by Marcus Ryder MBE
These are personal views, and do not reflect the view of Birmingham City University or the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity.
The 24th February 2023 marks the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
While the ongoing war remains a major challenge, this milestone also provides an opportunity to reflect on just how much the reporting of the war quickly revealed serious issues on how journalists prioritise and frame globally important stories - invariably reporting through a “white lens”, and whether any changes have been made since that might rectify some of the poor journalism practices that were revealed which were a direct result of the lack of newsroom diversity.
We saw the obvious problems of the early reporting of the Ukraine war when, as the LA Times wrote: "In the heat of war, a number of correspondents, consciously or not, framed suffering and displacement as acceptable for Arabs, Afghans and others over there – but not here, in Europe."
The overwhelmingly white pool of correspondents were also accused of being incredibly slow to report on stories involving the discrimination faced by African refugees trying to flee the conflict. Fortune magazine for example, under the headline “How Black organizers are leading their own rescue efforts for Africans fleeing Ukraine”, wrote how the stories only came to light due to the Africans reporting about their plight themselves on social media under the hashtag #AfricansInUkraine, before being picked up by journalists working for mainstream news organisations.
There was no doubt that a major reason for this poor journalism was a lack of newsroom diversity. It is a fact that there is a serious lack in diversity in all areas when it comes to foreign correspondents: racial, gender, class and disability.
Currently international news organisations do not publicly hold statistics on the diversity of their foreign correspondents, and many are reluctant to share data they do have. In 2020, for instance, a survey was sent to 47 newsrooms that cover Africa – only 11 replied, and for those, that did the median average was 20% of their staff were non-White.
Anecdotally, there is good reason to suspect this 20% median is a case of positive bias (in non-statisical language – the reality is probably a lot worse). When I lived in China one of the highlights of the journalistic calendar was the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China annual summer party. It was an opportunity for the foreign journalists working in Beijing for all different international media organisations to get together and let off some steam.
The annual parties were normally put on at a diplomatic residency and the food was always great.
In all the parties I attended I only ever met two foreign correspondents working for a European or US news organisation who were not White - Emily Feng and Sui-Lee Wee - both are ethnically Chinese and both were possibly the best journalists I met in Asia, winning multiple awards.
I do not think I met a single visibly disabled foreign journalist, and the vast majority of them were men who had been privately educated.
Speaking to other journalists based abroad they nearly all have similar experiences to mine.
All the anecdotal evidence points to foreign correspondents for international news media are overwhelmingly White, from higher socio-economic backgrounds, male and non-disabled, with only a few notable exceptions that can be literally counted on one hand, and those exceptions are invariably in front of the camera, giving the impression of diversity more than the actual reality of the diversity of the people behind the camera.
As the Ukraine war broke out, the racial disparities in reporting in particular were stark, and were relatively simple to identify and highlight, with several journalists and news organisations issuing mea culpas for their racialised “mistakes” (mentioned earlier).
However it begs the question if the values and the lack of racial diversity which led to these “mistakes” are still shaping and influencing our news coverage of the Ukraine war a year later? And is our journalism poorer for it?
The short answer to both these questions is an unequivocal “yes”. Let me explain with two examples.
Numerous journalists have drawn comparisons between the war in Ukraine and the Second World War. For example, Time magazine led with the headline “The Crisis in Ukraine Has Disturbing Echoes of the 1930s” comparing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Austria in March 1938.
It is possibly unsurprising that White journalists use cultural references to European history to understand current events. And while these comparisons might be useful, they have their limitations.
It is interesting to note that very early on in the war, the Kenyan U.N. Ambassador Martin Kimani, used a speech at the U.N. Security Council about the Ukraine war to talk about the artificial nature of national borders (which he said should still be respected) drawing on the historical parallels between post-colonial African nation states and post-USSR nation states.
His terms of reference were unapologetically African and he referenced a colonial history that many Europeans feel uncomfortable in confronting.
I am not trying to make the argument that one period of history (World War II vs. post-colonial borders) is better for understanding the Ukrainian war than another. What I am arguing though is that our journalism is poorer if we only look at one period of history to understand the present. And in turn, this is a direct result of the lack of diversity in our newsrooms.
The other example of how the lack of diversity impacted the reporting of the Ukraine war came in the form of a story that grain shortages, caused by the war, could have devastating effects across Africa. Several news organisations ran stories of how “21 [African countries] import most of their wheat from Russia”.
Wheat is an incredibly important staple for Europe, North America and North Africa, and so Western journalists can impose this importance onto other regions. The reality is that wheat is not a staple in any sub-Saharan country (with the possible exception of Somalia, who due to being colonised by Italy, eat a lot of pasta).
Speaking to experts on food security they felt this was a classic case of Western journalists imposing their own cultural values on the rest of the world - literally reporting through a “white lens”.
All this has very real-world consequences. Because the lack of diversity in the reporting of how we see world events meant that many American and European governments, and commentators were surprised when several important UN votes did not align to their own views.
The poorer understanding of the consequences of the war due to the lack of diversity in our newsrooms itself became a geopolitical limitation.
Identifying racism is relatively simple - identifying the white lens that frames much of our international reporting, and in this case the Ukrainian war is far more difficult. But its consequences can be far more insidious.
More rounded journalism that brings better understanding of the war itself as well as responses from countries across the globe to it requires more diverse backgrounds of the correspondents reporting the war.
A year ago, I wrote that “the current war in Ukraine could be a seminal moment in how newsrooms respect diversity and incorporate anti-racism into their work.” So far, it seems few newsrooms have failed to grasp this opportunity, although, for instance, the launch of Semafor Africa in 2022 and the increasing appeal of outlets such as The Continent give me some pause for hope.
But as journalists, commissioners and editors working in mainstream news outlets based in Europe and America, we must do better.
I know we can do better.
I just hope we progress on the issue of newsroom diversity much faster. We can’t afford not to.