Carleton University’s journalism school and The Canadian Press tapped into expertise from major news organizations during a recent roundtable to compare notes on current best practise in fostering greater diversity in sourcing by journalists.
Top executives from The Canadian Press, CBC, Bloomberg, BBC, National Public Radio and Informed Opinions shared insights into their formal efforts to give voice to underrepresented communities through their journalism.
Carleton University’s School of Journalism and The Canadian Press were recently awarded SSHRC funding for a partnership that seeks to diversify the sources used by Canada’s leading national news service and to help other media outlets give a greater voice to underrepresented communities.
The Canadian Press is partnering with Carleton’s journalism school on the project to identify, track and analyze the news organization’s choice of interview subjects to gain an accurate picture of the diversity of sources (or lack thereof) when it comes to how sources self-identify according to gender, race/ethnicity and, ultimately, other equity-seeking groups.
The goal is to use the knowledge gained from an examination of journalistic practice in sourcing at The Canadian Press to develop and refine a self-identification survey tool for fostering greater diversity in sourcing that could have broad implications for journalism education and industry practice.
A first step in the project was the Feb. 23 roundtable with media practitioners who shared rich details about how their organizations have been working to foster diversity in sourcing.
Shari Graydon from Informed Opinions spoke about the organization’s efforts to amplify the voices of women and gender-diverse individuals in media coverage.
Miranda Holt briefed the group on the BBC’s 50:50 Equality Project, an initiative started in BBC News in 2017 to increase the representation of women on air. Since then, it has been taken up by 730 teams across the BBC.
Sharon Wu, CBC’s Manager, Media Representation, Content Management & Preservation and Anand Ram, Senior Producer, talked about the journey that CBC has taken with its source diversity tracking, including the successes and challenges with continuing to evolve the work.
Keith Woods, chief diversity officer at National Public Radio (NPR), provided details on NPR’s work documenting the race, ethnicity, gender, and geographic location of sources.
And Laura Zelenko, senior executive editor, described Bloomberg’s New Voices initiative, which aims to build the definitive global database of women newsmakers in business and finance.
The roundtable included CP’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Joanna Smith and CP Business Editor Kate Hopwood, who are both part of the research project team. Carleton’s participants included project director Allan Thompson (who is also head of Carleton’s journalism program), journalism professors Randy Boswell, Nana aba Duncan and Brett Popplewell and research assistants Gabby Calugay-Casuga, Lahari Nanda, Tobin Ng and Rachel Watts.
A cross section of journalists, editors, journalism educators and advocates for equity-seeking communities were also invited to take part in the roundtable to provide feedback on the project concept.
As a next step, the journalism students who are working as research assistants on the project will be joining the CP bureaus in Ottawa and Toronto for two-week internships that will allow them to be embedded in the organization and better prepare themselves for the research work to follow.
Monday, February 28, 2022 in General, Journalism News
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