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LONDON, Feb 15 (AFP): Women still lag far behind men when it comes to both making the news and reporting it, suggests a survey of gender bias in the world's news media, released Wednesday in London.
Newspapers, radio stations and television stations in 76 nations-but not magazines or new media-were scrutinised for the third Global Media Monitoring Project on February 16, 2005.
"Only 21 percent of news subjects-the people who are interviewed, or whom the news is about-are female," said the project's 143-page report.
"Though there has been an increase since 1995 (the year of the first monitoring project), when 17 percent of those heard and seen in the news are women, the situation in 2005 remains abysmal."
Putting the findings another way, the report added: "For every woman who appears in the news, there are five men."
Between different kinds of news media, women newsmakers were more likely to be found on television (22 percent) and least likely to be heard on radio (17 percent).
"When women do make the news, it is primarily as 'stars'-celebrities, royalty-or as 'ordinary' people," it said, while women "barely feature" in news stories as authorities or experts.
When it comes to delivering the news, the survey found signs of progress, with "a steady increase in the percentage of news items reported by women, from 28 percent in 1995 to 31 percent in 2000, reaching 37 percent in 2005".
But whereas men are more likely to handle "serious" news such as politics, "female journalists are more likely to work in the so-called 'soft' stories such as social and legal issues".
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