We are all biased, so how can we make journalism more inclusive?
By: Vera Penêda
Tags: Inclusion, Insights, Diversity, Journalism, Media

It’s time to accept newsroom diversity efforts have failed. Despite decades of making a case for more inclusion and representation in journalism, despite numerous dedicated studies and initiatives, most newsrooms are still not an accurate mirror of the society they seek to capture and inform.

Wherever you look, the numbers are grim. In Germany, where the European Journalism Centre held its last News Impact Summit of 2019, one in four citizens have a migrant background, but only two to three per cent of journalists are from migrant families, according to one study. The journalism industry in the UK is 94% white and 86% university-educated.

That minorities and people of colour cannot find themselves reflected in those writing the news naturally leads to trust in the media remaining low. This hits journalists where it hurts. It is difficult for newsrooms to cast themselves as champions of truth if they are so homogeneous. At a time when media companies are increasingly turning to subscription or membership models for revenue, it is unlikely that audiences will pay for content that neither represents them nor reflects their concerns.

During our Summit in Munich, we went through the latest developments on this pressing challenge. Here are eight learnings from our discussions:

1.Become an ally for inclusion

“I am not sure I am the right person to be up here,” noted Charlotte Haunhorst, the managing editor of JETZT, a young cross-media magazine by national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Charlotte is what most people would see as quintessentially German, but recognises JETZT needs to reflect greater diversity. Based in Munich, Charlotte has made it one of her key goals, as a young woman in a legacy media organisation, to push for diversity outside the Berlin media bubble.

Charlotte Haunhorst, the managing editor of JETZT, shares the strategies put in place in order to make the newsroom and the content of the magazine more diverse.

“I guess sometimes you just need to be brave,” she said, explaining how JETZT decided to go against the tide and convinced management at SZ to take active steps toward inclusion. As a result, the magazine adopted more inclusive language and updated its content with a dedicated column for LGBTQI issues.

Lara Joannides from the BBC showed what men can do to advance gender balance in the newsroom. Lara leads the 50:50 project, the BBC’s biggest collective initiative to increase female representation in its content. The project was actually created by a man, Ros Atkins, who during a four-hour drive listening to the BBC realised that only male voices had been on air. He got his team to monitor the number of women on air in order to produce more balanced stories.

2. The problem comes from the top

Many journalists in Dutch newsrooms still turn their heads around when they see a female journalist with a headscarf entering the door, said Hadjar Benmiloud, creator of Vileine Academy. The platform started out as a feminist magazine until Hadjar realised that no matter how popular the content was, it was still hard getting funds to sustain the project. That is how Vileine became an academy to train aspiring female journalists.

This approach is paying off as 80% of Vileine’s students have secured jobs in newsrooms. But Hadjar’s plans have also pivoted to consultancy and media partnerships. “Selling diverse talent is not enough. There is no diversity success without inclusive management,” she said. This is why Vileine Academy wants its collaboration with newsrooms to have a real purpose, not simply be seen as a PR stunt. “Newsrooms need to look at the top to see power imbalances, blind spots, and lack of feedback mechanisms that trickle down to the rest of the workplace,” she said. Yet, not all of them are ready for such introspection.

Part of the problem is that diversity is simply not a priority. While some improvements have been made, such as ensuring diversity through paid internships or making editorial meetings more participatory, in most cases, top management continues to be overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged.

Edith Heitkämper, from non-profit ProQuote Medien, talks with Lara Joannides, who leads the BBC Project 50:50 and Marverine Cole, a journalist and lecturer at Birmingham City University on how to improve gender balance in the newsroom.

3. Data can drive diversity

“We’re so used to seeing a dominance of men in the media that we actually think it’s balanced, but data is key to understanding the actual balance,” explained Lara Joannides from the BBC. The numbers provided by the 50:50 project were key to making other team managers understand how one-sided, and therefore, inaccurate, their reporting was due to the lack of women’s voices in the stories.

And what role do women play in the decision-making process? In 100 regional newspapers in Germany, only 7.4 per cent of editors-in-chief are female, according to a study on gender distribution in leadership positions.

Gender representation is one of the challenges of the wider issue of diversity. “Migrants are barely a respected audience in Germany, neither adequately represented in newsrooms or broadcasting councils,” confirmed Christine Horz, a researcher at the Institute of Media Studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum, who is currently running a study on the participation of people with migration backgrounds in German newsrooms. “There is a lack of awareness of the necessity of diversity in newsrooms. We need a top-down strategy, otherwise, it will not work. That is why we focus on raising awareness among chief editors and politicians,” said Christine, recalling that the media, public opinion, and policymaking all influence each other.