The survey gathered a wide range of information on UK journalists’ personal characteristics. This included age, years of work experience, gender, ethnicity, education, religious affiliation, political stance, and socio-economic background.

Journalists’ personal characteristics have been shown to be among the factors that influence the news they produce (Shoemaker and Reese 2014). Diversity – or the lack of it – has become an increasingly salient issue when discussing the state of journalism. Researchers have argued, for example, that news media miss important stories and fail to reach diverse audiences if their staff are too homogenous (Borchardt et al. 2019; Cohen and Clarke 2024; Douglas 2022; Lück et al. 2022). In the UK, the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) has, since 2017, published regular reports on Diversity in Journalism (see, e.g., Spilsbury 2023). The survey data partly support findings from these reports, while also adding further details on political leaning, and, for the first time, whether journalists were state or privately educated, which is still an important marker of social class in the UK.¹

1.2 Age

The age of the journalists who responded to the survey ranged from 20 to 88 years. Their average (median) age was 45,² which is three years higher than the median age of the working population (Faragher 2023).³ At least in the UK, journalism cannot be seen as ‘a young person’s occupation’ anymore – as it was in the past (Weaver 1998, 456).

Figure 1.1

The data suggest that the profession in the UK may have become slightly older since 2015, and less attractive to Generation Z and Millennials. In 2023, 39% of UK journalists were over 50 – up from 34% in 2015. Nearly two thirds (63%) of the journalists in our sample were 40 years or older, and only 14% under the age of 30 (see Figure 1.1). This is in contrast to the global average – where journalists’ median age is below 40, and often lower than the median age of the working population – but is in line with the US and the rest of Europe, where a lack of growth in the industry might explain the prevalence of older journalists (Josephi and Oller Alonso 2021).

Journalists’ age is, unsurprisingly, mirrored in the data on their years of work experience. Nearly half of the respondents to the survey (46%) had been in the job for more than 20 years, and around one in five (20%) for more than 30 years. In contrast, only 5% in the sample had two years or less of work experience, and 15% between five and a half and ten years. There was a notable difference between genders, which we will discuss below.

1.3 Gender

Respondents to the survey were divided nearly equally between journalists who identified as male (49%) and female (50%). Less than 1% (or six respondents in total) identified as gender non-conforming (‘other’) (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2

Most older, more experienced UK journalists in the sample were men. Two thirds (65%) of those with up to five years of work experience were women, but among those with more than 30 years of work experience the pattern is reversed, with men making up 66% of journalists (see Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3

Female journalists in the sample were on average eight years younger than their male colleagues (41 vs 49 median age) – slightly widening the gap of seven years observed in the
2015 survey.

In line with the patterns described earlier, women over 50 were markedly underrepresented. While at least half of all journalists in the younger age groups were women, among the over 50s the figure was just 36%. We find a similar pattern for journalists who come from ethnic minority groups. We discuss possible explanations below.

Other chapters in this report look at the extent to which female and male journalists’ employment conditions (see Chapter 2), experiences of harassment, and perceived job security (see Chapter 6) differ.

1.4 Ethnicity

Nine out of ten journalists in the sample (90%) came from a White background.⁴ In line with the trend in the general UK population, this is slightly less than in 2015 (95%) (see Figure 1.4). The share of Black journalists has increased from 0.3% to 1.3%.⁵ The small increase in the share of journalists with an Asian background is not statistically significant.⁶ Furthermore, it is important to be clear that any minor differences between 2015 and 2023 could be due to sampling error.

Importantly, though, compared with the 2021–2022 UK censuses that record a notably higher percentage of people with a Black (4%) or an Asian (9%) background, journalists from these ethnic groups were still underrepresented. In this regard we find little change to the situation in 2015.

Figure 1.4

The survey also shows that journalists from an ethnic minority background were less likely to hold a management role: three quarters of ethnic minority journalists (75%) had no management role, compared with less than two thirds (62%) of their White colleagues, and only 3% held a position in middle management, as opposed to 15% of their White colleagues. Interestingly, the gap was smaller at the top, with 23% of journalists from a White ethnic background having a top management role and 22% of journalists from an ethnic minority background.

The survey data are aligned with what a number of qualitative studies have suggested in recent years, namely that news organisations in the UK still struggle with ethnic diversity, and, in some cases, systemic racism (Douglas 2022; Al-Kaisey 2022). This is despite the fact that some UK newsrooms have attempted to act on the discrimination against ethnic minority journalists. For example, in October 2021, the Guardian created the role of a senior editor for diversity and development (GNM press office 2021). In the same year, the BBC published a ‘Diversity and Inclusion Plan’ guiding actions for the next couple of years (BBC 2021).

1.5 Age discrimination against female and ethnic majority journalists?

The data show that the age distribution of female and ethnic minority journalists differed significantly from that of White and male journalists. As already observed, female journalists tended to be younger than their male colleagues (see Figure 1.5). Equally, UK journalists from an ethnic minority background also skewed younger (see Figure 1.6).

Figure 1.5



Figure 1.6

There are two (non-mutually exclusive) explanations. First, it may be the case that the data on both female journalists and those from an ethnic minority background were ‘catching up’ with changes to hiring policies that were made after those now aged 50 entered the profession. However, we note that comparison with the data from the previous survey shows no change in the age distribution of female journalists since 2015.

Another explanation may be that age discrimination hits female and ethnic minority journalists harder than their White and male colleagues, meaning that they exit the profession at an earlier age. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, in particular in television, women are discriminated against once they reach the age of 50 (The Guardian Datablog n.d.). Research on this topic is still rare (Josephi and Oller Alonso 2021). A close study of career trajectories of journalists in Seattle between 2015 and 2021 aligns with the theory that White men are most likely to retain their jobs in contrast to, among others, women and persons of colour. The study argues that ‘the direction of journalistic careers tends to be characterised mostly by inertia or exit’, with female and minority ethnic journalists more likely to be among those who exit, while ‘White men tend to advance to or retain the most prestigious jobs’ (Powers 2022, 406). However, these studies only provide some first indications and further research would be needed to explain what lies behind underrepresentation of female and ethnic minority journalists among UK journalists over the age of 50.⁸

1.6 Education

By 2023, 91% of journalists in the UK sample had a university degree, up slightly from 86% in 2015 (Thurman et al. 2016, 11). As in many professions in the UK, a university education has now become the norm, but the increase from 2015 is striking given the figure was already so high. Journalists in the survey were also more likely to hold higher degrees. In 2015 around a third (32%) of journalists had a master’s degree, but this percentage rose to 41% in 2023 (see Figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7

Two thirds of journalists in the sample (66%) had received some form of formal education or training in journalism. More than half (55%) took a short course in journalism at a university or college; 48% said that they did a journalism degree at university or college; and a little under a quarter (23%) undertook an apprenticeship.

1.7 Religious affiliation

The vast majority (71%) of the journalists in the sample said that they had no religious affiliation, up by ten percentage points (pp), from 61%, since 2015 (see Figure 1.8). This is in line with the broader trend among the UK population. However, as we observed in 2015, the proportion with no religious affiliation was considerably higher among UK journalists than the general UK population (where it was 38%) (ONS 2022b; Scotland’s Census 2024; NISRA 2022). The data on journalists’ affiliations with non-Christian religious groups is difficult to compare with the census data given the small numbers in the survey sample, so we should be cautious about any apparent differences.

Figure 1.8

1.8 Political stance

Although the most widely used news source in the UK, the BBC, is required to be impartial, it is often observed that most national newspapers have a right-leaning editorial line (Smith 2017; Ponsford 2024a). It is perhaps surprising, then, that not only did most journalists self-identify with the political left, but there has been a shift leftwards since 2015 (see Figure 1.9). When asked where they saw themselves on a scale from 0 (‘left’) through centre (5) to ‘right’ (10), in 2023 three quarters (77%) chose a left-leaning (0–4) position, as opposed to a little over half (54%) who did so in 2015 (Thurman et al. 2016, 12). The median political stance in 2015 was slightly centre-left at 4 on the 0–10 scale, whereas in the 2023 survey it was 3. The 2023 survey also shows that, in keeping with general trends, female journalists tended to be slightly more left-leaning than male journalists.

Figure 1.9

It should be pointed out, though, that journalists’ personal political views do not necessarily exert a large influence on their work (as is described in Chapter 7, only 13% said that ‘personal values and beliefs’ were ‘extremely influential’ on their work). Also, journalists’ self-identification between left and right may be fuzzy (Smith 2019) and the meaning of ‘left’ and ‘right’ may have shifted between 2015 and 2023, away from the traditional economic definition towards a more cultural one (de Vries et al. 2013).

1.9 Socio-economic background

In spring 2022, the NCTJ published a Diversity in Journalism report that showed 80% of journalists came from a privileged background as measured by their parents’ occupation, up from 75% the previous year (Spilsbury 2022).⁹ Journalism in the UK, commentators observed, had ‘a huge class problem’ (Vinter 2022). A government-commissioned report from 2019 stated that between ‘the 1958 and the 1970 birth cohorts, the biggest decline in social mobility occurred in the professions of journalism and accountancy’ (Milburn 2009, 19).

The survey data show that class inequality continues to be an issue for UK journalism. We assess journalists’ socio-economic background in two ways. The survey asked journalists what the main job of the main wage earner in their household was at the time they were 14 years old; secondly, it asked whether journalists attended a state-funded, a fee-paying private, or a non-fee-paying selective school (or a school outside the UK system).

1.9.1 Journalists’ parents’ occupation

The first question about the main wage earner’s job in their childhood home was asked using an open text question. We coded the responses using a coding scheme developed by the Warwick Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick.¹⁰ This scheme classifies occupations into nine categories using standards developed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The NCTJ Diversity in Journalism report used the same classification (Spilsbury 2022).

The Warwick Institute for Employment Research scheme allocates job titles to the nine main categories of the ONS Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020.¹¹ The nine categories are as follows,¹² with 1 being the most and 9 being the least privileged:

1. Managers, directors, senior officials
2. Professional occupations
3. Associate professional occupations
4. Administrative and secretarial occupations
5. Skilled trades occupations
6. Caring, leisure, and other service occupations
7. Sales and customer service occupations
8. Process, plant and machine operatives
9. Elementary occupations.

We coded as ‘0’ those responses that we could not allocate unambiguously to one of the above nine categories. This was only the case for 21 job titles or 2% of all responses.

We find that the journalists in the sample overwhelmingly came from a privileged background. 71% grew up in a household where the main earner had a job in one of the three leading occupational categories (see Figure 1.10): ‘managers, directors, senior officials’ (15%), ‘professional occupations’ (45%), and ‘associate professional occupations’ (11%). In contrast, only about one in ten (12%) came from a working-class background. These figures align with the pattern found in other research (Spilsbury 2023).¹³

Figure 1.10

But to what extent does journalists’ socio-economic background influence their career? We looked at two areas. First, we assessed whether journalists whose parents were occupied in one of the three leading professions are overrepresented in senior positions. We do not find evidence to support this. The data do not suggest that it is more likely for those from a privileged background to hold a top management role than it is for journalists with a less privileged upbringing.

We also analysed whether journalists’ background has an influence on whether they work for national media. Here we do find a statistically significant link, albeit with a weak effect.

1.9.2 State funded, fee-paying private, and non-fee-paying selective education

In the UK, being privately educated is often considered a marker of class and privilege. The 2011–12 British Social Attitudes survey reported that ‘63% of the privately educated see themselves as middle or upper middle class compared with only 24% of the state educated’ (Park et al. 2013, 37). However, there is very little information about the percentage of journalists who attended fee-paying private schools. The only data available were collected by the Sutton Trust, which only considered leading journalists, among whom the proportion of those who attended private school is exceptionally high.¹⁴

Looking at the much more wide-ranging sample in the 2023 survey, the picture is different. 13% of respondents attended a fee-paying private primary school, 22% went to a fee-paying private secondary school, while 10% went to a selective but non-fee-paying secondary school (see Figure 1.11). This is considerably above the 6% of all UK school children who, according to the Independent Schools Council, currently attend a private school.¹⁵ The fact that, according to the Sutton Trust, a considerably higher percentage of journalists in leading positions attended fee-paying schools than is the case for all journalists may indicate that a private education does have an influence on how successful journalists are in their career.

Figure 1.11

1.10 Conclusions

The survey data show that the median UK journalist in 2023 was White, university educated, over 40, not affiliated to any religion, from a privileged socio-economic background, and left-leaning. We also observe marked differences between groups of journalists. Such inequalities between journalists matter. Although female and male journalists were almost equal in number, women were clearly underrepresented among the over 50s (who are more likely to occupy senior positions) – with the same being true for journalists from an ethnic minority background. Compared with the 2015 survey, very little progress has been made towards a more representative share of Asian, Black, and other ethnic minority groups among UK journalists. Although journalists’ political stance has moved towards the left, this does not appear to be reflected, so far, in more equality within their own profession – a task that is, of course, largely the responsibility of media owners and senior managers. These inequalities are likely to fuel concerns about the impact on what the news media cover. For example, the overrepresentation in the national media of journalists from relatively privileged backgrounds may mean the concerns of those from less privileged backgrounds are underrepresented. However, to properly understand the impact (if any) that such patterns have on journalistic output, the data must be combined with content analysis.¹⁶