As part of Michigan Radio's strategic plan to improve our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (DEI), we committed to being transparent in the diversity and gender of the news sources we use in our newscasts, news features, on-air interviews and Stateside.
Michigan Radio began compiling this data in late December of 2020 and we now have a full quarter of data to review.
Using the data available (428 sources logged by reporters and producers), Michigan Radio is doing very well in its efforts to represent the diversity of our state.
The data suggests that at a statewide level, white people are slightly underrepresented among our sources (78% of Michigan is white, while 70% of our sources were white) and all minority groups are overrepresented.
If we compare our source diversity to the population of the 7 county area that makes up Southeast Michigan – population representation is just about where we should be. That population is White – 68%, Black – 22%, Latino – 4%, Asian – 4%.
Going forward, Michigan Radio hopes to continue doing a good job making sure the people we put on our airwaves represents the diversity of our population.
Michigan Radio also does a good job with our balance of gender identity among the sources we put on the air, but we still have room to improve. Michigan has slightly more women than men in the population.(51-49%), and while our sources are close to that, we still aired more sources who identified as men than women (male 51% - female 48% - non-binary .5% - transgender .5%).
In the future, Michigan Radio also plans to track the zip codes of where our sources live, so that we can be sure we present the full geographic diversity of our state and no one region is overrepresented in the opinions and information you hear in our news programming.
Our next report will be available in July.
