The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) released the findings of its second annual national Canadian Newsroom Diversity Survey late last month.
The CAJ collected data on 5,012 journalists from 242 newsrooms across radio, television, digital and print media in Canada. This is up from 3,873 journalists at 209 newsrooms in the inaugural 2021 survey results. The CAJ worked with data and analytics experts at Qlik to develop an interactive website to visualize the results.
This year’s survey represents the most comprehensive data set on the gender and racial breakdown of Canadian newsrooms. It marks the second year this survey, which is voluntary, has been distributed. In total, the CAJ sent invitations to 760 newsrooms to complete the survey.
From 2021 to 2022, the per cent of Asian journalists were the second most common in both years with 10 per cent in 2021 and 7.1 per cent in 2022. The percentage of white journalists rose from 74.9 per cent in 2021 to 77.9 per cent in 2022. Indigenous journalists slightly dropped from 6.4 per cent to 4.6 per cent. Latin journalists also dropped from 1.3 per cent in 2021 to 1.2 per cent in 2022.
The percentage of Mixed Race, Black, Middle Eastern journalists all moderately rose in 2022. Mixed Race journalists went from 3.1 per cent in 2021 to 3.2 per cent, while Black journalists changed from 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent. Middle Eastern journalist percentages rose from 1.7 per cent in 2021 to 2.4 per cent in 2022.
White journalists hold 82.9 per cent of supervisor roles and 84.3 per cent of top three leadership positions in newsrooms.
A comprehensive report detailing the national results, methodology, year-over-year comparisons, data limitations and a full list of who participated can be found on the CAJ website.
