In 1993, two studies conducted at Ryerson Polytechnic University by Professor John Miller and graduate student Kimberly Prince came to some sobering conclusions regarding diversity and Canada's newspapers.
Newsroom Staffing
- In 41 daily newsroom surveyed across Canada, there are 2,620 professional journalists (supervisors, reporters, photographers, artists and copy editors). Only 67 are nonwhite. That's 2.6 percent, or five times less than the percentage of non-whites in the Canadian population.
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- Just four native Canadian journalists and 16 blacks work in those newsrooms.
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- No one seems to think these low numbers pose a problem. Ninety-three percent of the editors feel the climate in their newsroom does not discourage either the hiring or promotion of non-whites. Yet only 11 of the papers say they have a strong commitment to hire minorities. One cites "backlash from whites" as an excuse for not doing more.
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Depiction in Print
- If you read the largest newspapers in five of Canada's most cosmopolitan cities, it's easy to form the following impression of visible minorities: Half are either athletes or entertainers; if they're in the news otherwise, they're probably in trouble; and few make any contribution to business or have noteworthy lifestyles.
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- Minorities were depicted in 420 of 2,141 photographs published in a random week's editions of the Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Winnipeg Free Press, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun and Montreal Gazette. Only six percent of those pictures ran in lifestyle sections; and only three percent appeared in business sections. Thirty-six percent were pictures of athletes.
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- Only 14 percent of the 895 local news stories in those papers mentioned minorities or were about issues that directly affected minorities. This is far less than the 20 percent minority share of the combined populations of the five cities. Minorities also tended to be portrayed more negatively (49 percent) than positively (42 percent) in those stories.
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Diversity in Local News Stories
In this study, a story was considered positive if it was about a person of color achieving something, or if the angle tended to represent a minority viewpoint. This would include, for example, a September 25, 1993 Toronto Star article about Aboriginal director Alanis Obamsawin winning a film award, and a Vancouver Sun story the same day on an Asian-Canadian launching a human rights discrimination suit against a private school that wouldn't admit her son.
This study saw great discrepancies in the tone used by these papers in stories concerning non-whites.
- The Calgary Herald's margin was 75 percent negative to 19 percent positive
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- The Toronto Sun's was 61 percent negative to 21 percent positive
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- The Montreal Gazette wrote positively about minorities 72 percent of the time, and negatively 17 percent of the time
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- The Toronto Star and Winnipeg Free Press tended to be more balanced
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The Ryerson study suggests Canadian papers could benefit from policies being adopted by large American papers to promote diversity in everyday news coverage. A "mainstreaming" checklist issued to all news staff at The Seattle Times, for example, suggests that reporters and editors should ask:
- Have I sought diverse sources for this story?
- Am I employing 'tokenism' by allowing one minority person to represent a community?
- Am I furthering or battling stereotypes?
The study concluded that "Change doesn't happen without commitment from the top. So far, most Canadian publishers just don't seem willing to make that commitment."
Has the situation improved?
Source: Adapted from "How Canada's daily newspapers shut out minorities." by John Miller in Media Magazine, July, 1994.
