2024 Canadian Newsroom Diversity Survey

The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) released the findings of its fourth annual national Canadian Newsroom Diversity Survey today.

This year’s voluntary survey collected data about 5,806 journalists from 270 newsrooms across radio, television, digital and print media in Canada. In total, the CAJ sent invitations to 715 newsrooms to complete the survey. 

“The Canadian Newsroom Diversity Survey is an incredibly valuable exercise because it is the sole national survey that gathers concrete data on the gender and racial compositions of Canadian newsrooms,” CAJ President Brent Jolly said.

“After four years of exhaustive data collection, the survey also provides an exceptional opportunity to reflect on the importance of the continued efforts to build more equitable and inclusive newsrooms both now and in the future.”

As in previous years, the CAJ worked with data and analytics experts to develop an interactive website to visualize the results.

Some key findings from the 2024 survey include: 

• About 77 per cent of journalists identify as white, 3.5 per cent identify as Indigenous and 19.5 per cent identify as a visible minority. 
• Asian journalists are the most underrepresented racial category overall. Asian people make up 17.5 per cent of the Canadian population, but only 8.7 per cent of journalists in Canada.
• About 7 out of 10 newsrooms have no Indigenous or visible minority people in the top three leadership positions in newsrooms. 
• Supervisory and leadership roles are disproportionately held by individuals who are white. However, for full-time journalists, excluding supervisors, most racial percentages are close to their census data, except for Asian full-time journalists, who are underrepresented. 
• Just over 49 per cent of all journalists identify as women, compared to 50 per cent who identify as men and 0.7 per cent who identify as non-binary. For the first time since the survey launched, men and non-binary people outnumber women.
• Among supervisors, 83.4 per cent identify as white, compared to 2.4 per cent identifying as Indigenous and 14.2 per cent identifying as a visible minority. 
• “Interns” is the only category where Indigenous and visible minority journalists outnumber white journalists. 
• From 2021 to 2024, the proportions of Asian and Indigenous journalists working in Canadian newsrooms have declined.
• The percentages of Black and Middle Eastern journalists have increased since the start of the survey.
• The percentage of non-white journalists working at smaller media outlets  increased in 2024.
• While white people and men make up larger shares of the total supervisor and full-time journalist roles, when looking at the individual gender and race categories, most journalists, regardless of race or gender, are in full-time positions.