An algorithm to make women more visible in the media

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 03/05/2022

Publishing house Axel Springer SE has announced it will support an action to make more women visible in media.  The company, which operates in 40 countries, will support the EqualVoice initiative launched by Swiss publisher Ringier. EqualVoice Factor is a semantic algorithm developed in-house by Ringier, that measures the proportion of women and men in the online reports of its media brands.

Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer SE, announced the support of the EqualVoice initiative. A start is being made with B.Z.-Berlin, Berlin’s biggest tabloid, that is testing it since January at B.Z. Digital. Best practice models for analyses and measures are to be developed from the pilot and successively applied to the other news media brands such as Bild and DIE WELT, he said.

Springer recently upgraded its targets for women in top management positions to 40% group wide from earlier 30%. This came after the company fired the editor-in-chief of big-selling Bild after an article in the New York Times accusing the publisher of trying to downplay an investigation of sexual misconduct and bullying at the Bild office.

The group is one of Europe’s biggest publishers with titles like Bild and Welt but the company has over the last few years expanded into English-speaking markets and most recently bought Politico and Politico Europe. It earlier bought Insider and tried to buy Financial Times.

“Diversity and gender balance are absolutely essential for future-oriented journalism, which is why we want to drive this change with Equal Voice and other initiatives”, Döpfner said. ”We are committed to ensuring that all genders, as well as nationalities, religions, skin colours or sexual orientations, are fairly represented.”

”This is of particular concern for me and all Axel Springer brands, and our goal for the years to come. Equal Voice technology is an effective tool for creating awareness in editorial offices and establishing diverse reporting as the standard for the longer term.”

The editors-in-chief of the media brands of the Polish joint venture Ringier Axel Springer Polska have been supporting the EqualVoice initiative since 2021. Other Central and Eastern European countries, in which Ringier is active, will follow in the near future, it was announced at a EqualVoice conference in Zurich, Switzerland.

“The EqualVoice Factor turns an emotional issue into a fact-based discussion and solution-oriented action. This in turn leads to measurable change, which is what we are seeing in the Ringier Group. It’s all the more rewarding that we can now offer our EqualVoice Factor to other companies”, said Annabella Bassler, founder of the EqualVoice initiative and CFO of Ringier,

Ringier CEO Marc Walder stressed that women continue to be dramatically underrepresented in media.

“The media have the power to give women more visibility in all areas in the interest of equality between women and men. And, it goes without saying, in the interests of readers of both genders.”

EqualVoice Factor generates two indicators: the visibility of women in images, headlines and titles, and how often women and men are mentioned in articles.

It was announced that the initiative’s existing Advisory Board will be expanded to include an international offshoot. The International EqualVoice Advisory Board is made up of Brittany Kaiser (co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation ), Mathias Döpfner (CEO of Axel Springer SE), Katharina Borchert (Journalist and former Chief Innovation Officer at Mozilla) and Yann Borgstedt (entrepreneur and founder of the Womanity Foundation).

The programme included speeches and presentations by human rights barrister Amal Clooney, Federal Councillor and Minister of Justice Karin Keller-Sutter and behavioural economist Professor Iris Bohnet from Harvard University.