Understanding the problem with a lack of diversity in media

Announcing a research project on open journalism

Have you ever struggled to find images or footage for a story that you’re working on? Or spent ages going through websites with free images and videos, trying to find a visual that isn’t stereotypical or from the wrong place or time?

We have. And we know that in some cases, what visuals we find online has influenced how we approach a video story.

Based on our preliminary research, we’ve found that it is easier to access visuals of countries like the United States and France than it is from countries like India or Tanzania — even though India has a larger population than the US, and Tanzania has a larger population than France.

That’s why we’re working on a way to address the lack of diversity in the kinds of free to use images we can find online. We want to increase the amount of such open licensed footage available for journalists to use. But before we finalise how we’re going to do it, we want to make sure we fully understand what this lack of footage means for journalists. And for that, we need your help.

We’ve put together a detailed survey, that shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes to fill. And we would really appreciate it if you could take out a bit of time to fill it out, and share it with other journalists who use free visuals (Creative Commons or royalty free) as part of their work.

Here is the link: https://forms.gle/rbb4aWgzU1fsXiCM6

The results of this survey will help us decide which areas we need to focus on most urgently. And that’s why, the more responses we get, the better we can do. This survey is about gauging what journalists need.

As we’re collecting information from this survey, we’re also developing this project as part of the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, which our co-founder Manon Verchot was selected for.

We can’t wait to share more about what we learn with all of you. And, as always, we have more exciting interviews and opportunities coming up very soon.

Starting with one project that we’re helping the Earth Journalism Network with. EJN has just announced a grant of up to ₹2.7 lakh for a video story about renewable energy in Bihar, Maharashtra, UP or Tamil Nadu. This is a great opportunity to team up with some excellent video journalists and do some field reporting. The deadline is November 17th.

More soon!

Manon & Sanshey