The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has claimed it met a challenge set by its sister broadcaster in the United Kingdom that it achieve equal male and female interviewees and commentators in its news coverage in March.
The ABC was one of 41 media organisations around the world that joined in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) March challenge.
Only about half of the organisations met the target.
Managing Director at the ABC, David Anderson said the ABC’s overall March result was 51 per cent female voices, with three-quarters of the 48 participating editorial teams achieving 50:50 or better.
When the tracking began, less than a third of teams were achieving this.
Mr Anderson said that as the national public broadcaster, the ABC had a special obligation to lead the way on gender equality in the Australia media.
“However, the challenge is far from over. We have more work to do to consolidate this achievement and continue to improve our performance in areas and topics which remain overly male-dominated in our coverage,” Mr Anderson said.
“We’re also broadening our focus to include other under-represented groups such as Indigenous Australians, people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities and people with a disability.”
Director General of the BBC, Tim Davie said the Corporation’s 50:50 project continued to enrich the Broadcaster’s content with new voices “helping us to reflect the audiences we serve”.
“With our external partners, we are now also seeing a real impact beyond the BBC on a global scale,” Mr Davie said.
“I encourage any organisations interested in taking up the challenge to get involved,” he said.
