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https://theconversation.com/male-voices-dominate-the-news-heres-how-journalists-and-female-experts-can-turn-this-around-160209>
"Last week, the ABC announced it had achieved a milestone it had been trying to
reach for more than two years. For the first time, in the previous month of
March, it had equal numbers of women and men appearing in its news coverage.
This may seem surprising. You might expect the gender ratio of people quoted in
the news would mirror the gender split of our society.
But that’s not the case. Studies of news coverage from around the world have
consistently found more than 70% of people seen, quoted and heard in the news
are men, while women make up less than 30%.
When it comes to “expert” sources, around 80% are men.
In response to this imbalance, the BBC started its 50:50 equality project in
2017. The ABC followed suit in December 2018. Other media organisations, such
as Bloomberg, have introduced similar initiatives.
Despite these encouraging programs, the Global Media Monitoring Project, which
analyses sources in news content from around the world on a set day every five
years, has reported overall progress in bringing women’s voices into the news
is “extremely slow”.
This means news tends to be male-centric, and women are denied the legitimacy,
authority and status that often come with inclusion in the news. As a
journalist and news researcher, I was interested to learn more about why women
are so under-represented.
Is it because, as some journalists will argue, women are reluctant to be
interviewed as news sources? Or is it because journalists tend to turn to the
same sources again and again, and most of these experienced sources are men?
My research, which included interviewing 30 female academic experts about their
attitudes towards interacting with the news media, suggests the latter is more
likely."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
