Who Makes the News: 6th Global Media Monitoring Project

"...studying how women and men are represented in the news is important because often what people see is what they believe. And when it comes to gender, rectifying the mistaken assumptions caused by discrimination, misogyny, and patriarchal beliefs can only be done through a clearsighted reappraisal and revision of news policies and practices." - Philip Lee, World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) General Secretary

The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) is a research and advocacy initiative working to improve gender equality in and through the news media. Every five years, the GMMP spends one day monitoring the news to track the representation of women in news media across the globe. The research seeks to capture a snapshot of gender on one "ordinary" news day, which is defined as one in which the news agenda contains the run-of-the-mill mix of stories and everyday articles on politics, economy, social issues, crime, and other issues. In 2020, for the first time, the project included an examination of the roles of Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, racial groups, and the elderly in the news.

This sixth GMMP assessment is based on data from 116 country teams and examines 30,172 stories published in newspapers, broadcast on radio and television, and disseminated on news websites and via news tweets. As explained in the report, "The emergence and rapid proliferation of Covid-19 made the implementation of the 6th Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) the most extraordinary since the initiative's inception in 1995. Yet, despite the pandemic, the media sample was the highest ever."

The research provides overall statistics and analysis, as well as more detailed country case studies. The analysis is based on the Gender Equality in the News Media index (GEM Index or GEM-I), which calculates the average gender equality gap based on six GMMP indicators: in people in the news (subjects and sources), in participation as reporters, in voice as experts and as spokespersons, and in presence in economic and in political news.

The following are just a few overall findings:

• While progress is being made, the report states that "all things remaining equal, it will take at least a further 67 years to close the average gender equality gap in traditional news media."
• From 1995 to 2020, the largest strides toward parity were made in radio, and television replaced newspapers as the medium in which women appear most.
• In the year 2015, when Twitter monitoring was introduced, the presence of women on Twitter was fairly high, at 40%; in 2020, it stood at 32%. Also on Twitter, the percentage of news stories reported by women in 2020 was at 43%.
• Female experts are underrepresented in the media across media topics covered. In COVID-19-related stories, in politics, and in government globally, 22% of women subjects appear as experts. In science and health, globally, 26% of women subjects appear as experts.
• Following stagnation between 2005 and 2015, women's visibility as reporters increased by three percentage points overall across print and broadcast news.
• The news media often exclude vulnerable women and marginalised groups. In Latin America, indigenous people make up only 1% of subjects and sources in television news stories, despite representing 8% of the population. Globally, persons living with disabilities are referred to as such only 1% of the time.

The report concludes with an Action Plan 2021-2025, which expands upon actions agreed upon in 2015 to take into account new challenges that have emerged since the fifth GMMP. Suggested actions are offered for media regulation and self-regulation bodies, media houses, civil society, journalism and media training institutions, and funding agencies.

The GMMP findings are available as a global report (in four languages), as well as in regional reports and national reports.

In 2020, the project also offered video recordings by GMMP country coordinators, who share highlights of their country's findings and offer actions to accelerate the pace of change in gender equality in the news media.

The GMMP findings can also be explored visually on an interactive platform, the GenMap, which can be accessed here.