Welcome to the Future of Journalism, a podcast from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
I'm Eduardo's one half of editorial at the institute. How they their Saturday sources featured in our news stories.
This is a question many news organisations have been grappling with in the last few years.
As the BBC 50:50 project showed, measuring is often the first step towards an output that truly reflects the audience who aspire to serve.
But how are these dilemmas being addressed by Nusra Front?
Global South. Our guest today is our journalists, fellow Nana AMA, Asante Nana AMA is the leader of the Ghana Expert Women Project,
a new initiative to count the number of women interviewed.
That's experts and authority figures in this African country.
Nana AMA is the former co-host of one of the most popular morning radio shows and the creator of the Unfiltered podcast that
provides Ghanaian women with a platform to participate in national conversations in which their voices are often missing.
Nana AMA, Welcome back to the Writers Institute and thank you for being with us today.
Thank you. Do I do? I'm happy to be here. So let's start with the basics.
I'm very curious about the project, and I know that the project basically came about your time at the institute.
So what's the kind of expected women project done?
How did it come about? OK, so let's first start with how the project came about.
You know, I spent six months on the institute's uncovered extended it.
And so during the period, I was stuck in the UK and that prolonged to my my stay as a fellow mirror
connected me with the Department of Journalism at the City University of London.
They had worked on this project where they had counted the number of women expected to appear in media in the UK.
And she did this because this is something I had been talking and thinking about, but I had no idea how to proceed.
And so Mira, who knew that this this had happened sort of put me in touch with Suzanne,
who is at the City University of London, the journalism department.
And sort of that started a conversation towards how could this project be replicated in Ghana?
And then I came back home when I came back home.
One of the things you think about when you've had about how this project took off in the UK and has become a major success and so they started,
it was a challenge when they started, but it's become a success that it's something that media outlets look out to to check their performance.
And so how do you come back to Ghana? The context that Ghana and replicates this?
You need money to do this, you need to hire monitors to do this.
And so that thankfully the department had some, some funds and they were willing to share and help me sort of replicate it in Ghana.
That's how it started. What we did was to design a survey that counted the number of women in media over the five month period hired monitors within
the counting every week so that we would be able to know how many women actually appear in Ghanaian women in Ghanaian media.
As experts, you know, not just as and now says, not just as readers,
not not just as hosts of shows or presenters, but actually women who come because of their expertise.
And I was going to ask about the start of the project,
you said that obviously a project like this takes money and you got, you know, some help from City University to do it.
But what was the main challenge in terms of designing the project and and choosing the the shows that you were going to monitor and so forth?
You know, I think the the one, if I had done this without the guidance of the team of the journalism department, that would have been hard.
But because they sort of had the template, it was easy to tweak it to fit my context, which was gone.
So my the the challenge was deciding on which shows we have so many flagship shows,
you know, so you have 400 radio stations and got just 100 stations, I learnt.
So which ones are you going to choose from? First of all, the which television programmes,
because most other television programmes that were dominant were not shows that fit the the the model that we were going for.
So the challenge was choosing which outlets, which television programme, which radio programme.
That was one of our challenges. And then also because some of the programmes, even though they were flagship shows, they were weekly, not daily shows.
So then how do you monitor those ones? How do you design something to fit that?
And what were the criteria that you used to actually chose a show instead of another one?
It was popularity. It was representative. 30.
What was that? The reasons that you were using when choosing them?
So what our key factor was what the radio stations themselves describe as the flagship shows or the media
outlets themselves describe as their flagship shows and were popular in Ghana and were most listened by,
you know, affect other other indicators available out there.
So they were their award shows that determine which shows are popular.
They were people who track which shows are most listened to.
So we used all of these. We put all of these together to select which shows would be useful for this project.
I guess sitting well with many listeners are probably thinking or asking themselves is,
what did you find when you measured the, you know, the contributors and the people interviewed in these programmes?
You know, going in, you have your assumptions when you're going into any new research.
And so I had assumed when we were going in that we will find, you know, just fairly high number of women because to my mind,
even though the when a lot of women's voices in media, you know, we went, we may be around 30 percent.
That was my assumption when we were going in and I complained about the the the absence of women's voices in media.
But I thought we were doing really well. It is 2020, 2021, so we were, you know, were making progress and then we finish.
And what we establish is that only one out of 11 expects there's a woman who I interviewed on radio and television in Ghana is a woman only one.
And this is a country that has more than 50 percent of the population are women.
So, you know, to put it in perspective for you.
Hmm. And it's not only that they were like a much fewer women he saw is also that they got much less time on air.
Right. And also, yeah, I noticed I read that they were actually treated with less respect.
I don't know if you can elaborate on that and describe some of the situations that that you found when monitoring.
So one of the things we found that men were giving more time on, on and on during interviews, male aspects had more time.
They were treated with more respect. The knowledge was not questioned much as women's knowledge.
Women experts knowledge were questioned by a host of presenters of these shows, and the women were treated with far less respect.
And so there were comments about their looks.
Women who went on TV and there were comments about even on radio people received comments about your looks and comments about.
Some people had received complaints about their relationships, you know?
So whereas men do not get any of those questions about So how are you doing with marriage?
How you doing all of these two things with combining your work with my and things like that?
Men were not getting some of these questions, but women who went on the shows were getting questions, and sometimes they were just simply cut off.
In the middle of interviews and.
What were the women that were actually interviewed in these shows,
where were they women experts and authorities that that that you found when you
monitored what you were monitoring the the output of of these TV shows in Ghana?
So that's that's a really interesting question.
So there were people who came and spoke for banks, like for their knowledge, in banking, in health, in education.
It was it was really brought. It was really brought.
It was just that there were a few other women who were invited to speak, but the areas the people were invited to speak were brought.
And which were the men, oh, well, men got sick.
Well, the men got the men guides. It's the same area, except I think the men received more respect.
So the same areas, just that the more men were invited to save them, they needed to have a conversation about banking in Ghana.
They were going to invite more men than women. That was the stand that if women were lucky, then one woman would be invited to come and speak.
Just now presented the national findings of the project, and they are available, by the way, on your website,
for anyone to check which kind of reaction did you get from Germany's foreign from news
executives in these in these radio and television stations or from the broader audience?
What do people think when they saw this? So for women who and activists and feminists who have been talking for years that you know,
there are no women in in in media women's voices absence for people who have been making these complaints, there was fine line.
He has the evidence for them. So there where it was, it was, it was a relief for them.
It was an affirmation of something they had observed. And this was exciting and full of them for the media outlets.
Well, it was. It was. It was mixed.
I would say it was mixed. Are people who were like, Well, we know we, we we know, we know that this problem exists.
But there are reasons why they exist and the people who were like, Actually, we disagree.
This is not true. We we do.
We do much better than you are claiming in the survey, even though you know there are shows that had zero women during the period.
But I had those then producers saying to me, You are wrong.
We did better than clean. Even though the evidence is otherwise.
Hmm. And obviously with this project, you've you've been looking into experts and authority figures that are quoted in there in the news media.
But I wonder if you can walk us through diversity in newsrooms in Ghana,
not just in terms of gender, but also in terms of socioeconomic status and maybe ethnic background.
Our newsrooms in Ghana are truly diverse.
And if they are not, what do you think are the steps you know to take to make, then make them more inclusive amongst the more diverse in the future?
Hmm. Well, this is a really hard question.
I'm, you know, on the on the surface would appear that newsrooms are diverse.
But once you go and you realise that it's such a it's such a journalism because, you know,
people are over here, underpaid and overworked, you sort of need to come from certain backgrounds to survive.
First of all, you have to have had and be educated in certain places.
So you have to go to that either Institute of Journalism or have gone to university.
First of all, and very few people from lower end of the the economic scale make it to university or are able to go to the journalism school.
So that means that people from the lower end of the scale do not make it into newsrooms.
If you come from a really poor background, you're probably not going to make it there.
Of course, not everybody there. I'm not saying because God knows it's not a rich country.
We're a poor country. So it's a sin levels, right? So the people there do not come from rich homes.
But I would say that people from the lowest end of the scale do not make it to the newsrooms.
And then you, because we come from we got guys made up of different ethnic groups.
You have to look at which ethnic group is represented and not all the groups are represented.
You have to think about religion as well. And not all the religious people from the many religious groups are represented in newsrooms.
And then you have to look at women. And I would say that if you walked into a newsroom, that most newsroom would have a fair, you know,
fairly high number of women as such today are not people in higher positions
so that the people at the entry level or mid-level and then at the top level,
always for some reason, women do not and unable to make it so that top end.
So if your newsrooms are largely Christian in Ghana and solving Ghana, so when I see solving outlets, I'm dividing Ghana into two.
I'm thinking of northern and southern Ghana, and southern Ghana is largely Akan.
And so people from, you know, that are kind of speaking areas are largely represented in newsrooms, which also means they're really Christian.
You know, so the orientation of the newsroom tends to be Christian or sort of, yeah, tend to be largely Christian, I would say, and not reflective.
You probably may have two or three Muslims, and that would be it's I don't think I even remember anybody in a newsroom that was
a practitioner of African indigenous or Ghanaian indigenous religious practises.
Yeah, there may be people from poor backgrounds or impoverished backgrounds who make it to the newsrooms, but they are not.
They are not the majority. The people who succeed and thrive are people from, you know, your mother is a teacher, your father is a doctor.
You're, you know, at least you come from a home where people were educated.
You are not First-Generation University person in in the newsroom.
Hmm. So it sounds like like the same dilemmas that you know, news organisations are grappling with in other countries, too.
And I would like to know about, you know, the next steps for the project.
You've now shown that 80 89 percent of the experts feature man.
These guys that I think is 95 percent of the time is given to men in these programmes.
And they also, you know, treated with more respect, even if sometimes they they have actually less expertise than the women featured.
So these are really striking figures and striking detail.
So what would you like to achieve with these data without the kind of things that you would like to to get done?
You know, after after showing these striking data, you know,
I had been complaining for a long time about the absence of women in media, and I had never thought about it in the context of women.
But I always thought that when just women's voices, you know, you go into newsrooms and there are a lot more women,
but they are not the ones in authority positions and on the radio.
We are the ones, you know, when the news readers or even giving shows to host the shows, we host the entertainment and relationship shows.
And so we're not involved in the serious issues.
And so my my I'm excited that we've been able to do this project that shows clearly that women expect I've sent.
In national conversations, which for me says that's because all of these conversations goes to shape national policy,
national law, you know, conflict, how even decisions people make because if you exclude women,
you're not hearing what the other side think about banking, insurance, human rights and even legal issues.
You're not hearing all of these perspectives which are necessary in framing
policy and laws and making decisions about how life should work in this country.
And actually, this is also not fair, just like 50 percent of the population.
And we're not that. So I'm I'm happy that this project, we've done this project.
I hope this is our first round and there will be more rounds that so we can actually check to see if people are making,
if media outlets are making the changes they said they will make.
When we went out for interviews after we launched the the the reports,
we went for all of these interviews where producers and journalists promised they would do better than they have done.
And so my hope is that this report and this data will keep them in check.
They will have it at the back of their minds that this is necessary.
First of all, it's unfair that we're not represented and it's necessary because women's voices and perspective on issues matter.
So that's my hope for the president. I hope, I hope that media outlet journalists, producers, presenters take this further.
So this is not one of those things where a report is launched and we do all the interviews and everybody says the right things.
And then, you know, we go back to our old ways. I hope this is a move towards change.
You know, this triggers a move towards change for all of us.
Hmm. And I was wondering, I mean, in terms of, you know, impact and in terms of change,
what are the things that you think are needed to, you know, to feature more experienced, more female experts on Ghana's media?
Is it a question of of the media or is it also a structural question as it happens in some countries where you know,
people in charge are usually men still men and they are more feature?
Is that? I mean,
how much of the blame would you put on there on the news media and how much of the blame on on the structural inequalities in Ghanaian society?
I would say probably 50 50, 50 50.
I would say I will put half the blame on media. I will put half the blame on society.
Let me start with media. So after we did the report and I found out that nearly 90 percent like women are,
you know, nearly 90 percent of experts in radio and television are men.
I decided I needed to understand why aren't women showing up for these interviews?
Because I had spoken to producers and journalists who said to me, Look, we try to find women.
We just can't find them when we call them. They have one excuse after the other.
And I know professional women. I know women look.
Ghanaian women have surpassed men and gets an education in Ghana.
So I found it's really strange that we were not showing up for an interview.
So I decided, how about I go and interview professional women and ask why they don't do interviews,
speak to those who actually go on shows and ask what they experience have been?
Maybe this will shed some light on what is happening and why producers can't seem to find women.
And what I found was that look, women, because culturally you women are the ones that run to home in Ghana and we live in a in a city.
Most radio stations, especially the popular ones, are located in the cockpit, so it's hard to get from one end to the other.
And so women who are telling me, Look, if you call me at seven p.m. and ask me to come on this show the next morning at 7:00
a.m. when I have a family children to take care of a job to do and one they will,
I won't be able to make kids. That's not going to work.
If you want to do a phone interview, I may be able to do that, but you have to give me time to prepare and produce.
You know, once that because, you know, in the newsrooms, everything goes very fast, right?
So there is that no women who said to me,
I have been on shows where I have been so disrespected or I have been to the shows that the men where men have looking over me.
And, you know, I realise that the presenters on this show are far more interested in the arguments of the men,
which are no reason at all than my reason documents.
And so my wife's dress myself, you know, why bother?
You know, if they're just going to pitch me against a man and listen to the man and not even consider my arguments so I will not go?
So that's the structure, the design of the programmes themselves. You know, you have programmes to.
Ranking programmes, that's that's a nine p.m. That's when people are going home, and if women have children,
they have to tend to these children and you want the women in the studio that's going to be hard for them to come to the studio.
So there is that and there is also there are there are women I spoke to said, I don't want trouble.
I don't want people to be calling my husband or, you know, my loved ones to complain about my views.
Because for some reason, no matter what you say, whether you go on radio, you say Jesus is love or women are great.
It seems radical because you're on radio and people gets people's parents and loved ones get calls all the time.
You know, it's sort of raining a woman and some married women do not want to put themselves out there,
and women who are not married do not want to be presented as radical.
And so they don't go. And that's because the culture itself is conservative. There are certain expectations of women.
And so if we're going to move forward, then everybody is going to have to make changes.
So our society is going to have to realise that for us to progress, women have to speak and engage actively in the political and the media space.
And speaking of participating in media conversations is a start.
And then for other radio and television and media outlets just to consider the design of the programmes.
You know, the COVID has taught us that we can have Zoom conversations advised to you.
And I I mean, New York, you're in London. We're having this conversation.
It's possible, you know, people do not have to be physically present in the studios for conversations to be had, for it to be interesting or engaging.
And so for me, I think there is the outlets have to consider the design, the way it treats women when they appear on these shows, so you can change.
But the format of these shows so include more women.
But if they show up and they're not treated with respect, if you allow men to talk over them more,
if you sort of dismiss them live on the radio or in the middle of an interview, it's not going to come back.
So both sides are to make changes. I'm not placing all the blame on on a media outlet, but also we women have to sort of take certain steps,
recognise that we're present and we have to play a role. Hmm.
There are so many nuances that you just described in those interviews,
so he's not just the survey data or the, you know, the monitoring that you read,
but also the nuance of these interviews that reveal, you know, real reasons for women not to be not to be featured on the Ghanaian media.
Finally, I would like to know, you know, what would be your advice to journalists who may be listening right now,
who live in other countries that are not in Europe or the U.S., and they would like to replicate something similar to this project and try to monitor,
you know, which kind of gender breakdown in experts feature authority voices.
Any advice, any tips that may be useful for them in terms of trying to trying to replicate your success?
I would say, you know, keep your monitors in check if you want solid data.
Please keep your monitors in check because you know, you asked me about challenges.
Earlier, Eduardo and I forgot to mention that that was one of my, you know, so you don't have false starts.
You know, you hire people and they promise to do everything.
And then you need that on the evening that you need to receive the data you you start calling and they don't pick up.
So I would say that's number one.
Also, pay attention yourself because so, you know, if somebody is fudging the data, I would say, pay attention yourself.
Hmm. Just the last question, I mean, the applications for the fellowships are approaching for the fellowship.
Here are the asteroids. It seems clear that you've been a fellow with us at the are fellow.
And I wonder, I mean, what would your advice for people who are considering applying?
What did you learn while you were here with us at Oxford?
Even if that, you know, with that difficult conditions that we got from COVID and from the pandemic?
What do you think people can expect when they apply to the Journalism Fellowship here at the institute?
Oh my God, what did I learn? Do you have another hour? Day?
Look, I will not. I will never stop saying this.
I I came to Oxford basically depressed about, you know, my job as a journalist because I thought, God, nothing moves, nothing changes.
And you know, I was in Ghana. I saw my problems were unique, you know, and intractable.
And there are no solutions to this.
And then I got to Oxford and I met all these amazing, incredible, brilliant people with different perspectives who sort of have similar challenges.
Look, they may not be the same, so the corruption may differ, but corruption is happening.
The the gender issues may be different, but they were present.
And so that a lot just being in conversation with the other fellows, the prospects reshaped mine and offered me tools to take back to Ghana.
So I have to then move in addressing some of the issues I saw.
So my perspectives on democracy, gender, human rights, technological information and information,
all of that were transformed because of our conversations together,
you know, with Mira and Rasmus and all the other people who were invited to come and talk to us.
And also, when you work in mainstream media in a context like mine, Ghana is not, you know, middle.
We are middle income country on paper, but where are? And so it's impossible for you to independently do something.
But then I come and I meet jackals organisations doing the black box theatre that's so innovative.
That's something that, oh god, that's something that an outlet can do.
And it doesn't have to be one outlets in Ghana.
You can sort of pitch it to other people that I speak to Kahit about Japan, how stories I find and how to make sure that you know,
you can do it inside for long form pieces that people will be interested in.
It was it, I would say. By all means apply.
You have to sell yourself when you apply, but it's a chance for me to have fellowship.
It's not, you know, it may not come in the form of rigid class structure, but you know,
all the people who come to speak to us in during the period that we are in Oxford bring with them knowledge that will shop in what,
you know, open your eyes to things you didn't see in your own context.
So there were things I didn't know I didn't even realise were present in Ghana until we started having those conversations.
I remember when they brought I forget his name, but the BBC guy, the 50 50, the passenger was Ross Hoskins, Ross Ross Hopkins.
Yeah, Ross Atkins. I'm so sorry, Ross.
So when when Ross Atkins came to speak to us, I had been whining and complaining about there are no women's voices in me that our new women's voices.
And I thought it required so much to do it. But then he came, and after his presentation, I was, Oh, that's illuminating.
Like, I, you know, it's sort of opened my eyes to ways in which I could do that in my context and a dare require so much,
and I could actually find allies to help me do this, you know, so I would say, please apply.
It's it's out. It's a life.
Or I would say a journalism rich, an experience and also a life and rich and experience because so many people I met have become friends.
I meet Zoe this Sunday to have a conversation about work and life.
So yeah, by all means, please apply for the writers fellowship.
It's a I have an abundant journalism because of the time I spent there, and it was such a pleasure to host you here in August for Nana AMA.
Thank you for joining us today. It's been a great conversation. You're welcome.
You're welcome. I enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this.
So our guest today again is Howard told his fellow Amma Asante Nana AMA is the leader of the Ghana Expert Women Project,
a new initiative to count the number of women interviewed as experts and authority figures in this African country.
Make sure to follow our podcast channel on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.
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Thank you for listening to the future of journalism. I'm Eduardo.
Suarez will be back soon.