Perspective: One news anchor decided to put more women on air. Now his idea has gone global.
By Margaret Sullivan Margaret Sullivan Media columnist Email Bio Follow Media columnist May 15 at 7:04 AM Ros Atkins, who hosts the popular BBC news show “Outside Source,” had long realized that he was giving men more on-air time than women — and so were most other media decision-makers.“Something snapped in me,” he told me, “and I thought, however unlikely, I’d like to try and take this on.”
“Similar initiatives have failed over the years, in large part because they are designed by the HR department and passed down to the newsroom from on high,” said Vivian Schiller, a former news executive at NPR and Twitter and now with the Civil Foundation. Fortune magazine’s executive editor, Adam Lashinsky, said his staff has long acknowledged their pages featured “too many middle-aged white men in ties and white shirts.”
The BBC template doesn’t strive to balance men and women on a daily basis, which would be journalistically unsound and probably impossible, but rather over the course of each month.The measurement purposely excludes show hosts and major newsmakers, such as British Prime Minister Theresa May, because those aren’t controllable factors.
Aneeta Rattan, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, said media appearances can both create and combat damaging stereotypes.
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