White editors are “significantly overrepresented” among top editors in five countries, a Reuters Institute report has found.
The report showed 18 per cent of the 88 top editors are non-white in top news media brands from Brazil, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In the UK and Germany, none of the outlets in the Reuters Institute sample had a non-white top editor.
The Race and Leadership in the News Media 2020 report took data from the top ten offline (TV, print and radio) and online news brands in terms of weekly usage.
The report added that the UK’s Financial Times and the US’s Vox have women of colour as editors-in-chief, but they are not included in the sample.
In its conclusion, the 2020 report warned that the impact of the coronavirus could worsen representation in the news media – based on previous data collected in the US:
“The years following the financial crisis, for example, saw a sustained decline in the number of minority journalists in US newsrooms as thousands were laid off in ways that further exacerbated racial inequalities. There is a real risk that the impact of the coronavirus crisis could have the same effect.”
Read the findings in full here.