Now more than ever, news is the major source of information, ideas and opinions for people across the world. News is a mirror on the world. But news has traditionally been reported by men, and tends to be about men. Women’s experiences and opinions are badly neglected in most news coverage.

The news media have continually changed and expanded over the years, and today’s 24-hour news environment – whether through television and radio news channels, newspapers, or online news services – has reached into people’s homes around the world. Who covers the news and what is covered (or not) is therefore extremely significant. News tells us who and what is important.

A report from the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), coordinated by the World Association for Christian Communication, reviews almost 40,000 sources to provide a picture of news reporting since 1995. In particular, the report focuses on the balance of news between men and women: who is covered in the news, in what way and by whom.

Key findings from the 2005 report include:

• Women are under-represented in the news: only 21 percent of news subjects are female. Women’s points of view are rarely heard in the topics that dominate the news: they make the news primarily as celebrities or ‘ordinary’ people.
• Expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male: 83 percent of the experts and 86 percent of spokespersons are men.
• There has been an increase in news reporting by women, up from 28 percent of news items in 1995 to 37 percent in 2005. However, female reporters cover fewer ‘hard’ topics such as politics, and tend to disappear from the screen as they get older.
• News stories are more likely to reinforce gender stereotypes than challenge them, and in fact news that analyses gender relations, or that covers the different impact of events on men and women, is almost non-existent.
• Blatant gender stereotyping is found in a wide range of stories, including sport, crime, violence and even politics. Many news reports use language and images that reinforce gender stereotypes in a subtle way.
• Coverage frequently misses the opportunity to enrich and expand news angles by including a mix of female and male viewpoints.  

The report demonstrates that there is a still a serious bias in the news to the extent that women – 52 percent of the world’s population – appear to be invisible. The author suggests that fair portrayal of women in the news should be considered a professional journalistic criterion like any other. Over the next five years, she recommends action in the following areas:

• dialogue between activists, researchers and journalists to call attention to the imbalance in their news coverage and encourage accountability in news organisations
• implementing new and existing media policies to promote gender balance in news output
• organisational targets and in-house monitoring to ensure equal representation of women and men in the news
• gender-awareness training for journalists
• support for media education that helps citizens to analyse gender imbalances and stereotyping in news content
• building on GMMP-style monitoring at regional, national and local levels and across different media.

Without these approaches, news will continue to be gender-blind, or at worst gender-biased. With a concerted effort from all media, there is a possibility that men and women will begin to make the news equally.

Source(s):
‘Who Makes the News?’, Global Media Monitoring Project 2005, WACC: London, by Margaret Gallagher, 2006 (PDF) Full document.

Funded by: World Association for Christian Communication, Open Society Foundation, General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church, FinnChurchAid, Bread for All

id21 Research Highlight: 8 March 2007

Further Information:
Margaret Gallagher

Contact the contributor: gallammv@aol.com

World Association for Christian Communication
308, Main Street,
Toronto
Ontario M4C 4X7
Canada

Tel: +1 416 691 1999
Fax: +1 416 691 1997
Contact the contributor: info@waccglobal.org

World Association for Christian Communication

Other related links:
‘Women’s voices get a boost: accessing technologies for empowerment’

‘Courting the Web: what's in it for women's wants and wares?’

Here is the News: Where are the women? Where are the men? (PDF)

The Network of Women in Media, India

International Women’s Media Foundation