Black people are 55.9% of the Brazilian population, but in the three main newspapers in the country they constitute only 9.5% of the people who sign texts published in the printed editions. Women, who are also a slight majority in the general population (51.1%), are a little more than a third of the people with bylines in these newspapers. A study by Brazilian researchers warns about "a very serious cultural, social, and political problem that shows no signs of having been mitigated by the few recent initiatives to promote diversity in newsrooms.”
The research paper "Race, gender and the press: Who writes for the main newspapers in Brazil?" was conducted by the Affirmative Action Multidisciplinary Study Group (Gemaa, by its Portuguese acronym), from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and published in May. After two studies in which it analyzed the race and gender profile of columnists in the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo, Estadão, and O Globo in 2016 and 2020, Gemaa turned to the analysis of the people who published signed texts in a sample of the printed editions of the three newspapers between January and July 2021.
Poema Portela, one of the researchers responsible for the study, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR) that the focus of this research came from a provocation of the Network of Black Journalists for Diversity in Communication.
"[Network representatives] brought up this concern, coming from their professional experience, of feeling that there were fewer opportunities or more difficulty in accessing opportunities within these large media outlets. So, in general, they end up in a precarious work position (...) or going to an alternative media space," Portela said.
The researchers identified 4,331 articles and columns written by 1,190 people in the sample analyzed. After that, they established by heteroidentification (a method of identifying a person from the perception of another) data such as gender, race and age group for each one of them.
Women were 36.6% and men were 59.6% of the people who signed the texts collected from the three newspapers (the remaining 3.7% were not identified). The disparity between men and women varied depending on age group: women are twice as numerous as men up to the age of 29, and continue with a slight percentage advantage until the age of 49. After the age of 50, men are in the majority, and they are five times more prevalent after the age of 70.
Among Black people the younger age groups are overrepresented as well, the study points out. This data "may show a greater openness of newsrooms to racial inclusion in recent times, but it is small and, if it exists, pales in comparison to the deep racial inequality that marks this activity," the researchers wrote.
According to Portela, "At the end of the day, the diagnosis is that any movement that is being made [toward racial inclusion] is still very tentative." "In the long-term view, lacking a more assertive movement for change, the tendency is for this inequality to extend over time," she said.
White people are the absolute majority, signing 84% of the texts published in the three newspapers. Black people are 9.5% and yellow people are 1.8%. Only one Indigenous person was identified in the sample. "If we compare these numbers to the proportion of these racial groups in the Brazilian population, we conclude that the representation of Whites is more than twice their population proportion," the researchers wrote. The representation of Black people, on the other hand, is almost six times smaller than their proportion in the population, according to the most recent data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
Closing the analysis of newspaper columns, the study classifies the scenario as "an almost total White supremacy in the production of opinion pieces." White people constitute 92.7% of staff columnists in the three newspapers. "It is as if Blacks, who constitute more than half of the Brazilian population, have nothing to say about politics, policies, and the debate about values in our society," the study states. The gender disparity is also slightly accentuated in this space, with the proportion of two men for every woman as a staff columnist in these newspapers.
The study also analyzed the race and gender composition of the newspapers' editorial teams based on the names found in the printed editions. In Estadão, White people were 100% of the sample; in O Globo, 93%; and in Folha, 86%.
For the researchers, "Such a system of inequalities operates in favor of whites, particularly white men, giving them enormous power of influence over the process of formation of public opinion, so fundamental to the functioning of democratic rule.”
Portela said that surveys such as those conducted by Gemaa "have a role in highlighting things that are almost obvious." "If 90% of the journalists [in these news outlets] are white, this is visible somewhere, at least for those who circulate in this environment," she said.
In this case, the investigation sought to gather evidence of what the Black Journalists Network presented as the personal experience of the professionals who conform it. The expectation is that this evidence will be used to feed processes of change within the newspapers, said the researcher.
"What can be done from here? Within Folha, for example, if they are thinking about affirmative action, about initiatives to bring more black people or people with any other marker of inequality into the company, let them use [the research] as an input, to understand that there are things that they need to look at that may not be being looked at," said Portela.
LJR contacted representatives from Estadão, Folha, and O Globo to ask them about the results of the study and the actions being taken to increase diversity among the people who work for each newspaper.
Estadão
Eurípedes Alcântara, journalism director of Estadão, told LJR that "the disparity between women and men who have bylines in the three newspapers reflects a reality that is reflected in almost, if not all, sectors of the economy, in which the immense advances in the participation of women in companies is still not in sync with Brazilian demographics."
On the gender disparity according to age groups, he believes that "there are more young women in newsrooms because there are more women coming out of journalism schools every year. There are fewer women in older age groups in newsrooms for reasons observed in Brazilian society as a whole: Children and greater family responsibilities force women to make choices that unfortunately diminish the momentum of their careers.
The racial distribution in the Estadão newsroom, on the other hand, "mirrors the census of the population of professionals who graduate from journalism," he says. "The racial distribution of the people who write for Estadão and are not employees of the newspaper is mostly white, due to structural and historical distortions in Brazilian society. It does not denote any active editorial preference for white authors. Certainly more white authors send articles to the newspaper than Black, brown or Asian descent authors," Alcântara said.
"In both the private and public sectors, the presence of Black and brown people in the workforce, and even more in management positions, is a faithful portrait of the historical neglect of Brazilian society together with the vigorous, disciplined, and constant promotion of these minorities. There are fewer Black and brown people signing texts in Estadão because there are fewer Black and brown people contributing texts to the newspaper. There are fewer Black and brown journalists in newsrooms because schools deliver fewer Black and brown journalists to us every year, especially in the southeast where we are located. This is why we actively seek to increase diversity by bringing in candidates for the Focus course [Estadão's training program] from all regions of Brazil," he said.
Alcântara also said that "diversity is essential for journalistic quality" and that the newspaper has acted to increase diversity among its contributors.
"Estadão has this year established close and constant relations with Educafro and Zumbi dos Palmares [civil society organizations], which has substantially increased the presence of Black authors in the newspaper. With the help of Educafro and outside consultants specialized in racial issues, Estadão will soon begin to revise its Writing Manual. For the next six months we will have, every week, a Black columnist in the newspaper. We will try to maintain this frequency next year, depending on the experience that will begin now. In partnerships with "Black media" we will bring in at least three articles a week for a year to be done by these partner news outlets or by Estadão in collaboration with them," said the journalism director of Estadão.
Folha de S.Paulo
Flavia Lima, Folha's assistant editorial secretary for diversity, told LJR that according to the internal Census conducted in 2022, "men represent 54% of the editorial staff, women are 43%, and we still have 1% non-binary and 1% who gave other answers." She pointed out that the Census has been carried out annually with the objective of achieving gender parity among the people who collaborate with the newspaper. To this end, Folha has developed projects "to increase the participation of women not only in the newsroom, but among readers and among the newspaper's sources," she said.
"Among them, I would like to mention Voz Delas, an internally developed digital tool that monitors the volume of women heard as journalists' sources; our Source Guide, which is being improved and includes primarily women, Black and Indigenous people, and people with disabilities. And the Projeto Leitoras, which, since 2021, gathers women in focus groups around news themes, and was formulated in order to increase the participation of female voices of different profiles in the newspaper and, as a consequence, subscriptions by this group", Lima said.
Also according to Folha's Census, in 2022 "whites were 79%, browns 10%, Blacks 8%, and Asian descent 3%", and less than 1% was Indigenous. According to her, "Folha's priority is to increase the newspaper's gender and color/race diversity (besides socioeconomic, geographic, sexual orientation, and ideological diversity, among others).
In this sense, Folha's most relevant project is "the training program for Black professionals, whose first edition occurred precisely in the first half of 2021 (the period in which Gemaa's research was conducted, which may indicate that there was not enough time to capture some changes in the newspaper)," Lima noted.
"We are aware that there’s still much to be done, including hiring more experienced Black people and in other important sections of the newspaper, such as photo," she said.
Lima also said that Folha has taken action to increase the diversity of gender, racial and other social markers among its columnists. "We have an economics column signed by a transgender person, one of our main cartoonists is a trans person, and the paper's editorial staff has two journalists who identify as such. (...) Among columns and blogs signed by a single person, women are 36% and non-whites are 13%. In the most recent invitations made to columnists, it is possible to say that gender parity and the racial issue have been taken into consideration", she said.
"I think that Folha has placed diversity as a priority. The numbers show that the task is not simple and has been performed at variable speeds, but there is an understanding of how important it is to have professionals with distinct experiences participating in all stages of journalistic production. I like to think that there is no going back," she said.
O Globo
Flávia Barbosa, executive editor of O Globo, told LJR that in the newspaper's newsroom, "considering all the positions from intern and designer to editors and director," women are 47% of the professionals and men, 53%. The gender imbalance is greater among columnists, "despite the fact that diversity (not only gender, but also racial diversity) was one of the fundamental criteria for the expansion of the Opinion team in January 2021," she said.
She noted that "the texts published in the editorial areas of the print edition are, today, only a fraction of the production of the newspaper O Globo, which is much larger in volume in its online version." "Several texts are even produced by editors or even reporters who do not necessarily sign the texts — that is, there is a 'backstage' that seems to me not captured exactly" in the research conducted by Gemaa, Barbosa said.
"But it is clear that, like most professional newsrooms, the one at Globo still shows reflections of the past, when journalism was a mostly male profession. As a profession that demands too much in terms of time, it was also historically more hostile to women, who, in our society, have the challenge of balancing career and family," she said.
However, she said she does not see the gender inequality among the people who collaborate with the newspaper "as reflecting a deliberate choice, in which 'publishable' stories or more noble agendas are directed to male journalists."
"One cannot, of course, rule out unconscious biases, which belong not to journalists as professionals but to the citizens they are, embedded in a culture/society. But the growing level of personal awareness and group discussion about the need for diversity in the newsroom has made us more aware of these 'biases,'" Barbosa said.
According to her, Editora Globo, which publishes the newspaper O Globo, conducted its first Diversity Census in 2022, "to have a solid picture of the organization."
"We have no doubt that non-white people are vastly under-represented in the newsroom, and we have made efforts to consider racial criteria when hiring. There are two reasons for this situation: The burden of the past and an absence of an affirmative action policy. We are building, starting with the Census, this structural policy. But we don't wait. In the last five years, for example, we have added race to the criteria for selecting interns," she said.
Barbosa said that Editora Globo has been looking for ways to improve hiring, professional development and promotion processes in the newsrooms of the three daily newspapers it publishes: O Globo, Extra and Valor Econômico. "We talk here about opening the gate even wider, but also about spreading ladders," so that "professionals from disadvantaged groups have the opportunity to grow and compete for the spaces that today they hardly occupy," she said.
"The most important thing is to always be clear about the picture of the present and commit to a different future. Then it's crossing that bridge. We believe that we are on this path. O Globo has the absolute belief that plurality throughout the journalistic process — of the experiences that formulate a story idea, of the views that guide its research and editing, and of the conscience that gives an opinion — is an ally of the most complete information and will help us better accomplish our mission. The more the composition of the newsroom mirrors the demographics and experiences of Brazil, the more we will be able to portray Brazil, reflect on Brazil, and inform Brazil," she said.
