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KUOW audits diversity of sources in local reporting

“Value diversity. Be inclusive and equitable. Seek a multitude of perspectives and experiences. Practice fairness. It is imperative to our journalism, the decisions we make and the culture we create.” — From KUOW Core Values Statement

Since 2015, KUOW has tracked the diversity of sources in our local broadcast features and midday local news programs, both to gain a greater understanding of gaps in KUOW coverage and to hold ourselves accountable to our goal of amplifying a diversity of perspectives and voices across topic areas. Beginning in July, KUOW expanded our source diversity tracking to more platforms. In addition, we commissioned the firm Impact Architects to conduct a retroactive source and content diversity audit on our coverage in 2020, to get further perspective and analysis on trends and opportunities for improvement.

We are publicly sharing the audit findings, as well as its recommendations, out of our commitment to transparency and accountability.

We invite you to look at the full report here.

KEY INSIGHTS

So, what did the audit find? The audit identified areas where KUOW is succeeding at including diverse perspectives, as well as areas where we could do more. The audit included six program areas over the 2020 calendar year: KUOW’s local reporting on our website, Seattle Now podcast, The Record midday show, Speakers Forum, RadioActive podcast, and THE WILD with Chris Morgan podcast.

For each content piece analyzed, Impact Architects coded both the story topic and the demographics of the sources included in the story, in order to gain insights into not just the diversity of KUOW’s sources overall, but how that diversity was present across topic areas.

Impact Architects identified the following trends:

  • Health was either the primary or secondary topic for about a quarter of all records.
  • Arts and culture was the second most common topic area by a significant margin.
  • Arts and culture topics had a more diverse population of sources than health topics.
  • Women comprised 55% of all source records, a figure that was consistent across all but one programming area.
  • KUOW included Black sources at a rate that is about six percentage points higher than population estimates in Seattle and King County.
  • Two-thirds of KUOW’s Black sources were found in either arts, culture or racial justice topics.
  • KUOW includes Native sources at a rate that exceeds local population estimates.
  • KUOW's sourcing for Hispanic/Latinx sources was well below local population estimates.
  • KUOW’s sourcing distribution for Asian/Asian American sources roughly matched state population estimates, but was well below that of King County and Seattle.
  • The location for the majority of sources was tied to Seattle, without a neighborhood designation.

See full report here.

NEXT STEPS

The audit and its findings will help inform KUOW’s editorial strategy in the next year and guide us as we work on improvements to our coverage and source diversity tracking practices.

KUOW plans to conduct a second audit next year, which will help us gain a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of changes being made and where KUOW should prioritize efforts next.