TORONTO, ONT., Jan. 22, 2025 / CNW/ – The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) is pleased to release the findings of its fourth annual national Canadian Newsroom Diversity Survey today.
This year’s voluntary survey collected data about 5,806 journalists from 270 newsrooms across radio, television, digital and print media in Canada. In total, the CAJ sent invitations to 715 newsrooms to complete the survey.
“The Canadian Newsroom Diversity Survey is an incredibly valuable exercise because it is the sole national survey that gathers concrete data on the gender and racial compositions of Canadian newsrooms,” said Brent Jolly, CAJ president.
“After four years of exhaustive data collection, the survey also provides an exceptional opportunity to reflect on the importance of the continued efforts to build more equitable and inclusive newsrooms both now and in the future.”
As in previous years, the CAJ worked with data and analytics experts to develop an interactive website to visualize the results.
Some key findings from the 2024 survey include:
- About 77 per cent of journalists identify as white, 3.5 per cent identify as Indigenous and 19.5 per cent identify as a visible minority.
- Asian journalists are the most underrepresented racial category overall. Asian people make up 17.5 per cent of the Canadian population, but only 8.7 per cent of journalists in Canada.
- About 7 out of 10 newsrooms have no Indigenous or visible minority people in the top three leadership positions in newsrooms.
- Supervisory and leadership roles are disproportionately held by individuals who are white.
- However, for full-time journalists, excluding supervisors, most racial percentages are close to their census data, except for Asian full-time journalists, who are underrepresented.
- Just over 49 per cent of all journalists identify as women, compared to 50 per cent who identify as men and 0.7 per cent who identify as non-binary. For the first time since the survey launched, men and non-binary people outnumber women.
- Among supervisors, 83.4 per cent identify as white, compared to 2.4 per cent identifying as Indigenous and 14.2 per cent identifying as a visible minority.
- “Interns” is the only category where Indigenous and visible minority journalists outnumber white journalists.
- From 2021 to 2024, the proportions of Asian and Indigenous journalists working in Canadian newsrooms have declined.
- The percentages of Black and Middle Eastern journalists have increased since the start of the survey,
- The percentage of non-white journalists working at smaller media outlets increased in 2024.
- While white people and men make up larger shares of the total supervisor and full-time journalist roles, when looking at the individual gender and race categories, most journalists, regardless of race or gender, are in full-time positions.
“It’s encouraging to see greater diversity among interns, but this underscores the need to ensure these early opportunities translate into sustainable, long-term careers for Black, Indigenous, and other visible minority journalists,” said CAJ national chair and survey lead Zane Schwartz.
White journalists hold 83.4 per cent of supervisor roles and 80.5 per cent of the top three leadership positions in newsrooms. The 2024 survey results showed that, like in 2023, about 70 per cent of newsrooms employed no Indigenous or visible minority journalists in the top three roles.
Fifteen media outlets employed no visible minority or Indigenous journalists. About 70 per cent of surveyed media outlets employed no Indigenous journalists, 66 per cent employed no Black journalists and 70 per cent didn’t have any Latin journalists on staff.
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.
As in previous surveys, Pennsylvania-based data and analytics firm Qlik continued to play an integral role in this project. They provided the CAJ with data analysis and visualizations of survey results, allowing users to interact with newsroom survey results based on race, gender and job role.
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