Today is World Press Freedom Day, a day designated to take stock of the state of free press and expression around the world and to remember the journalists who were imprisoned, attacked, and lost their lives in the pursuit of truth.
The traditional definition of press freedom focuses on government interference in the news media, but it does not consider some of the most ubiquitous ways press freedom of women, gender-diverse people, and people of color are infringed upon every day, starting with the lack of gender equity and diversity in newsrooms.
A 2020 report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found no discernible improvement in the representation of women in newsrooms and in leadership positions during the past two decades in any of the examined countries. In the United States, despite some recent signs of progress, just 2.6 percent of all journalism staffs and leaders are Black women, according to the Women’s Media Center.
This has real consequences on what makes the news, how issues are covered, and therefore how they are understood and discussed by the public.
How can we expect informed dialogue, debate, and progress on critical issues affecting societies if women are not the reporters, sources, subjects, or experts? Issues about which women and mothers have the most knowledge and experience cannot be covered properly without the inclusion of their voices, expertise, and perspectives. This includes subjects such as child care, elder care, reproductive health, gender violence, and sexual harassment — not to mention nuanced reporting on business, politics, public education, and criminal justice.
The results have played out for years in the U.S. news industry, which is losing the trust and confidence of its audience because people do not see themselves, their points of view, or their concerns represented.
A 2018 Pew Research Center report found the journalism field is more white and more male than U.S. workers in all other occupations and industries combined. Oftentimes, the news media’s claim of objectivity is nothing more than the elite, white, male perspective that casts story subjects identifying as people of color, immigrant, LGBTQI+, working class, or Muslim as the other. This conscious or unconscious bias, which has dominated newsroom culture for generations, tends also to preference statements by government officials and accept and repeat harmful stereotypes.
Coverage of the shootings of six Asian American women in Atlanta provides an instructive example. Initial headlines of the atrocity emphasized irrelevant details and centered on the police and perpetrator’s version of the incident. After heavy critique from Asian American reporters and advocates, the tone of coverage was slowly corrected to more accurately reflect the shootings as a hate crime and to shift the focus to the victims and loved ones left behind.
The Asian American Journalists Association jumped in and provided guidance on how to cover the shootings. This included cautioning about fueling stereotypes about sex workers and sex trafficking, explaining the history of racism and violence against Asian women, and even providing a tutorial on how to format and pronounce the victims’ names.
What Philanthropy Can Do
So what can be done? Numerous nonprofit organizations and researchers around the world are supporting women’s press freedom by documenting inequities, providing training and resources, and working to create safe and equitable work environments for women journalists.
Philanthropy has an opportunity to support these endeavors in a much more significant way.
For instance, one area of urgent concern is an escalation of online vitriol against individual women reporters, which has received minimal response from the social-media platforms that enable this violent behavior or the newsrooms that should provide cover and protection for their staffs. A report from the International Women’s Media Foundation (which Elisa heads), found that 70 percent of the 600 women journalists surveyed across the globe had experienced more than one type of harassment, threat, or attack in the past.
Online violence has serious repercussions for what gets covered. The women surveyed said they often engage in self-censorship, making calculations about whether to do a story and what language to use based on possible backlash once the piece is published. One-third said online harassment is causing them to leave journalism, which undermines progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion and slows the attainment of leadership roles for women and people of color.
In response, the International Women’s Media Foundation is leading a Coalition Against Online Violence to provide support for women journalists facing online attacks. This includes helping them improve their digital security and empowering media organizations to keep their employees safer online by offering training and online courses that assist them in identifying online abuse.
The coalition’s Online Violence Response Hub, launching this summer, will serve as a go-to resource for those being targeted as well as those seeking to support them. Comprising more than 30 nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, the hub will scale up funding to provide more resources to help women journalists address acute abuse and psychological trauma and prepare or defend against an attack.
Focus on Black Female Journalists
The specific challenges facing Black women journalists also need greater recognition and support. While publications ask both freelance and full-time Black journalists to put their lives at risk to report on racial injustice and the resulting protests, they rarely provide them with the resources to process the trauma incurred both on the job and in daily life. In a recent letter to its members, Dorothy Tucker, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, urged reporters to take advantage of the organization’s coping and mental-health resources as they balanced the professionalism needed to cover the trial of Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin with the reality that George Floyd, the man he suffocated, could have been them or their loved one.
A new resource, the Black Journalists Therapy Relief Fund, supported in part by the MacArthur Foundation (where Kathy works), provides financial assistance for Black journalists who are unable to pay for mental-health support. These and other resources — including concerted efforts to nurture and retain women of color — are critical to keeping women in journalism. A 2020 study of 101 people of color who left journalism found that 80 percent were women, and more than half were Black women.
Questions for Foundations to Ask
These days, “saving journalism” has become a mantra within a news industry faced with diminishing revenues and fragmented audiences. But propping up media organizations that do not reflect the people they serve or protect their staff from harm will not help journalism in the long run.
Foundations that already support journalism should regularly ask grantees about gender and diversity in their newsrooms. And they should offer flexible financial support as needed so news organizations can attain the guidance necessary to create policies focused on equitable recruitment and retention. Grant makers should also find out if newsroom leaders have procedures in place to help staff experiencing online attacks and whether the newsroom culture supports and protects women, people of color, and LGBTQI+ journalists who are disproportionately targeted.
A free, fair, and flourishing press requires a culture shift, one that values and develops meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and seeks to move from traditional notions of objectivity toward an embrace of nuance, perspective, and context. There can be no true press freedom without equal representation in the news media.