{"id":26517,"date":"2018-11-19T12:34:01","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T12:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=26517"},"modified":"2018-11-19T12:34:01","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T12:34:01","slug":"is-the-financial-times-bot-a-solution-to-gender-inequality-in-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/is-the-financial-times-bot-a-solution-to-gender-inequality-in-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Financial Times’ bot a solution to gender inequality in news?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Financial Times has announced the introduction of a bot<\/a> to automatically detect if there are too many men quoted in articles as an attempt to prevent sexism and promote gender equality.<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a surprise that the Financial Times has a more masculine audience due to its coverage of industries that are male-dominated. The organisation found that only 21 per cent of people quoted in their publications were women.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Julie Johnson<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

This comes after an interview for Nieman Lab<\/a> earlier this year when R\u00e9nee Kaplan, FT\u2019s first head of audience engagement, said that 80 per cent of the publication\u2019s subscribers at that point were men.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked [women in a focus group]: if you could picture the FT as a person, how would you picture that person? They all said they pictured a man,\u201d said\u00a0<\/span>R\u00e9nee in the interview.<\/span><\/p>\n

To combat this, the FT team has developed a new technology building a bot that will scan pronouns and first names in articles to alert section editors if they do not feature enough female voices in their stories. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The issue of women’s representation and gender equality is far from being new. From the BBC gender pay gap controversy<\/a>\u00a0to reports worldwide addressing the importance of involving women in leadership roles, Financial Times seems to have taken a new lead in widening their readership by standing truthful to their brand and values.<\/p>\n

Brooke Taylor, FT’s\u00a0opinion and analysis editor, said in the same interview<\/a>:\u00a0“I have a basic rule that either one of the three or one of the four [online opinion columns], depending on what day it is, is by a woman. I\u2019d like to get to 50 percent, but we\u2019re not there. We never tracked it before I took over, but my impression is that in terms of commentators, we were running about 20 percent women. Now we routinely hit 30 percent, and some weeks we’re 40 percent. We check it every week. I haven\u2019t set a formal goal, but I watch it and want it not to get worse. It\u2019s not a quota, but we do pay attention to it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The move has been praised by female journalists in the online community.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/WomaninHavana\/status\/1062979096974647296<\/p>\n

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Excellent idea, and something all of us in the media ought always to have in mind:
Financial Times tool warns if articles quote too many men https:\/\/t.co\/kizaHxistx<\/a><\/p>\n

— Claire Phipps (@Claire_Phipps) November 14, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n