New Delhi: Around 88% of the top leadership positions in Indian media – including print, television and digital platforms – were held by people from the general category in 2021-2022, a recent report has found. Interestingly, the situation was the same in 2018-19, showing literally no growth in caste representation across Indian newsrooms.
Oxfam India and Newslaundry conducted a study, titled Who Tells Our Stories Matters: Representation of Marginalised Caste Groups in Indian Media, between April 2021 and March 2022. It used the method of ‘byline count’ to analyse the representation of people belonging to different caste groups across various media organisations.
The report said that of the 218 surveyed leadership positions across print, TV and digital media outlets in the given period, 191 positions (88%) were occupied by the people from the general category.
“None of the mainstream media houses had people belonging to SC/ST categories in leadership roles. Two from SC/ST categories held leadership positions in two alternative media platforms,” the report said.
In 2018-19, the situation was no different. Of the 121 newsroom leadership positions, 106 (88%) were occupied by journalists from the upper castes. The 2019 study was conducted from October 2018 to March 2019 using the same method.
People from the general category were also heavily overrepresented in all forms of media in positions such as anchors and writers, the report adds.
Print media
In print media, over 60% of the bylined articles in English and Hindi newspapers were written by people from the general category (‘upper castes’). Less than 5% of the articles were written by people from the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe communities and 10% belonged to Other Backward Classes.
In almost all magazines, more than half of the articles were written by ‘upper caste’ journalists. “Not a single magazine had over 10% representation of SC and had either zero or negligible presence of people belonging to ST categories.”
It’s a similar situation in the case of Hindi newspapers. “OBC journalists had only a little representation, followed by SC and ST journalists, who accounted for a mere 0-6% of bylines and appearances,” it said.
Also read: Backstory: What Does the Growing Adani Footprint on India’s Media Landscape Mean for Us?
Television
While 55.6% of English news anchors were ‘upper castes’, there were no anchors from the SC and ST communities. English news channels had 11.1% representation of anchors belonging to the OBC community.
The report said that four of the seven channels studied did not have any anchor from the OBC community.
The report says that even among panellists who are called to give their views on shows, there is scarce representation of people from marginalised castes. “More than 60% of all panellists in Hindi and English primetime shows belonged to the general category. Less than 5% of the panellists in Hindi and English debates were from SC/ST categories,” it says.
Digital media
In digital media, ‘upper caste’ journalists dominated bylines with Newslaundry English topping the list with 68.5% bylines, followed by Firstpost (61%) and Scroll (54%).
Exactly half of all articles written for The Wire were by journalists from the general category, while 12.4% were written by journalists from the OBC category, and 3.2% from the SC communities, and 0.6% from the ST communities.
The Mooknayak was the only digital platform to have most articles written by journalists from the SC community, the report said.
Nine websites were surveyed for the report: EastMojo, Firstpost, Newslaundry, Scroll, The Wire, the News Minute, Swarajya, the Mooknayak, and the Quint.