ITV and the BBC have been publicly shamed by a City University study after it was found that both channels are failing to represent women on news broadcasts.
In particular, the BBC was voted the worst performing broadcaster for female representation with newsreaders, equating to a gender imbalance of 3.8 male experts for every one female, and ITV News comes in slightly better with a ratio of 3.6 to one. A BBC spokesperson who responded to the report’s findings said: “Increasing female representation on screen is a priority for the BBC and our flagship news programmes ‘Today’ and ‘News at 10’ have seen increases in women reporters. We now have women in many of our high profile roles, including Mishal Husain and Sarah Montague on ‘Today’ and Laura Kuenssberg as political editor, and we’re renewing our initiative to increase the number of women experts who appear on BBC News and elsewhere.”