By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 10 years ago

Chart of the Day: White men are 31% of the population but 58% of evening cable news guests

Media Matters has a series of depressing charts showing the (lack of) gender and racial diversity on cable news shows. They analyzed 13 evening cable news shows on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC during April, though I’d imagine this sad game could be played every month of the year.

The charts that show the combined effects of the gender and racial gap are particularly revealing. White men make up only 31 percent of the population, but they represented 62 percent of guests on CNN, 60 percent on Fox, and 54 percent on MSNBC. Consequently, as the chart below shows, white women and non-white men are underrepresented, and non-white women are super underrepresented.

Representation in US population vs. Cable news

It is possible to buck this trend. On Chris Hayes’ weekend MSNBC show, white men only made up 41 percent of guests. So other producers should take notes and follow his lead.

Check out the rest of the charts here.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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