[Reader-list] survey findings on composition of 'national' media

Avinash Kumar avinashcold at gmail.com
Wed Jun 14 11:55:13 IST 2006


A recently conducted survey report sent to me by one of the researchers.

avinash

SURVEY OF THE SOCIAL PROFILE
OF THE KEY DECISION MAKERS IN THE NATIONAL MEDIA

By

Anil Chamaria, Feelance Journalist
Jitendra Kumar, Independent Researcher
Yogendra Yadav, Senior Fellow, CSDS

KEY FINDINGS

     India's 'national' media lacks social diversity, it does not reflect
the country's social profile
     Hindu upper caste men dominate the media. They are about 8 % of India's
population but among the key decision makers of the national media their
share is as high as 71 %.
     Gender bias rules: only 17 % of the key decision makers are women.
Their representation is better in the English Electronic media (32 %).
     Media's caste profile is equally unrepresentative. 'Twice born' Hindus
(dwijas comprising Brahmins, Kayasthas, Rajputs, Vaishyas and Khatris) are
about 16 % of India's population, but they are about 86 % among the key
media decision makers in this survey. Brahmins (including Bhumihars and
Tyagis) alone constitute 49% of the key media personnel.
     Dalits and adivasis are conspicuous by their absence among the decision
makers. Not even one of the 315 key decision makers belonged to the
Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes.
     The proportion of OBCs is abysmally low among the key decision makers
in the national media: they are only 4 % compared to their population of
around 40 % in the country.
     Muslims are severely under-represented in the national media: they are
only 3 % among the key decision makers, compared to 13.4% in the country's
population.
     Christians are proportionately represented in the media (mainly in the
English media): their share is about 4 per cent compared to their population
share of 2.3 %
     Social groups that suffer 'double disadvantage' are also nearly absent
among the key decision makers: there are no women among the few OBC decision
makers and negligible backwards among the Muslims and Christians.
     These findings are based on a survey of the social background of 315
key decision makers from 37 'national' media organizations (up to 10 key
decision makers from each organisation) based in Delhi. The survey was
carried out by volunteers of Media Study Group between 30 May and 3 June
2006.
     The survey was designed and executed by Anil Chamaria, Feelance
Journalist, and Jitendra Kumar, Independent Researcher, from Media Study
Group and Yogendra Yadav, Senior Fellow, CSDS.

Survey methodology:

For this survey 40 'national' media organizations located in Delhi were
identified. These included all the major news papers, news magazines, radio
channels, television channels and news agencies that could be said to have a
national spread. Of these information could be obtained about 37
organizations. For this purpose different publications or channels of the
same media house have been treated as different organizations.
For each of these organizations we sought information on the top 10 'key
decision makers' who matter in deciding the news and editorial policy of the
organization. For each of these persons thus identified, information was
collected on their social profile in terms of their gender, age, religion,
caste/community, mother tongue and state of domicile. The information was
available for 315 key decision makers. This was gathered by a group of
volunteers of the Media Study Group. Since the information was gathered not
by face-to-face interview but by speaking to colleagues and other
informants, the data here may contain some errors.
SUMMARY TABLES

Gender Profile
     Men     Women
Print Hindi     86 %     14 %
Print English     84 %     16 %
Electronic Hindi     89 %     11 %
Electronic English     68 %     32 %
All     83 %     17 %

Religious profile
                                        Hindu     Muslim     Christian
 Sikh
Share in India's population     81 %     13 %     2 %     2 %
Print Hindi                            97 %     2 %     0 %     0
Print English                          90 %     3 %     4 %     0
Electronic Hindi                       90 %     6 %     1 %     0
Electronic English                    85 %     0 %     13 %     2 %
All                                          90 %     3 %     4 %     1 %

Caste-community profile
                               Brahmin     Kayastha     Vaishya/ Jain
 Rajput      Khatri     Non dwija upper caste     OBC
Print Hindi                 59 %     9 %     11 %     8 %     5 %     0 %
 8 %
Print English               44 %     18 %     5 %     1 %     17 %     5 %
   1 %
Electronic Hindi              49 %     13 %     8 %     14 %     4 %     0%
   4 %
Electronic English          52 %     13 %     2 %     4 %     4 %     4 %
 4 %
All                               49 %     14 %     7 %     7 %     9 %
 2 %     4 %

Caste-Community profile compared to population share
Caste/community group                                        Share in
India's population     Share in key media personnel

'Twice born' Hindus (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, others)     16 %     85 %
'Intermediary' Hindu castes (Jat, Reddy, Maratha, Patel, etc.)     8 %     3
%
Hindu OBC
                                                                       34 %
   4 %
Muslim

13 %     4 %
Christian

2 %     3 %
Sikhs

2 %     1 %
SC

16 %     0 %
ST

8 %     0 %
Note: Figures for population share are based on Census of India 2001 and
estimates generated by National Election Study 2004 of CSDS.


Share of Hindu upper caste men
Share in population      8 %
Share in key decision makers in the media     71 %
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