[MUSIC - John Cena: The Time Is Now]

Janae Pierre: Hey, y'all. I'm Janae Pierre, in for Melissa Harris-Perry. Earlier this month, LSU's Women's College basketball star Angel Reese was criticized for using the "You can't see me trash talking" gesture, made famous by wrestler John Cena.

[MUSIC - John Cena: The Time Is Now]

Your time is up my time is now (now)

You can't see me, my time is now (now)

Janae Pierre: Passing her hand over her face before pointing to her ring finger, showing us all where her deserved championship ring would land, but many men who cover the sport took it upon themselves to publicly admonish the 20-year-old champion.

Angel Reese: All year, I was critiqued about who I was. I don't fit the narrative, I don't fit in the box that y'all want me to be in. I'm too hood, I'm too ghetto. Y'all told me that all year.

Janae Pierre: This moment comes as a new Pew Research Center Survey reveals that 83% of sports journalists are men, and 82% of those men are white. We saw in real-time how those stats can impact coverage, but it's not just sports. This survey also shows that different journalistic beats vary widely by race and gender.

Jeffrey Gottfried: My name is Jeffrey Gottfried. I am a senior researcher on the news and information team at Pew Research Center.

Janae Pierre: I asked Jeffrey about the survey and all of the other factors they've uncovered.

Jeffrey Gottfried: For a little bit of a background on this study, is that last year we did a survey of roughly 12,000 journalists. We were able to understand the experience of journalists today, and the challenges that they face in the news industry, including the topic areas such as the [unintelligible 00:01:44] of society, the relationship with our audience, internal newsroom dynamics, and the views and experiences around diversity and inclusion in the industry.

In this recent analysis, we wanted to provide insight into who was covering which journalistic beats. The purpose here was to give journalists a mirror so they could have a better understanding of who was in their industry, and also to provide the public with a better understanding of who was covering the news they get. What we did is that we asked journalists to write down which topic areas or beats they cover.

What we saw is there really are wide differences in who covers certain beats, among a number of different factors. One specific factor that particularly stood out is the gender of reporters. For example, a vast majority of those who cover sports are journalists who are men, far higher than women. On the other hand, most who cover health, education, and social policy are women. Then journalists beats also differ modestly, by other demographic factors that we looked at, one of those being raced and ethnicity of journalists.

One reporting area that particularly stood out was the race and ethnicity of journalists with social issues and policy. Hispanic and Black journalists make up a far greater portion of those who cover this beat than any of the others that we studied.

Janae Pierre: Let's dive into that, and how you got this data in the first place. What were some of your methods?

Jeffrey Gottfried: Absolutely. Something that was really interesting for this study, is that we first even had to define what we actually meant by a journalist. What we decided to go with, and the way that we were trying to understand this population, is people who are creating, editing, or reporting on original news content. That was the first step that we actually had to do. The next thing we had to do was then develop that list, that sampling frame, from which we actually want to survey our journalists.

We did a number of different methods. We relied on commercial databases of journalists, but also supplemented those lists with a number of different other lists so that we can get a really diverse and broad range of journalists who would be part of our study. Then, from there, we invited over 160,000 journalists to take part in our study, from which roughly 12,000 took part in our final survey.

Janae Pierre: You've also written about the ways journalists feel about their industry, and found that black, Hispanic, and Asian journalists are less likely than white journalists to say that their organization treats everyone fairly. How can we understand those two, in relation to one another?

Jeffrey Gottfried: Along with the [unintelligible 00:04:21], one of the things that was really important for us to study in this was the views and experiences that journalists have in regards to issues of diversity and inclusion. One of the things that really stood out to us is that journalists do offer a really mixed view of diversity within their news organizations. One of the things that really stood out there was the extent to which journalists said that their news organizations were doing a sufficient job in creating a diverse enough staff.

That's one of the things that really stood out there. What we did is that we asked journalists whether organizations were diversifying their staff along a number of different dimensions. What we saw was that when you looked at things like age, and when you looked at things like gender, most journalists did say that their news organization staff was diverse enough. When we started to look at other dimensions, there were a much more negative response to that.

One that really stood out was the diversification along race and ethnicity, in which journalists were far more likely to be telling us that their news organizations did not have enough diversity when it came along that dimension, far more than said that there was.

Janae Pierre: What are other ways that journalists see the industry, according to your research?

Jeffrey Gottfried: Overall, we did see that a lot of journalists do have a lot of negative evaluations, even of the industry in which they work on. There's a lot of concerns, a lot of challenges that journalists see themselves facing within their own industry. We see this playing out in terms of questions around misinformation, around views of how their audiences or the public views the industry, and views around a number of different areas.

One thing that really stood out was the juxtaposition of all of these challenges, the juxtaposition of all of this negativity that seems to be surrounding their industry. Juxtaposed to that is a group of individuals who are highly satisfied with their jobs. In a number of ways, what we saw is that journalists enjoy what they do. They wouldn't see themselves as doing something else. We asked, for example, a number of ways that they saw this, and one specific way was, we asked if they would do this all over again if they could.

A vast majority of journalists said they absolutely would do this all over again.

Janae Pierre: I'm laughing because like many journalists, I myself have gone through moments where I'm overwhelmed, I'm fatigued, I need to get out of this. Then I think about it and it's like, "No way. I'm not giving this up." [chuckles] We're going to take a quick pause here, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back talking more about gender breakdowns in the journalism industry right after this. It's The Takeaway. I'm Janae Pierre, in for Melissa Harris-Perry.

Before the break, Jeffrey Gottfried, senior researcher of news and information at the Pew Research Center, told us that though journalists have concerns about the industry, overall, they love what they do and couldn't see themselves doing anything else. Could you talk a bit more about some of the challenges that journalists face in the news industry?

Jeffrey Gottfried: Absolutely. I think one of the challenges is questions around misinformation. A lot of journalists are highly concerned about the role of misinformation in the news environment, and how they struggle with that. A lot of journalists say that they are able to recognize when there is misinformation, but don't think the news industry, overall, does a good job of handling it, not nearly as good a job as they think that they do, seeing it, and recognizing it. That is one specific area that absolutely stands out.

Another thing that is really interesting in the work that we did, in this main study, was the disconnect that we often saw between journalists and the public. I think that some of the data does suggest that journalists are quite aware of the disconnects that do exist between them and the public. When we asked journalists to say what one word would the public give to the news industry, journalists overwhelmingly gave negative words.

They felt that the public would say things such as biased, and other negativity words. There's a lot of ways that we did see this disconnect between journalists and the public manifest itself in our data.

Janae Pierre: We're seeing these new statistics at the same time, that many media companies are laying off journalists, unfortunately. Do you expect these figures to change at all?

Jeffrey Gottfried: One of the interesting things in our study is that I think there was a lot that journalists had about the future of what the profession could give, and what's going to happen. In terms of some of these statistics, for example, when we look at some of the diversity statistics, I know there's a lot of questions around what is the diversity of the field, what is the diversity of journalists. What we do see, overall, is that younger journalists tend to be more diverse than older journalists.

There are some trends there, that [unintelligible 00:09:37] suggests when we look at questions around diversity, when we look at questions around inclusion, is that there is some data that we do have, that does suggest that younger journalists are more diverse in that way. One other area that really does stand out is, there is a lot of concern about the future of press freedom, among journalists.

One specific area is that, what we did see is that there was a vast majority of journalists who did tell us that they have at least some concern about the future of press freedom in the country. Something that's really interesting, that underlies that, is that this particularly was the case among older journalists. It was pretty stark what those differences were, and that older journalists were far more likely to be telling us that they were concerned about the future of press freedoms.

Janae Pierre: Jeffrey, I'm wondering, looking at these numbers and this data, does this study make you hopeful for the news industry?

Jeffrey Gottfried: One of the things that really is interesting, going back to that juxtaposition of all that negativity, that could potentially be swirling around the industry, whether it is misinformation, whether it is political polarization, whether it is many other things, such as economic upheavals. Journalists do see a lot of those challenges, that are straightforward with those. Again, going back to the fact that they are highly encouraged to do their jobs, there is that hope that, again, this is what they want to be doing.

We see that play out in so many ways. I think that the hope that comes from this data is in the fact that you do have a group of individuals who really do what they are doing.

Janae Pierre: Jeffrey Gottfried, senior researcher of news and information at Pew Research Center. Jeffrey, thanks so much for taking time to talk with us today.

Jeffrey Gottfried: Thank you so much.

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