at 23.4 million, 23 million, and 22.5 million respectively.

Want to know more? Here are the most-watched cable news shows of 2017.

THE ROOT | RICHARD PRINCE
Reporting by Women Declining at Networks

The Women’s Media Center “Divided 2017” study finds that female journalists report less news than their male counterparts. According to The Root, the report examines coverage across the top 20 news outlets and shows the biggest gender gap in television reporting, with 74.8% of men reporting news, compared to 25.2% of women. In addition to television, the report also examines newspapers, online news, and wires. The online news medium has the smallest gender gap.

Did you know that Fox News’s website leads the media in gender parity?

ARAB NEWS | BEN FLANAGAN
Vice Media to Bring Edgy Brand of Journalism to Mideast

Vice Media is partnering with the Dubai-headquartered Moby Group to bring its TV channel Viceland to Arabic-speaking youth in the region.  To start, Vice will launch in the Middle East and North Africa with an online presence. The site will feature meaningful and entertaining content for young people, and will have about 50 staff members. Arab News reports that the partnership will create an opportunity for journalists and creators in the region to share their work with a larger, global audience.

ICYMI: Vice announces its first slate of short, scripted videos

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW | SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER
Crime Victims Like Timothy Caughman Deserve More Respect from Reporters

Author Shaya Tayefe Mohajer wants journalists to find a new approach for covering crime. According to Tayefe Mohajer, reporters should be careful about how they describe victims and suspects to avoid implicit bias — especially when the civil-rights movement Black Lives Matter is so prominent. She also calls for reporters and editors to be intentional about investigating and reporting facts. It’s important to avoid making assumptions about the final moments of a person’s life, she says. Reporting personal details that are irrelevant to the crime can be problematic, too.

“How the Media is Complimenting this Murderer” also shows why crime beat coverage needs an adjustment. 

DIGIDAY | SAHIL PATEL
NowThis to take a shot at sports with new vertical — but no highlights

NowThis plans to jump into the world of sports, reports Digiday, with a spring launch of NowThis Sports on Facebook. This will be the short-form video giant’s seventh vertical, joining existing offshoots like NowThis Politics and NowThis Future. The channel will share some of the latest sports news, as well as more evergreen content like athlete profiles and mini documentaries. NowThis is expected to assign a producer to own the channel. They will be responsible for providing daily content, which often means working with the company’s 80-person strong content team, says Digiday.

In other sports news: One news consumer asked for more coverage of women’s sports in this letter to the editor.

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