This weekend, about 2,200 managers from Canadian newsrooms around the country were surveyed about race and ethnicity in their organization. The results tell a sobering tale.
As of last year, 20 percent of employees were visible minorities, which works out to about 1 in 8. But when you add in disabled, aboriginal, LGBTQ, indigenous and incarcerated employees, that number drops to just 1 in 5, or about 1 in 10. It’s not just the people who don’t look like us who are hurting in Canada.
That’s the finding from the survey of editors and senior staff members for the Canadian newsrooms in the news productivity and representation report.
“The problems aren’t just with people who don’t look like us,” says Al D’Amario, director of Canadian initiatives at the Commission on the Status of Women and co-creator of the survey. “The lack of people of colour has very serious and serious implications for the journalism enterprise in Canada.”
Thirty-seven percent of Canadian newsroom staff are women, and 78 percent are male, so we know how this problem will impact our stories.
Last month, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. announced it would continue to fund a radio and television venture that had a lack of diversity. While 42 percent of Canada’s population is under 25, only 17 percent of CBC’s news employees were under the age of 35. In addition, people of color and people with disabilities comprised just 4 percent of its newsroom employees.
CBC has instituted a “new director of diversity and inclusion,” Jad Mouawad, to find ways to address the issue. Mouawad “will lead the CBC’s efforts to create a more inclusive, representative and diverse workforce and will work with our partners, partners in the news ecosystem and stakeholders across all areas of the organization to ensure its practices reflect diversity and inclusion.”
D’Amario encourages journalists to ask “questions of our institutions about how they think about the skills and talents of the people who work for them.”
She also urges organizations to hire and promote from the pipeline of young journalists and influencers who are likely to “look like them and get them out there as our new hires.”
Gaining more diversity is also important in the daily lives of journalists, D’Amario says. Whether it’s the diversity of opinions that top stories, the diversity of personal stories that people have, or the diversity of viewpoints on stories, D’Amario urges journalists to stay aware of what others are saying.
“How do you think the world works?” D’Amario asks. “You do those things, and you start making people feel less like they’re alone.”
Also on the commission’s website is the present and historical response from the newsrooms to the survey.