The Media Is (Still) Dominated By Men

In news media, it’s still a man’s world.

Male journalists make up 63% of bylines in print, Internet and wire news media, according to a recent report from the Women’s Media Center.

Diversity in newsrooms is critical if media outlets want to cover stories that reach and represent their audiences, but that’s increasingly difficult with women earning only around 36% of bylines or on-camera appearances.

The report looked at 20 of the most widely circulated and watched TV networks, newspapers, wires and online news sites in the U.S. Across the news cycle, women are clearly underrepresented. The New York Times, for example, has the widest gender gap when it comes to bylines, while the Chicago Sun-Times is close to equal.

But some news outlets are certainly doing better than others. For instance, PBS and ABC have women as their primary anchors, but regardless, the news is anchored by men 60% of the time. Just think evening news.

The Huffington Post has a nearly equal gender balance, but FoxNews.com and The Daily Beast are far from it. Men also dominate the news wires at the Associated Press and Reuters.

“When media are overwhelmingly male (and still, alas, overwhelmingly white), they just aren’t anywhere near as good as they could be,” said Geneva Overholser, a Women’s Media Center board member, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and former ombudsman for The Washington Post in a statement.

In general, the research also found that women are more likely to cover topics like lifestyle, culture and health, while men are more likely to cover criminal justice, politics and tech.

This annual report is the third in a series from the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit founded by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, that’s dedicated to advancing the role of women in media.

Check out the breakdown below.