By Isabelle Wilson-
Resurgent misogyny and white supremacy is dominating the U.S media at the expense of the hiring of women of colour, according to new research commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and produced by audience strategy consultancy AKAS.
Women of colour also face “extraordinary exclusion” across all elements of the news landscape in the US, according to the “From Outrage to Opportunity: How to Include the Missing Perspectives of Women of All Colors in News Leadership and Coverage”.
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Researchers spent five months looking at trends in six English-speaking countries: India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S, putting together decades of academic literature and analysing millions of news stories. The resulting report, hosted by the International Women in Media Foundation, is the most comprehensive investigation.
Researchers spent five months looking at trends in six English-speaking countries: India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. They synthesized decades of academic literature and dug into societal norms. The nonprofit Media Ecosystems Analysis Group contributed to the effort, analyzing millions of news stories. The resulting report, hosted by the International Women in Media Foundation, is the most comprehensive investigation
The research which highlights differentials in opportunity for women as a group together, and from women of colour as a separate group, concludes that the disparity could prove a major opportunity for the global news industry as, if the imbalance is corrected in representation within both news coverage and newsrooms themselves, “greater engagement by women could revitalise the news industry and generate billions of dollars of additional revenue”.
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The report’s author, Luba Kassova, co-founder of AKAS,(pictured) said the findings of the research were a reason for both “outrage and hope”, stating that women are severely sidelined as top editors and news protagonists, while women in multi-racial societies are suffering unfathomable exclusion in leadership and their stories are routinely missed.
”Compared to their proportion in the UK working population and compared to the US and South Africa, women of colour are severely underrepresented or altogether missing from editorial roles in the UK.”
Kassova added: “Moreover, women of color are experiencing extraordinary levels of exclusion and remain invisible within news organisations and the news industry, both as leaders and as protagonists in news stories.
Included in the findings of the research was that the UK did have a “comparatively good performance” in terms of overall women’s representation in top news roles compared to the other countries analysed – the US, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – in part because of a strong showing at the helm of the major national newspapers.
The research shows little change from an earlier research four years ago in 2018 when the Status of Women of Color in the U.S. research was conducted.
News Media looked at industry figures from print, television, radio, and digital news, WMC found that women of color comprised just under 8% of staff at print publications, about 13% of staff at local television stations, and roughly 6% of staff at radio stations.
It found that an estimate 83% of their journalists are white, and about 31% are white women; meanwhile, Black women, Latina women, and Asian women each made up just under 3% of newsroom demographic. The breakdown was similar among newsroom leaders.
While the ratio of women of colour to that of white women are quite low, it remains questionable how the relative ratio depicted in the research measure up with the fact that people of colour are far fewer in the US than white people.
The research commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Foundation published in the Press Gazette, goes on to explain that television newsrooms represent twice as many white bosses as women of colour, similarly ignoring the fact people of colour are a lot fewer in America, this potentially explaining the disparity in numbers which may not necessarily be attributable to prejudice.
Although the digital media does not keep tabs on diversity, a 2017 data from the American Society of News Editors, we know that people of color constituted under 25% of online-only newsrooms and that, while women outnumbered men and dominated leadership roles in just over 30% of those spaces.
An indisputable fact is that news organizations need to improve their hiring practices to raise inclusivity and prevent the same old barriers to advancement don’t move from one year to the next: “Men tend to groom men … who [often] are like themselves, in height, coloring, and even demeanor,” PBS host and Today show veteran Ann Curry says in the report.
The frontrunner for new leadership positions is often a white man, perpetuating the vicious cycle of the same practise in subsequent circumstances.
“We’ve got to be in this at every level,” said Wanda Lloyd, a former Washington Post editor, an executive in Gannett’s newsroom, a journalism and mass communications department chair at Georgia’s Savannah State University, and one of the professionals interviewed for the WMC report.
Leaders help dictate coverage. But they also manage resources, determine who gets hired and promoted. They circulate in the community, and people in the community need to see people of color, women of color, doing what white men are doing and have long been allowed to do.”
If you have one group of people deciding which stories are important and which are not, you’re probably going to present a selective, quite possibly stereotyped version of current events that won’t resonate with an increasingly diverse audience. (Because, as the WMC report notes, white people represent a shrinking majority of the national population.)
The report described women of color as “severely underrepresented”, adding: “Women of color are experiencing extraordinary levels of cultural exclusion and remain invisible within news organisations and the news industry, both as leaders and as news protagonists/contributors in coverage.
It proposes as a solution that newsrooms consciously look for stories that would appeal to both men and women, work on their inclusive storytelling and carry out 360 degree editing – the practice of making sure to include perspectives from all around different areas of a story.
The report said: “The truth is: there is no silver bullet. While hiring more women leaders is an imperative starting point, it is simply not enough to resolve the issue. To accelerate change, women’s missing or muted voices must be amplified at each stage of the news value chain: i.e. in news leadership and newsrooms, in newsgathering, in news coverage, and in news consumption.
“Moreover, to improve gender and racial equity in news, organisations should drive change at the individual level, as typically happens now, but also at two other levels: the systemic and organisational.”
Image:lubakassova.com
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