abc news iMPACT rEPORT

mARCH 2021
A message from David Anderson,
ABC Managing Director

The ABC plays a unique and vital role in the Australian media and in our national life. Central to serving our community
and living up to the ABC Charter is ensuring all Australians can see themselves represented in our coverage and
programming.

For the past two years an important initiative to help us achieve that has been the 50:50 Project running within ABC
NEWS. The 50:50 Project was part of a global BBC initiative designed to tackle the severe under-representation of
women’s voices in the public sphere. Around the world, including in Australia, as few as one in four people represented
in the news media are women. Progress in improving representation over the past 25 years has been described as
“glacial”.

As the national public broadcaster, the ABC has a special obligation to lead the way on gender equality in the Australia
media and ensure our news coverage fairly represents our society. Also, including a full range of voices and
perspectives simply makes our content better.

The 50:50 Project got underway in earnest within the ABC NEWS division in December 2018. When it began, men’s
voices dominated our coverage as interviewees and expert contributors – overall the male/female split was around
70/30.

Two years on, I’m incredibly proud to report that in March 2021 we achieved the target of having female and male
interviewees and contributors equally represented. In fact, the exact March result was 51 per cent female voices.

I congratulate everyone at the ABC who has contributed to making this project a success, in particular the dedicated
and hard-working members of the 50:50 team. Your determination and efforts are helping change the media – and our
nation – for the better.

However, the challenge is far from over. We have more work to do to consolidate this achievement and continue to
improve our performance in areas and topics which remain overly male dominated in our coverage.

We’re also building on the success of the 50:50 Project to expand to the 50:50 Equality Project. The focus will broaden
from gender to include other under-represented groups: Indigenous Australians, people from culturally and
linguistically diverse communities and people with a disability.

The 5050 Equality team will be:

Working to diversify and build the ABC’s contact database
Introducing an updated, simple tracking system to help drive the editorial discussion to increase the diversity of
Australian voices in our stories
Building connections with the communities we want to reach
Sharing audience data and other research to inform commissioning
Experimenting with content, storytelling and distribution techniques to reach new audiences

There’s no doubt we have significant work to do, but we have shown that when we work together we can achieve great
outcomes – and tell more stories that reflect Australia and the lives of all Australians.
Working together

The ABC is not doing this work alone. We’re grateful for the contributions and
inspiration from women’s networks and leaders around Australia. Here are
some of their thoughts:

“The 50:50 project has been a game changer. There have been so many great female economists
featured. This has improved the economic conversation and also led to issues that were
previously overlooked featuring much more prominently in public debates.”
– Danielle Wood, President, Economic Society of Australia and co-founder of the Women in
Economics Network

“Ensuring women are seen and heard in news media as leaders, experts, commentators, opinion
makers and valued contributors is critical to strengthening our democracy. Yet women need to
'see it' to believe we can 'be it'. The power of this cultural shift cannot be underestimated.”
– Virginia Haussegger, founding Director of the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation

“Equal representation always matters – it supports critical thinking, diversity in thought and
ultimately better outcomes for all. The ABC must represent the voices of all Australians.
Showcasing the voices of men and women equally provides an excellent foundation for fair and
inclusive, and ultimately more interesting and educative, reporting."
– Carol Schwartz, Founding Chair, Women's Leadership Institute Australia

“By undertaking the 50:50 project the ABC is signaling that gender equity and diversity matter to
them; that it should matter to Australia; and that fair gender and diversity representation is
essential to providing news coverage that is unbiased and fully informed."
– Wafa El Adhami, CEO Science in Australia Gender Equity Ltd (SAGE)

“50:50 is not difficult to achieve if our newsrooms delve more into what our society really
looks like and think more creatively about the voices available. News will always be about men
and their deeds until more women are given voice and sought out for their views, opinions and
reactions.”
– Wayne Burns, Executive Director, Centre for Corporate Public Affairs

“The ABC’s fantastic March 50:50 challenge month results prove women’s voices are now
being heard more than ever on the Australian broadcaster. As public service broadcasters we
have a duty to reflect the audiences we serve and growing the impact of the 50:50 Project
helps us achieve that mission.”
– Nina Goswami, BBC Creative Diversity Lead for 50:50 and News
As teams worked hard to shift the dial on representation of women in stories, ABC NEWS decided to
increase transparency around our efforts by joining 80 other media organisations across the globe to
participate in the BBC’s 2021 “March Challenge”.

Forty-eight ABC content teams joined the challenge, committing to publishing their March 2021 data to
spark public discussion about this initiative and why it's important.

As it happened, the March news cycle was dominated by stories involving women – about their
treatment in the political system and other workplaces, about harassment, misconduct and assault in
workplaces and schools, and about violence in their homes. Throughout the month a spotlight was
shone on gender inequality and the urgent need for women’s concerns, expertise and experiences to be
taken seriously.

Teams report their 50:50 project efforts are creating change across all facets of their work: from story
choice and commissioning to talent selection, production and the publishing platforms.

Every day they're having robust discussions about how to actively include more diverse voices and
perspectives in the pursuit of delivering better quality and more relevant news. And their contact books
have grown and diversified.

Many teams have received positive and constructive feedback from talent they have interviewed,
audience members and on social channels. Hearteningly, several teams have seen changes in external
organisations we work with, which are now offering more female and diverse spokespeople.
Our 50:50 March Challenge results

75% of the ABC NEWS teams participating in the challenge achieved the target of 50:50 in March.
That’s compared to 29% of the teams tracking when the project started delivering results in in
2019.

A further 15% of the participating teams met the challenge goal of increasing their female
representation in March.

Overall, across all programming, ABC NEWS achieved 51% female representation in March.

March Challenge – Honour Roll

Teams that achieved 50% female representation:

• Asia Pacific Newsroom

• Audio Current Affairs
• Audio Hub/NewsRadio
• Children’s TV (BTN)
• E&S (RN)
• In-depth & Investigations
• Network News
• News Channel
• News Online
• State Newsrooms
• TV Programs
March Challenge – Individual team results

Audio Current Affairs (55%)

AM:52%
The World Today" 57%
PM: 53%
The Signal: 65%

Team report: 50:50 made us aware we had a gender imbalance in our storytelling – we
were relying on the same voices and experts and needed to try harder to better
represent the world around us. While the daily record-keeping is an extra task for
producers, it’s also a big reason why this has been so successful. Being able to see that
daily data provides instant feedback and informs the next program and conversations
with reporters. The successes are clear: we’re telling better stories, our journalism is
more relevant to more Australians, in keeping with the ABC’s strategy, and we’re
talking to a wider range of people.

Audio Hub/NewsRadio (50%)

Breakfast: 50%
Midday: 50%
Drive: 50%
Team report: NewsRadio officially joined the 50:50 initiative in November 2020 and achieved
gender parity in the first month of tracking – and we’ve built on that result each month
since. Given the tight deadlines NewsRadio journalists work to, we're really proud of the way
the team has taken to this push for gender balance. Our people are highly engaged in the
initiative, with much more dialogue about diverse voices and ways to encourage more
women onto our programs. It's clear we have built solid habits that will form the building
blocks for the year to come.

Audio Hub Team: Satyam Weinstein, Richard Martin, Helen Tzarimas, Glen Lauder, Laura Tchilinguirian, Alison Crew,
Cathy Niven, Sandy Aloisi, Chris Glassock, Fiona Ellis-Jones, Dianne Comrie, Scott Wales, Peter Hughes, Peter Simpson,
Francois Martin, Rachel Hayter, Glen Bartholomew, Sarah Hall, Cameron Green, Eleni Psaltis, David Marchese, Thomas
Oriti
RN (49%)

RN Breakfast: 45%
RN Drive: 57%

Team report: RN Breakfast and RN Drive have generally been striving to improve the gender
balance across their coverage but in March it was really at the forefront of their thinking. This was
partly because of the 50:50 project and partly due to the prominence of stories about the
treatment of women in workplace following the Brittany Higgins allegations. This influenced both
the choice of guests and the overall attention and focus on gender issues in the way we do our
own jobs.

Network News Teams (54%)

• SRT: 63%
• Network Desk VOD: 63%
• CPH: 60%
• Sport: 53%
• International: 50%
• Asia Pacific Newsroom: 48%
• Business: 47%
Specialist Reporting Team (63%)

• TV News: 68%
• Digital: 57%
• Audio Caff: 87%

Team report: The SRT’s 50:50 strategy has been a longer-term play in which we solidify the
talent mix as an early consideration in all rollouts. The team is now much quicker to
identify 50:50 options in both the pitch and commissioning stages, as well as keeping it top
of mind throughout story gathering. By and large, the team has seen a much greater
richness across platforms by the diversification of voices in their stories, plus a greater
audience reception – both of which have been incredibly helpful in confirming the value of
the strategy.

CPH (60%)

TV News: 64%
Digital: 59%
Capitol Hill: 71%
Team report: The reckoning at Parliament House and within Australian politics
generally over the treatment of women meant not only did we hear from more
women in March – including the thousands who marched on the Parliament
demanding action – but the focus of the stories was on gender equality. The Capital
Hill team continued to target new female panellists, with a focus on newly elected
MPs, recognising that women tend to be more reluctant to pitch themselves than
male MPs. In our digital coverage we also emphasised reaching out to a greater
diversity of people, with a focus on hearing from more women.

CPH Team: Andrew Kesper, Kathleen Ferguson, Mark Riley (Channel 7), Kath Sullivan, Brihony Speed, James Elton, Stephen Dziedzic, Kim
Armstrong, Ed Reading, Andrew Greene, Ian Cutmore, Andrew Probyn, Steph Dalzell, Brett Worthington, Eleni Curry, Louise Yaxley, Kylie
Blackburn, Jade Macmillan, Rebecca Rose, Nic Vevers, Adam Kennedy, Jack Snape, Jane Norman, Mark Moore, Matt Doran, Paul Kneeshaw, Ben
Crawford, Matt Roberts, Lucy Barbour, Nick Haggarty, Georgia Hitch, Luke Stephenson, Melissa Clarke, Samantha Bacon
 International (50%)

• TV News: 47%
• Digital: 51%

Team report: Our 50:50 push has been fantastic, bringing the discussion about who our stories
are about and who they are for to the forefront of the conversation. It’s certainly resulted in
more women in our stories and it’s prompted conversations which are both more rigorous and
more open, defining more broadly what is “news’, who should be in stories and what they should
be focussed on.

Glenda Gaitz, International Producer and 50:50 Champion

 Business (47%)

• TV Program: 49%
• Digital: 46%

Team report: It’s been a real challenge in the traditionally male-dominated corporate landscape to
find female voices but persistence has paid off. The reporting team and interview planners now
have a good contact book of expert female talent to call upon. There are some fantastic female
voices in the world of business and finance and we are proud of our role in allowing more of them
to be heard. Consistently asking for female voices has seen a shift from the world of business, with
fund managers, research firms, banks and consulting firms now actively contacting us about the
female talent they have available.

Network Business team: Ian Verrender, Kay Steadman, Lee Brooks, Alistair Kroie, David
Chau, Ron Russell, Karen Stimson, Stephanie Chalmers
 Sport (53%)

TV News: 38%
Digital: 54%

Team report: The focus on 50:50 in March certainly had an impact on our results. While time constraints
and tight deadlines can get the better of them, the members of our team are making a real effort to include
females in their stories. Our biggest challenge is daily sport can be heavily male dominated and that daily
coverage can take away from the time required to produce original content. But we’re getting there! Our
women journalists are tending to lead the way in doing stories about women. For example, Brit Kleyn’s
recent Olympics TV packages included gymnastics, one of the sports that gets females in.

Amanda Shalala, Network Sport Reporter and 50:50 Champion

Johanna McDiarmid, Digital Producer and 50:50 Champion

Elena De Bruijne on a shoot for “In Her Words”

Network Desk VOD (63%)

Team report: This was the first month of tracking gender for the network VOD team. The gender count
across all video on demand pieces produced in March, not including international content, was 63% in
favour of women, boosted by stories such as the women’s marches across Australia which generated
100% female participation. We’re pressing on with our great efforts and aiming to have an equally
inclusive and gender balanced April.

Asia Pacific Newsroom (48%)

Pacific Beat: 50%
Wantok: 47%
The World TV: 57%
The World Digital: 46%
Team report: Cultural issues in the Pacific often mean women are more hesitant to speak.
Sometimes a woman might not even have access to a mobile phone and have to ask to use her
husband’s. But when we’re able to convince a woman she has the authority to speak it’s a huge
win. Both our radio and TV programs are finding the investment in seeking out female voices is
paying off. Finding a female doctor in PNG, for example, meant we had some go-to female voices
during its unfolding COVID crisis. A real win was having women’s voices dominate in stories that
were not ostensibly about “women’s issues”, on topics such as global politics, human rights and
space. The World has built up a strong contact list of female experts and it’s changed the face of
the program. The diplomatic and academic communities have praised the show’s diversity.

APN Team: Erwin Renaldi, Steven Viney, Wing Kuang, Prianka Srinivasan, Joshua Boscaini, Sean
Mantesso, Tahlea Aualiitia, Erin Handley, Cotton Wang, Mosiqi Acharya, Jordan Fennell, Christina
Zhou and Grace Feng

State Newsrooms (50%)

• ACT: 58%
• TAS: 52%
• VIC: 51%
• QLD: 50%
• NSW: 50%
• SA: 47%
• NT: 45%
• WA: 44%
ACT News (58%)

TV News 58%
Digital 58%

Team report: 50:50 is now a consistent part of our daily editorial meetings in the ACT newsroom
and all reporters are well-practiced at providing a balance of talent in their stories. It took some
time to convince everyone about the importance of the 50:50 project, but it’s now embraced.
Having daily conversations made it a focus and brought home its value. Some of the digital
stories that are heavily female focused have performed very strongly. It’s made us more focused
on finding new talent and experimenting with stories we wouldn’t have done in the past. We’ve
also diversified our contact list.
 ACT Team: Julie Doyle, Troy Cuthbertson, Brett McKay, Elise Pianagonda,
Mick Inman, Tahlia Roy, Selby Stewart, Kate Midena, Markus Mannheim, Benjamin Wilson

NSW News (50%)

TV News 46%
Digital 52%

Team report: Halfway through the month large parts of the state were hit by
devastating floods, which took the focus away from 50:50 and meant we had less
space and fewer resources for stories focusing on women. However, since we started
tracking, reporters and producers are thinking much more about who they are
including in their stories. It’s made our people much more aware of the under-
representation of women in the media and generated conversations about how to
include more female voices.
NSW News Team: Karl Hoerr, Rani Hayman, Maryanne Taouk, James Carmody , Alison Xiao, Catherine Hanrahan, Sharon
Masige, Tony Ibrahim, Joanne Babbage, Mark Reddie, David Hirst, Julia Feder, Riley Stuart, Christine MacLean, Jesse
Dorsett, Nakari Thorpe, Cecilia Connell, Mark Tobin, Kathleen Calderwood, Mark Davies, Josh Bavas

NT News (45%)

TV News 47%
Digital 44%
Team report: A lot of what the NT newsroom does has a good split of male/female talent but we
have only had one month where we had more female talent than male. It only takes a few male-
heavy stories to skew our stats. But we are improving. When we first started tracking we could
quite easily slip into months where we would have around 60% male. Now we consistently get
close to that 50% mark. More reporters are now having conversations about actively looking for
female talent if they find their stories are overly dominated by male voices. Gradually it’s
becoming a natural part of the process to think about achieving that balance.

QLD News (50%)

TV News 52%
Digital 49%

Team report: The Queensland newsroom has been doing very well meeting targets for some time.
Reporters, producers and editors regularly discuss the talent we are using in our news stories on
television and digital. By having talent choices at the forefront of mind during commissioning
original stories we make sure we have a diversity of voices and opinions. One challenge is in
stories from regions and in late breaking stories where you have to take the talent you can get.
 SA News (47%)

TV News 49%
Digital 47%

Team report: The SA newsroom has incorporated the 50:50 stats in the morning editorial meeting
every day. We debrief on the previous day’s results and brainstorm for the day ahead. In many
stories of the day most of the talking heads – politicians, police and so on – are men, but we’re
always looking for ways to include a range of diverse talent. We’ve expanded our contact book to
include more women and people from CALD communities. We’ve noticed a good reaction from the
community when we do this. The 50:50 work is so important to the ABC Adelaide newsroom as it
encourages us to think outside the box in order to be a more representative newsroom.

SA News Team: (Back row) Tom Fedorowytsch, Candice Prosser, Christopher McLoughlin, Rebecca Brice,
Lincoln Rothall, Eugene Boisvert; (Front row) Emma Rebellato, Sara Tomevska, Claire Campbell, Stacey Lee
 TAS News (52%)
TV News 52%
Digital 52%

Team report: In Tasmania we’ve been putting talent choices front of mind early in the
commissioning process for stories. We’re looking for engaging and representative voices that
reflect the community, and an important part of that has been making sure we strike a good
balance in our stories. In tracking the gender balance of our content it became very clear that
proactive and early decisions were key to reaching our goals. It also gave us more of a critical
eye of how small decisions, like the inclusion of talent pictures in a digital story, could have a
big impact on the end product. In March, we continued our focus on tracking and commissioning,
and that led to our 50:50 success continuing.

Tasmanian News 50:50 team: Kate Higgins, Lucy MacDonald, Michael Breen
 VIC News (51%)

TV News 54%
Digital 50%

Team report: The Victorian newsroom had a concerted focus on improving its 5050 stats for
March – and achieved a big improvement on our February results. We commissioned a number of
stories that had female-only or predominantly female talent, for example on domestic violence
during lockdown, research about the lack of physical activity among Victorian women, women’s
experiences of sexual assault and workplace harassment, the March for Justice Victorian rally and
women’s sport league AFLW. We also made a concerted effort to ensure that our vox pops
included an even spread of men and women.

Vic News Team: 7pm presenter Tamara Oudyn and supervising producer Sarah Jaensch
 WA News (44%)
TV News 50%
Digital 41%

Team report: Perth ended the month with 50:50 for TV, a good achievement considering we were
in an election month. We commissioned a number of election spin-off stories which boosted our
female talent. Digital numbers were affected by analysis pieces inevitably focusing on the two
male leaders of the opposing parties. The WA team starts editorial meetings with a 50:50 briefing
to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds and we’ve had a series of intensive brainstorming and
commissioning meetings to identify stories that appeal to women. We’re building our database of
female contacts and the feedback from the women we have contacted has been extremely
positive.

TV Caff (45%)

Q+A: 59%
Four Corners: 56%
Australian Story: 51%
Insiders: 48%
Foreign Correspondent: 48%
Investigations: 45%
7.30: 37%
 7.30 (37%)

TV 42%
Digital 32%

Team report: Since the start of the year the 7.30 team has increased conversations about the
representation of women’s voices in coverage. This, coupled with a news cycle dominated by
issues directly impacting women, has seen a significant increase in their representative data, a
trend the team hopes to continue into the year.

Q+A (59%)

Team report: Q+A has long prioritised achieving 50:50 in our discussions as it broadens and
enhances the conversations we are having. Since we’ve begun tracking our results we’ve adopted
“a balance over time” principle. We can also achieve balance of voice through audience questions.
We’ve unearthed many fresh female voices and formed important relationships with organisations
who provide talent to us. Another benefit that can’t be easily measured is the number of women
who are encouraged by other women appearing on the show. Live TV can be daunting, but seeing
other women take up the opportunity can motivate others to accept our invitation to come on.
 Insiders (48%)

Team report: The main challenge is that a lot of the key-decision makers delivering newsworthy
announcements for our program are men. Over the past 18 months the political agenda has been
dominated by health and economic announcements and few women hold portfolios in these areas.
The Prime Minister, Treasurer, Chief Health Officer, Health Minister, Deputy Prime Minister,
Opposition Leader, Deputy Labor Leader, Shadow Treasurer and Shadow Health Minister are all
male. Over the past two months, with the issue of the treatment of women in the headlines, we
have had more female voices. All-female panels also get positive feedback. 50:50 tracking helps
shape editorial discussions and encourages us to look for more diverse female voices, which
improves our coverage and enhances the conversation.

Four Corners (56%)

TV 54%
Digital 57%
Team report: Four Corners achieved a significant milestone with the representation of women in
our stories during the March 50:50 Challenge. In comparison, in February, Four Corners recorded
29% female representation in the TV episodes TV and 33% female representation in digital articles.
Several of our stories have been female-led, “Bursting the Canberra Bubble” and “Enslaved”.
Although these stories are related to sexual assault, we ensured they were sensitively told and put
the women at the centre of their own stories.

Four Corners Digital Producer Laura Gartry

Foreign Correspondent (48%)

TV 46%
Digital 49%
Team report: When we commission and produce shows, we’re always aware that we’re looking for a
roughly equal balance of male and female characters and 50:50 has helped us sharpen our focus
here. But sometimes the nature of the story means it is either skewed one way towards men or
towards women. 2021 has been a year where women’s issues and women pushing for change is a
story in itself and we’ve made sure we cover those, including in stories out of Belorus, the US,
Russia and Spain. In fact the story from Spain ended up being all female characters, as it just
happened that they were the best talent we could find. One show we made had more male than
female characters and a female viewer noticed and wrote in annoyance, so our viewers are now
pretty aware, too.

Australian Story (51%)

Program 60%
Digital 44%

Team report: March skewed more female than male with five broadcast programs and five digital
stories featuring a woman as their focal point. With several months’ lead time from commissioning
to on-air broadcast, the March results represent the concerted efforts of the team to improve
female representation over a longer period – since the launch of the 50:50 project.
 Investigations (45%)
• TV 56%
• Digital 41%
• ACaff: 36%

Team report: We continue to discuss the inclusion and development of more female expert talent in
our stories, especially in areas that are dominated by men, such as defence and national security
investigations. Our March 2021 exclusive investigative content included issues that specifically
affect women, such as aged care, domestic violence and sexual abuse. Our aged care reporting has
always attracted a higher proportion of women.

News Channel (59%)

• Mornings: 51%
• Midday: 55%
• Arvos: 52%
• Evenings: 58%
• The Drum: 64%
• Weekend Breakfast: 60%
Team report: Being aware of the gender balance on our programs is so ingrained now in our
editorial process that it doesn’t require huge effort, or for us to do anything different month-to-
month. It remains harder to find as many female spokespeople as male but we don’t have to
deliberately over-correct in favour of female guests as much we did a few years ago because our
contact books are much more gender-balanced now. We’re receiving strong feedback from
audiences on the prominence we’re giving to domestic violence and issues affecting women and
how we’re elevating women’s perspectives on these stories.

News Channel Team: Tracey Kirkland, Lani Oataway, Isabella Bull, Gabrielle Gervais, Jessicah Mendes, Naomi Kaplan, Nicola
Duncan, Holly Edwards-Smith, Shelby Traynor, Madeleine Cross, Michele Harris, Tim Kennedy, Amanda Kerr, Alexander Gore,
Michael Reid, Alex Hargraves, Jacob Gillard, Lauren Higgins, Evelyn Leary, Michael Forno, Lorna Dunkley, Samantha Clare,
Matthew Hodges, Sarah Naughton, Casey Briggs, Katelin Meredith, Matthew Cargill, Rebecca Amer, Andrew Tien, Joe O’Brien
 News Breakfast (54%)

TV 52%
Digital 100%

Team report: For months we’ve been having daily discussions about achieving a 50:50 (or better)
balance with our on-air guests, but there was definitely added focus and incentive for March given
the results are being published. The March floods were a major story for us and given many
spokespeople for disaster-related services are men we made particular efforts to find female talent
when we spoke to locals who had been affected. We keep our 50:50 count updated daily and record
the figures in the handover note so the planners and output team know how we’re tracking and can
book accordingly. It’s discussed in the morning editorial meeting and when we’re assessing guest
pitches across the day and has become part of the daily workflow.

NBK Team: Madeleine Morris, Meagan Dillon, Tavleen Singh, Zahrah Ahmad, Tony
Armstrong, Michael Rowland, Ahmed Yussuf, Lucy McDonald, Rachael Merritt, Anthony
NBK
Furci, TEAM: MADELEINE
Laura Wootton, Nate ByrneMORRIS, MEAGAN DILLON, TAVLEEN SINGH,
ZAHRAH AHMAD, TONY
ARMSTRONG, MICHAEL ROWLAND, AHMED YUSSUF, LUCY MCDONALD, RACHAEL MERRITT,
ANTHONY FURCI, LAURA WOOTTON, NATE BYRNE
 Behind the News (63%)

Team report: BTN joined the 50:50 Challenge at the

beginning of March. So far, the results have confirmed what
we already thought – that we have a slightly higher
representation of females to males in our stories. This could
be a natural result of the development and maturity of girls
and boys in our demographic, with girls tending to be
slightly more confident and willing to be interviewed.

Belinda Hendry, Education Advisor, Behind the News

News Digital (54%)

• Homepage Pictures: 53%

• Mobile Explainers: 47%
• Instagram: 62%
• Features and Analysis: 54%
• StoryLab: 74%
Team report: The 50:50 project came at a great time for us as we were looking for ways to bring
focus to our efforts to broaden our audience and make sure our front pages are of interest to all
Australians. It’s helped us to question our thinking and the decisions we’re making about story
choice and placement throughout each day. The result is a more varied line-up, greater
prominence for stories that don’t fit the traditional news mould and a greater variety of faces and
voices in our stories. We think that makes us a more appealing destination for readers. The March
challenge gave us the impetus to refocus our efforts and search for new ways of achieving genuine
equality in our content. We paid close attention to our daily results and used our editorial and
planning meetings as an opportunity to drum up new ideas and plan the rollout of stories.
 THANKS AGAIN TO ALL PARTICIPANTS,
FROM THE 50:50 EQUALITY TEAM:

Emma Pearce (Co-Lead)

Rhiannon Hobbins (Co-Lead)
Flip Prior (Audience and Content Development)
Gemma Breen (Digital Producer)

THE BBC 2021 IMPACT REPORT IS HERE

HTTPS://WWW.BBC.COM/5050/DOCUMENTS/50-50-IMPACT-REPORT-2021.PDF