Less than a third of people quoted in the news are women, showing the media industry needs to focus on correcting the gender balance in its coverage, an industry body says.
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The Women in Media gender scorecard found 43 per cent of bylined journalists are women, while just 18 per cent of sports stories are attributed to women.
"Almost a quarter of analysed media coverage over the reference period was sport. Male dominance as authors of sports coverage has an outsized effect, hindering women's overall representation in media," the report said.
Women's bylines would make up 51 per cent of the coverage analysed, if sports stories were removed from the count.
The scorecard, which is based on an analysis of more than 18,000 news items in a two-week period, also found the number of female journalists covering politics rose from 26 per cent in 2016 to 41 per cent in 2022.
Women in Media's strategic advisor Petra Buchanan said parity with men remained a distant goal in the media.
"For women to achieve parity in voice and representation we need the media to ensure more female journalists are writing, producing, fronting and being technically involved in all aspects. Women must be empowered as sources and experts in news and storytelling," Ms Buchanan said.
Women sources make up 30 per cent of those quoted, up from 23 per cent in 2016, the analysis, completed by media monitoring company Isentia, showed.
Female reporters were more likely to quote female sources than male reporters. Almost three quarters of sources quoted by men are men.
Reporters are also far more likely to quote men as non-expert sources, with 56 per cent of quotes sourced from non-expert men compared to 24 per cent from women.
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Thirteen per cent of quotes were drawn from expert men, while 7 per cent were from expert women.
The report found 46 per cent of stories published by ACM, the publisher of this masthead, in the reference period were written by women, slightly higher than the industry average.
The analysis included 18,346 reports between July 18 and 31, 2022.
"Press coverage was drawn from major metropolitan and national publications, while broadcast reporting was drawn from the major evening news bulletin on free-to-air television stations, AM on Radio National, and the 6pm news on 702 ABC Sydney," the report card said.
Women In Media provides support to help working in the media industry and has more than 6000 members across Australia.
Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
