Who's+On+the+News?

Links: [|White Noise]

An **Extra!** survey finds that the dominant voices on the leading public radio stations in seven U.S. urban markets are overwhelmingly white and predominantly male.

The survey, which looked at the ethnicity and gender of the stations' daytime hosts and news anchors, found that 73 out of 83 were non-Latino whites (88 percent). Fifty-seven of the daytime hosts and anchors were male (69 percent).

Six of the hosts were African-American, two were Asian-American and two were Arab-American. (Hosts who appeared on multiple stations were counted once for each station.) Just one Latino host appeared during any station's daytime broadcasts, while no Native American hosts showed up in the survey.

The dominance of white, male voices contrasts with public radio's professed mission of inclusiveness, especially when considering the diversity of the metropolitan areas the stations serve.

[|Who's On the News?] A study of **ABC World News Tonight**, **CBS Evening News** and **NBC Nightly News** in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.

[|Power Sources]

While women made up only 15 percent of total sources, they represented more than double that share-- 40 percent-- of the ordinary citizens in the news. This reflects a tendency to quote men as the vast majority of authoritative voices while presenting women as non-experts; women made up only 9 percent of the professional and political voices that were presented. More than half of the women (52 percent) who appeared on the news were presented as average citizens, whereas only 14 percent of male sources were.

The balance was roughly equal among networks. **NBC**, with 18 percent, had slightly more female sources (of whom 53 percent were non-authorities), while **ABC** and **CBS** both presented 14 percent (of whom 48 percent and 55 percent, respectively, were ordinary citizens).

Even in coverage of gender-related policies (which made up 0.2 percent of coverage), women made up only 43 percent of the sources. On such issues as equal opportunity, gender equality and discrimination, partisan sources made up 24 percent of the total; 71 percent of these were Republicans and 29 percent Democrats. All of these partisan sources were men. Women were presented as non-expert citizens 77 percent of the time in gender stories. Men, by contrast, spoke as experts in their fields 100 percent of the time in such stories.





Statistics on minority representation both in the news and behind the scenes, broken up into different categories: []

"A study of **ABC World News Tonight**, **CBS Evening News** and **NBC Nightly News** in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican." []


 * __Representation of Missing Children:__**

October 15, 2008: __Chicago Defender__ Article "Missing, Murdered Black Youth get Unequal National Media Coverage" The __Chicago Defender__ is a black weekly newspaper that has been in publication since 1905. []
 * Endangered Missing vs. Endangered Runaway?
 * Only 10 black girls, out of 31, were declared as "endangered missing". The other 21 were labeled as "endangered runaway."

August 9, 2009: CNN Study on representation of missing children []
 * Children under 12 represented only one-sixth of cases reported
 * White children represented 67% of AP's missing children coverage, and 76% of CNN's coverage.
 * Only 11% of AP's coverage represented Hispanic children.