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NTCC PROJECT

Year- 2020 Project – Are women given less playtime Student’s Name-
In Sport Journalism? Shradha Tiwari
An analysis of the gender bias in BA (J & MC)-5B
Sport coverage and reporting on TV.

TOPIC- Are women given less ‘playtime’ in Sport

Journalism? An analysis of the gender bias in Sport
coverage and reporting on TV.

Submitted by
Shradha Tiwari
Enrollment Number- A7579818003
Course & Semester – BJMC- V B

Under Guidance of
Namita Pathak
Designation- Faculty
ASCO Lucknow

AMITY SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

AMITY UNIVERSITY LUCKNOW CAMPUS
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

As a part of our course curriculum, I had to make a project on the topic - ‘Are women

given less playtime in Sports Journalism? An analysis of the gender bias in sports

coverage and reporting on TV’ to get an insight about dynamics for women in sports

journalism. It enlightened me with position the women have in Sports Journalism in

comparison to the men, reasons behind it and some solutions for it.

Working on projects always results in knowing something new. I extend my heartiest

gratitude to everybody who helped me through the successful completion of my project,

which has been a great source of learning and experience for me.

I am also indebted to my teachers, my guide Namita Pathak, my family and friends for

their valuable support guidance in carrying out this study.

Student’s Signature

Name – Shradha Tiwari

BJMC-V B
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CERTIFICATE BY PROJECT GUIDE

Certified that the project ‘Are women given less playtime in Sports
Journalism? An analysis of the gender bias in sports coverage and
reporting on TV’ is prepared by Shradha Tiwari, student of BJMC- V B,
AMITY SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION, in partial fulfillment of award of
degree of Masters/Bachelors of Journalism and Mass Communication from
AMITY UNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH, LUCKNOW CAMPUS.

FACULTY GUIDE DIRECTOR

Name- Namita Pathak Dr. S. M. Johri

Designation- Faculty Professor-Director
Amity School of Communication Amity School of Communication

Date:
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CONTENTS

S.no. Topics Page

No.
1. Abstract 5
2. Introduction 6-9
3. Literature Review 10-11
4. Project design- data collection and methodologies
12-16
5. Results 17-27
6. Conclusion & Recommendations 28-29
7. References 30
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ABSTRACT

The topic of the research is “Are women given less ‘playtime’ in Sport
Journalism? An analysis of the gender bias in Sport coverage and reporting
on TV.”

The sports have always been regarded as a man’s friend. Breaking such
stereotypes, women emerged in this arena later on. In today’s time, women
empowerment and equality are highly encouraged and so it becomes
important to check if it is true or not. Sports and media together make an
ideal match to check if the gender disparities still exist and not and if yes,
then till what extent. This study aims to understand if the gender bias exists
and the women get a fair time in the sports reporting and coverage. It also
tries to understand the public’s perception regarding this and decode reasons
for the same. The research is a mixed-research where content analysis of the
sports section of night and fast news bulletin has been done of DD News,
India TV and News18 India. Also, secondary research and questionnaire are
some other tools used for data collection.
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INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY-

To understand if women face gender bias in Sports TV Journalism in India be

it the sports coverage or reporting.

CONTEXT-

Media is the perfect mirror to showcase the gender equality to the world.
Sport is another medium which tries to cease out the differences between
male and female. When both come together, the disparities should eradicate
at a faster rate. It is surprising to know that Sports Journalism actually has a
lot of gender gaps which needs to be filled. Sport broadcasting includes the
sports reporting and sports coverage. In the last few years, this male-
dominant industry has seen a significant change with the emergence of more
females in India. But, has this change only been confined to the screen or has
there actually been some difference? Do the female journalists get an equal
treatment as their male counterparts? Do the female sports get a fair
coverage time on TV? This study tries to find the answers to all these
questions and decode the reasons behind it.

The study is based on the content analysis of the sports news section of the
night’s fast news bulletin. It has used one public TV network- DD News and
two private TV networks- India TV and News18 India. Also, the study used
secondary research from the material available online for deeper
understanding and a questionnaire to check the public’s attitude towards this
issue.

RATIONALE-

 The history calls sports a man’s game. The emergence of women sports
happened later on. This created a notion that sports is male-oriented.
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 The misogynistic attitude towards the females becomes a barrier for

the females to approach sports.

 The patriarchal society and the cultural boundaries have always limited
the women’s role in sports.

 Family care and family life stop the females from getting associated to
sports.

 However, breaking all the shackles, women have progressed and

Sports is going through a boom period.

 The sports media has tried to fill in the gender gaps.

 Women in the sports media industry have faced challenges like

harassment, criticism for one mistake or tags like a glam doll.

 All the factors make it necessary to check if the book is actually like its
cover or not.

 It is important to understand if the women actually get the playtime in

sports reporting and coverage or not.

 Also, if not, why is the industry failing to do so?

ISSUE-

Following issue could be addressed-

For the low participation of women in Sports TV journalism, the blame is

often put on the industry for it. If it is still the case in India, the study could
clarify if it is actually the industry that has to be blamed for it or the public?
The study could draw some conclusions and suggest accordingly for the
gender bias on Sports TV Journalism.

BOUNDARIES-
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The study is restricted within these boundaries-

 Only three channels have been taken for the content analysis. One is
the public TV network- DD News and the other includes two channels
from the private TV network- India TV and News18 India.

 The sports section of the night fast news bulletin has been taken for all
three channels which aired only from Monday-Friday in a week.

 The sample time frame taken for the analysis of the newscast is 3 rd
February-7th February, 2020. It is the latest week for good content on
sports news before the Corona pandemic.

 The sample size for the questionnaire is small and limited to 100
people.

OBJECTIVES-

 To study if women face gender bias in sports TV journalism.

 To study if the coverage time is given fairly to the female sports as

male sports.

 To study the weightage given to the female sports in relation to the

male sports.

 To study if the news profit has to do something with the gender bias
keeping in view the comparisons of the public TV network and private
TV network.

 To study the public’s perception towards this issue.

 To decode the reasons behind the gender bias in sports TV journalism

in India.
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HYPOTHESES-

 H1- The preference is given to the male professionals in the sports

journalism rather than the females.

 H2- The news of female sports stands underrepresented than male

sports in the importance of sports news.

 H3- The news coverage time is heavy for males and light for females.
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LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature review of this research study is done to understand the truth
of sports journalism for females and decode the possible reasons for gender
bias and challenges for females, if it still exists.

 ‘Women in sports journalism’ by Sara Ellen Swanson from San Jose

State University in 2009 – This research paper discusses the change
that the journalism field has seen from the time women were not
allowed to enter the locker room for interviewing players till the time
the research was conducted. The research conducted interviews of the
female journalists in sports where they opened up about how the
women were not accepted in the locker room before but with time it
changed and they feel the biggest challenge they have to face is the
audience’s ignorant attitude towards them.

 ‘Women sports and journalism: Case study of Indian women cricket’-

by Sandhya Chauhan and Aditya Kumar Shukla from International
Journal of Physical Education, Sports and Health – This research paper
uses the case study of Indian women cricket to analyze the coverage
the female sports get and it concludes that the female sports don’t get
attention from media till the time it comes in public interest and once
it comes in their interest, public wait for the media to enhance the
sports.

 ‘Female athletes and journalists in television sport news

programmes, in comparison to their male counterparts’ by E Calvo
Ortega and B Gutierrez San Miguel from Spain- This research paper
has analyzed news programs to check how the females are being
treated in terms of sports TV journalism and uses various terms to
check it statistically. It concludes that female sports don’t get regular
coverage and so the public doesn’t remember it and the males
dominate the industry.

 ‘Women in Sports Journalism Is there still a stigma?’ By Jacob Bentley

York- This article presents views of many female sports journalists
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Katie Falkingham being one of them. It says that the industry still
accepts them and does not challenge them now, but it the audience
that judges their work and they agree that it has always been a male
dominated industry.

 ‘Women, Sport and the Media: Key elements at play in the shaping of
the practice of women in sport journalism’ by Ilan Tamir, Moran
Yarchi and Yair Galily from Israel- This research studies the factors
that lead to the position women have in sport journalism and uses the
experiences of various female sports journalists to know it and
concludes that bringing more women in the industry at senior
positions would not change the stigma and more female youth needs
to come to the scenario for a change.

 ‘Female sports journalists still face rampant sexism on the job’ by

Michael Serazio- This article focuses on understanding the reasons of
the gender bias towards females in the sports journalism like less
interest or less coverage of female sports, female journalists as the
target on social media, or the male dominance in the industry.

 ‘Research reveals why women journalists believe sports newsrooms

are still dominated by men’- on the website https://www.city.ac.uk/
- This article brings forth various problems other than harassment as
the challenge for women in the sports journalism industry. It brings out
increased competition, misogynistic attitude and several other reasons
for the gender disparity.

 ‘Like the IPL, Indian Sports Journalism Is a Boys' Club With a Sexism
Problem’ on https://thewire.in/ - This article shows opinions of Sharda
Ugra, who has been one of the oldest sports journalist in India and Rica
Roy from NDTV which points out that while male journalists are not
criticized much and even if they are, it’s for their work but female
journalists are criticized on social media because of their gender, dress
and they face biased comments.
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PROJECT DESIGN (Methodologies)

TYPE OF RESEARCH-

This research study is a Mixed-research study. It contains the following-

a) The content analysis of the sports coverage of public (DD news) and
private TV network (two channels) has a Descriptive approach where
the analysis has been done for the fast news bulletin night program for
1 week.
b) Secondary research conducted from the online materials to get an
insight about the extent to which the women are involved in electronic
media in India and decode some of the other reasons of gender bias if
it exists and conclude with better results and recommendations.
c) Questionnaire to check public’s opinion on the gender bias and their
attitude towards females in sports journalism and the reasons they feel
about it.

DATA COLLECTION METHODS, SAMPLING AND PROCEDURE-

CONTENT ANALYSIS-

Data collection- The content analysis of the sports news section was done of
the fast news bulletin of three channels. The videos were collected from
online portals. This analysis has thus used a descriptive approach. The sports
news items were coded on a coding sheet. Every day’s news items have been
coded from the sample taken. Headlines, teasers, slugs were not coded. The
coding was done on the following categories-

 Gender of the sports being shown in the news or the sports

protagonist in the news
 Gender of the sports in the news and TV Network (This code is a
comparison of the three TV networks taken based on the gender of
the sports telecasted by them)
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 Gender of the news presenter or news host

 News coverage time based on the gender of the sports
 Importance of the news according to the different sports

Sampling- The sample that has been taken is the sports news section from
the fast news bulletin aired at night on TV. The time frame that has been
chosen is 3rd February, 2020 to 7th February, 2020. This time frame has been
taken because it is the latest time before the Corona virus pandemic when all
the major sports were in action. There are total 126 news items taken as a
sample. The programs and the TV networks that have been taken are-

 Public TV Network- DD News

Program’s Name- ‘Express news’

 Private TV Networks- a) India TV

Program’s Name- ‘Super 100’
b) News18 India
Program’s Name- ‘Sau Baat Ki Ek Baat’

Two private TV Networks have been taken so that the comparison

does not stand biased.

The sampling that has been done is systematic and purposive sampling.
Because the coding has been done only one researcher, there was no need
for the Krippendorff’s alpha reliability coefficient to measure the agreement
of the code.

Procedure-

The coding of the three channels has been done on Excel sheets according to
the different categories or codes.

They are as follows-

CODING SHEET 1-
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Frequencies of the given items

Substance Male Female Mixed Sports Both

Gender of the protagonist in the sports news
DD News - - - -
India TV - - - -
News18
India - - - -
Overall 104 12 2 8

Gender of the sports in news & TV Network

DD News 59 7 2 7
India TV 17 0 0 0
News18
India 28 5 0 1
Overall - - - -

Gender of the news presenter

DD News 2 3 - 0
India TV 2 2 - 1
News18
India 5 0 - 0
Overall 9 5 - 1

News coverage time

based on the gender of the sports (in seconds)
DD News 772 sec 81 sec 27 sec - 102 sec
India TV 129 sec 0 sec 0 sec - 0 sec
News18
India 409 sec 63 sec 0 sec - 19 sec
Overall 1310 sec 144 sec 27 sec - 121 sec

CODING SHEET 2-

Column5 Column4 Column3 Column2 Column22Column1

Sports Frequencies of the news
Categories based on the sports

DD News India TV News 18 India TOTAL

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Cricket 48 13 27 88
Football 4 0 0 4
Hockey 7 0 4 11
Tennis 4 2 2 8
Badminton 1 0 0 1
Basketball 1 0 0 1
Others 10 0 3 13

After the coding was done, the statistical calculations like frequency
distribution tables were made with the help of collecting data from the sheet
and lastly, bar/cylindrical charts were made showcasing the results according
to the different categories.

AN IDEA OF COMPARISON FEMALE JOURNALISTS WORKING IN THE INDIAN

ELECTRONIC MEDIA -

A secondary research was conducted to get an idea of the extent to which

the women have been involved in the Indian Electronic media. Data was
collected and studied from the following research studies for the same-

 ‘Analysing status of women journalists in Indian tv news channels’ by

Neetu Singh from DD News and published by Abhinav Publication

 ‘Gender Inequality in Indian Media’ by Media Rumble in partnership

with UN Women.

QUESTIONNAIRE-

A questionnaire was prepared to conclude about the public’s perception

towards gender bias in Sports Journalism if it exists and decode their opinion
about the predicted reasons for it. A total of 100 participants took part in the
online survey where these were the attributes of the participants-
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A total of thirteen questions were asked including name, gender and age. The
data of the other questions have been presented in the results section.

RESULTS

CONTENT ANALYSIS-
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The results were based on different categories. In every category, the results
have been expressed in percentage with the following variables-
Male, Female, Mixed sports (both male and female were part of the same
competition yet were shown in the same news item), Both-gender sports
(both male and female were part of different competitions yet were shown in
the same news item).

Exception-

 The category of the gender of the news presenter has the variables as
follows- Male, Female news anchor or Both (both female and male
anchor in the same program)

 The last category has the following variables-

 Cricket, Football, Hockey, Tennis, Badminton, Basketball and Others
(things like Olympics, national weightlifting, shooting, marathon,
wrestling were included in one category).

1) Gender of the sports being shown in the news or the sports

protagonist in the news-
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Here, the percentage has been rounded off to simplify the data.
The results of the percentage of the sports news items on all the three
TV Networks based on the gender were as follows- In the sample of
126 news items, 82.5% were male sports news, 9.5% were female
sports news, 1.6% were mixed sports news and 6.3% were related to
both.

2) Gender of the sports in the news and TV Network (This code is a

comparison of the three TV networks taken based on the gender of
the sports telecasted by them)-
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The results of the percentage of sports news items telecasted in each

channel based on the gender of the sports were as follows-

In the public TV network- DD News, there were a total of 75 sports

news items, out of which 78.60% were male sports news, 9.33% were
female sports news, 2.67% were mixed sports news and again 9.33%
were about both-gender sports.
In the private TV Networks-

India TV- There were a total of 17 sports news items, out of which
100% were male sports news and there were no news related to
female, mixed or both-gender sports. It was completely male-
dominated.

News18 India- There were a total of 34 sports news items, where

82.35% were dedicated to male sports, 14.70% to female sports, 2.94%
to both-gender sports and there was no news item of mixed sports.
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3) Gender of the news presenter or news host

The results show that in the broadcast of the sports news aired on the
five days on all the three channels taken as sample, 60% of the
broadcast were hosted by male news anchors, 33.3% by the female
news anchors, and 6.7% by both female and male anchors in the same
program.

4) News coverage time based on the gender of the sports-

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Here, the percentage numbers have been rounded off to simplify the
data.
The results conclude that time of the news coverage enjoyed by the
different sports based on the gender including all the three channels
from the sample are- 81.8% of the coverage time devoted to male
sports news, 9% of the coverage time devoted to female news, 1.7% of
the coverage time devoted to mixed sports news and 7.6% to the both-
gender news.

5) Importance of the news according to the different sports-

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The results are as follows- Out of all the major sports, Cricket was given
the major importance with 69.8%. Other sports which included
Olympics, national weightlifting & shooting, wrestling, marathon had a
10.3% participation in the sports news telecasted in all the three
channels. The participation of other sports were- 3.2% of Football,
8.7% of Hockey, 6.3% of Tennis, 0.8% of Badminton and 0.8% of
Basketball. This shows that cricket being the most popular sport in
India plays a crucial role in the less viewing of the female sports news
items as history says it is a male-dominated sport.

AN IDEA OF FEMALE JOURNALISTS WORKING IN THE

INDIAN ELECTRONIC MEDIA-

 ‘Analysing status of women journalists in Indian TV news channels’

by Neetu Singh from DD News and published by Abhinav Publication-
It stated that the top positions in the media were still male dominated
and males were given more hard stories like the politics or sports than
the females who were preferred for soft stories and concluded that
around 72% of the females had issues related to the timing, family
bounds and such factors.
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 ‘Gender Inequality in Indian Media’ by Media Rumble in partnership

with UN Women- It was a survey from October 2019 till March 2019. It
stated that only 20.9% of the women were at the top positions in TV
News channels. It stated that only 9.3% of the panelists were women
in Hindi News channels where News18 India had 67.9% and India TV
had 74.4% were male panels. Also, based on the topic of sports the
gender composition of Hindi News channels was 100% male
dominated.

QUESTIONNAIRE-

The questionnaire had the following results to each question-

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CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS

According to the research done, the first hypothesis stands right. The
secondary research done to know about the female journalists working in the
Indian electronic media showed that men held top positions. Also, a 60%
male dominance in the category of gender of the news presenter was found
during the content analysis. It makes it clear that male professionals are
given preference over the female professionals in this industry.

The findings of the content analysis and the questionnaire help in testing the
second hypothesis right. According to the questionnaire, 52% people felt
both male and female sports were shown and 47% felt male sports
dominates the news. The findings also showed that 69% people felt the news
has always been male-sports related. The content analysis has 82.5% pointing
out towards male sports and 69.8% of the news was cricket related. In India,
cricket is the most celebrated sport and covers a major portion in the sports
news which back fires the exposure to many female sports news. Hence, the
male related sports are given more importance than the female ones.

The third hypothesis of giving more coverage time to the male sports also
stands true. The content analysis concluded that 81.8% of the coverage time
belonged to the male sports where in the questionnaire only 6% people said
that female sports news was telecasted often. Thus, even the race of news
coverage time is won by male sports.

The comparisons of the private and public TV Network in the content analysis
show that public TV Network still is a bit fairer than the private networks in
the ratio of the broadcast of male sports to female sports news. This
highlights the fact that private TV networks work slightly more in the
direction of male sports keeping in view the profit margin by gaining TRP.

According to the questionnaire, the public’s perception stands in favour of

existence of gender bias where-
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 With 50% and 41% neutral responses, the public feel the misogynistic
attitude towards women is a reason behind it.
 With 56% people saying Yes and 29% Maybe, make the family life and
cultural restrictions a reason behind it.
 With 56% Yes and 31% Maybe responses of people, make it clear that
women are brought into this industry majorly to add glamour.
 With 20% Yes and 40% Maybe responses of people, signal that female
professionals in sports television news industry are criticized on social
media for their mistakes more than the male ones because of their
gender.
 With a clean 99% positive response, gives a good sign that people think
that sports is not only a man’s game and women too understand it
nicely.
 With 59% yes and 37% maybe responses, show that this gender biased
attitude would change in future.

Keeping in mind the secondary research and these conclusions, it is right to

say that gender bias exists in abundance in the sports TV news industry.
Other than the reasons mentioned above, the increased competition for the
sports journalism and lesser opportunities lead to less female composition in
this industry. Also, the lesser financial support and lesser/ no telecast of
female sports on TV is also a leading factor in the male-dominant sports news
coverage.

Some possible recommendations for this are-

 Better financial aid to the female sports

 Increased telecast of the female sports
 A fair news coverage composition model covering both the type of
sports
 Encouragement to the females to work as top professionals

Thus, the gaps of gender disparity would take long time to get filled not only
in this industry but everywhere in the world.
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REFERENCES

 Swanson, Sara Ellen, "Women in sports journalism." (2009). Master's Theses.

3986.
 Chauhan, Sandhya & Shukla, Aditya. (2018). Women sports and journalism: Case
study of Indian women cricket. 5. 200-204.
 E Calvo Ortega, B Gutiérrez San Miguel (2016): “Female athletes and journalists
in television sport news programmes, in comparison to their male counterparts”.
Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 71, pp. 1.230 to 1.242.

 York, J. B. (2018, May 19). Women in Sports Journalism: Is there still a stigma?
Retrieved May 15, 2020, from
https://social.shorthand.com/JBentley_York/ny6u50UW7cx/women-in-sports-
journalism-is-there-still-a-stigma

 Tamir, Ilan & Galily, Yair & Yarchi, Moran. (2017). Women, Sport and the Media:
Key elements at play in the shaping of the practice of women in sport journalism..
Communications. 43. 10.1515/commun-2017-0039.
 Serazio, M. (2019, June 20). Female sports journalists still face rampant sexism on
the job. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from https://qz.com/1649524/female-sports-
journalists-still-face-rampant-sexism-on-the-job/
 Research reveals why women journalists believe sports newsrooms are still
dominated by men. (2016, August 8). Retrieved May 15, 2020, from
https://www.city.ac.uk/news/2016/july/research-reveals-why-women-journalists-
believe-sports-newsrooms-are-still-dominated-by-men
 Priyansh. (2017, May 21). Like the IPL, Indian Sports Journalism Is a Boys’ Club
With a Sexism Problem. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from
https://thewire.in/gender/ipl-2017-sexism-misogyny-sports-journalism
 Singh, N. (2016). ANALYSING STATUS OF WOMEN JOURNALISTS IN INDIAN
TV NEWS CHANNELS, 5, 1-6. Retrieved from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/62f9/3ea5114bb9134c518e292da64873847c0d6
4.pdf
 Gender Inequality in Indian Media. Media Rumble & UN Women. Retrieved from
https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/less-women-indian-newsrooms-men-get-do-
more-serious-news-study-finds-106584