New figures that show the representation of women of colour in Scottish media coverage of the General Election has gone down have been called ‘disappointing but not surprising’.
Research from Pass the Mic and the University of Strathclyde showed that women in general were underrepresented in the media, but those of colour were even further down the pecking order when it came to who newspapers and TV channels looked towards for their expertise on the election.
Researchers looked at stories in seven newspapers and their respective X accounts as well as STV News, BBC’s Reporting Scotland and BBC Scotland’s The Seven and The Nine shows as well as their X pages.
Their main findings discovered at women of colour was huge under-representation of women of colour with white men making up 65.5% of all anchors, journalists and reporters in Scottish media stories about the election.
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They also made up 60.9% of all people in Scottish election news coverage. In the election, 57 MPs were voted in and none of them are women of colour, while Zubir Ahmed – the Labour MP for Glasgow South West – is the only man who is of colour.
Talat Yaqoob is the founder of Pass the Mic and she’s not surprised to see the figures that their research has shown, but remains bitterly disappointed by the lack of progress.
The findings relate to 2,191 stories specifically on the general election and just 1.5% of all people involved in them were women of colour. That’s down from the 2021 analysis also done by the Pass the Mic ahead of the Holyrood elections when women of colour made 2.1%.
The news industry has now been urged to take serious action and to reflect the people of Scotland better, with Ms Yaqoob insisting that women of colour’s expertise and experience of issues such as racism, misogyny and inequality are all being missed.
She said: “These findings are disappointing but not surprising, and illustrate why organisations like Pass the Mic exist. Women of colour’s expertise continue to be overlooked and under-represented.
“During such a crucial time, when more of the public are consuming current affairs and political information, we should be hearing from a wide-cross section of society and this must include women of colour.
“This election was a pivotal moment in UK politics, yet crucial discussion around racism, misogyny and inequality were missing, when these are so prevalent in so many women of colours’ lives, we must see and hear these stories too.
“The news industry must take meaningful action on this to better reflect the people of Scotland as well as the diverse news stories that matter to them.”
The figures also show that just one expert featured in coverage of the election who was a women of colour while only nine gave their opinions at all, and three of those were in the same story.
Other findings show that only four newspaper opinion and commentary articles were written by women of colour during the four week study, while only seven gave their personal experiences.
Researchers looked at The Herald, The Scotsman, The National, The Scottish Daily Mail, The Sunday Post, The Scottish Sun, The Daily Record, STV News, BBC Scotland’s The Nine and The Seven, and Reporting Scotland for their findings.
TV presenter Jean Johansson was keynote speaker at Pass the Mic’s recent conference and admits she is concerned by the data.
‘Unacceptable’ and ‘disturbing’ were two words she used to describe the issue and believes it’s vital that marginalised voices get more of a say in political coverage and the news cycle in general moving forward.
She said: “The data is disturbing and I must admit I’m surprised to see such low numbers in 2024. I thought we were in a place where news editors, producers and talent bookers understood the importance of having marginalised voices as experts or presenters especially surrounding an election and modern day politics.
“There are no excuses for leaving us out of the conversation. Organisations like Pass The Mic provide a data base of minority voices in all different fields so they should be accessed and utilised. To exclude us is either lazy or deliberate and neither is acceptable.”
Professor Karen Boyle from University of Strathclyde, added: “Politicians dominate election coverage and part of what we are finding here is that politics in Scotland remains a male preserve. When it comes to including perspectives from experts and the public, media organisations can and should do better.
“That in four weeks of election coverage the number of women of colour asked for their opinions didn’t even make double digits is frankly disgraceful. Our media landscape is impoverished as a result.”
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