Diversity, equity and inclusion are seen as core values by Asian journalists, and may even help attract advertising.

A new report, Advancing News Diversity in Asia released by the Asian American Journalists Association’s Asia Chapter provides a snapshot of the region’s news media industry “from an Asia perspective” which will be used in the design of tools and programmes for advancing DEI in newsrooms.

The report was based on focus group discussions, an industry-wide survey and interviews with newsroom executives involving more than 1000 journalists in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.

Nine out of ten respondents believed diversity improves the quality of news, and two-thirds of journalists said they thought diversity helped attract advertisers.

AAJA-Asia president K. Oanh Ha said the report is the first to give voice to the experiences and perspectives of journalists in Asia on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“The report tells us that diversity must be approached in Asia with a different lens than in the US and Western countries,” he says. And while the snapshot of DEI progress in the region is encouraging, more work was needed to strengthen and support diversity in Asia’s news media industry.

The report was supported by the Meta Journalism Project, and makes the connection between DEI indicators and job satisfaction and talent retention. Journalists who said they planned to remain in their news organisations for as long as they could rated those organisations higher in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Meta APAC news partnerships director Anjali Kapoor said the findings showed how important it is for journalists and the industry to build DEI into leadership planning and culture.

There were notable differences on the diversity priorities in each market surveyed: Across the region, socioeconomic status and gender came up as the two top issues that journalists considered the most important for the news media to focus on, while ethnicity and religion were prioritised lower.

The ANDA reports also shows that discrimination persists. Survey respondents indicated that sexual harassment against women journalists and trolling on social media were key issues the news media industry must address. Across the region 56 per cent of women journalists in the survey reported receiving sexist remarks or sexual innuendos at their news outlet, while 41 per cent of them said they had received unwanted physical contact from sources or newsmakers. More than three-quarters (76 per cent) reported receiving derogatory comments on social media.

AAJA Asia-Pacific director Gilles Demptos says the next stage of the project will be to develop tailored tools and initiatives with industry partners to further support journalists and newsrooms. These will be announced at the group’s ‘New.Now.Next’ conference in Singapore on July 27-30 July.

The ANDA report can be downloaded here. For more information contact asia@aaja.org