ABSTRACT
The disparity between male and female experts on broadcast outlets – those invited to be interviewed and give opinion and commentary – has long been evident. In some cases broadcasters have argued that they were obliged to interview many more men because men held important positions in society. However, in other cases – where the studio guest was being used as an expert commentator – the reason for the big disparity seemed harder to justify. City University in 2012 started a project to count and monitor the numbers of women experts on air on a range of broadcast outlets. They demonstrated a ratio of around 4:1 male to female experts. This campaign to highlight the gap led to targeted training of potential female experts by the BBC from a range of subject areas. And in the period since 2012–2015 there has been a discernible shift towards a more balanced use of experts in many programs. Yet the ratio in June 2016 remained at just over 3–1, whereas other figures show that the ratio of female expertise in society (using the law, academic and expert witnesses as benchmarks) is more likely to be 2.75 to 1. The surveys also identified how many male/female in-house reporters appeared on selected mainstream news and current affairs programs. There appears to be an ongoing disparity in the numbers of female and male reporters in mainstream news programming, This is interesting because broadcasters have total control over the reporters they employ so the argument that there are more influential men in society is irrelevant here. Furthermore there is a strong preponderance of women graduating from TV and broadcasting courses at universities. Evidence shows that news broadcasters actively chose to use men as reporters over women. There are nearly three times as many men as women on average across four flagship programs (ITV News at Ten, BBC News at Ten, Channel Four News and the Today program) This chapter will explore and ask why this might be?
