David Akin's On the Hill :: TV news worst when it comes to reflecting Canadian cultural diversity, report says

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TV news worst when it comes to reflecting Canadian cultural diversity, report says

by DavidAkin on Thu 15 Jul 2004 11:12 AM EDT | Permanent Link | Cosmos

Today, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters released a report prepared by the Task Force for Cultural Diversity on Television. The task force examined the quantity and quality of cultural diversity in Canadian television programming. On the quantity side, a panel of experts looked at a broad variety of programmming and attempted to determine the number of representatives from Canada's ethnic, racial, and aboriginal minorities which appeared on certain programs. The report says that ethnic, racial and aboriginal minorities make up 15.3 per cent of Canada's population. They suggest then, that that figure is a good benchmark for broadcasters to aim for, that if 15 per cent of the on-screen individuals are from this population group, then the program is reflecting Canada's cultural diversity. English-language TV news scored lowest against this benchmark than other kinds of television programming. "Nine per cent of all appearances in English-language TV news is by visible minorities. However, visible minorities are more prominent than average as anchors/hosts ... 12.3 per cent of all anchors/hosts in English TV news were visible minorities . . . only 4.4 per cent of expert/guest appearances in English TV news were members of visible minorities." The report also says that "visible minorities are somewhat more likely to be associated with arts/entertainment, accident disaster, religious and war-related stories or contexts". The report says that in English-language TV drama, "visible minorities are somewhat more likely than non-minorities to be depicted as criminals and police or emergency officials. In an exploratory qualitative context, a slightly lower proportion of visible minorities in drama programming were portrayed as intelligent or successful and a higher proportion were protrayed as threatening." "English language children's drama ... shows a different pattern.Visible minorities are prominent as primary characters and they were more likely to be portrayed as caring, respected and successful than non-minority characters ...""

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