Top editors are male and white
Top editors across four continents are male and white. 17% of 70 top editors across 100 news brands are people of colour and only 27% of 171 top editors across 240 online news brands are women, surveys by Reuters Institute show.
Overall, 17% of the 70 top editors across the 100 brands in Brazil, Germany, South Africa, UK, and US are white despite that, on average, 44% of the general population across all five countries are people of colour. This is down six percentage points from last year and is one percentage point lower than when the institute first started collecting these data in 2020.
Only 27% of 171 top editors across 240 online news brands are women despite that, on average, 40% of journalists in 12 markets in the survey are women. This is a small increase from 2024, when the figure was 24% across the same markets.
Among 32 new top editors appointed this year and last, 11 (34%) are women.
In ten countries investigated for six years, the percentage of women among the top editors has changed from 23% in 2020 to 28% in 2025.
In all 12 markets in the latest survey, the majority of top editors are men, including in countries where women outnumber men among working journalists.
Key findings:
- As in previous years, in every single country covered, the percentage of top editors of colour remains below – often far below – the percentage of people of colour in the general population. If we set aside South Africa – which pushes up the topline figure in the previous bullet point – and look at the four other countries covered, only 4% of the top editors are people of colour, compared with, on average, 32% of the general population.
- In Brazil, Germany, and the UK, none of the outlets have a person of colour as top editor. In South Africa, the percentage of top editors of colour dropped from 71% in 2024 to 63% in 2025.
- In the US, the percentage of top editors of colour also decreased – to 15%, compared with 29% last year.
- In Brazil, and to a lesser degree the UK, there are fewer top editors of colour than there are journalists of colour. Despite the decreases in South Africa and the US, there are still more top editors of colour than journalists of colour in both countries.
- The overall share of internet news users who say that they read news from at least one major outlet with a top editor of colour has slightly decreased from 27% to 23% and ranges from 0% in Brazil, Germany, and the UK, where no editors in the sample are people of colour, to 85% in South Africa.
“It’s worth underscoring how, in the six years since the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the public discourse surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts has in many places shifted from a sense of urgency to fading interest and, increasingly, explicit hostility, encouraged in part by right-wing public figures such as the US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the institute says.
“The percentage of women in top editorial positions varies significantly from market to market, from 7% in South Korea to 46% in the UK.”
“This year the UK has overtaken the US, and is, for the first time, the country in our sample with the highest share of women top editors, while the US, following its third consecutive decrease, is now tied in second place with South Africa.”
In nine out of 12 markets there are lower percentages of women in top editorial roles than women working as journalists.
“Looking more broadly at gender equality in society and the percentage of women in top editorial positions, we find no correlation. It continues to be the case that many countries that score well on the United Nations Gender Inequality Index have relatively few women among the top editors.”
“There is notable variation in the percentage of online news users in each market who say they get news from one or more major outlets with a woman as the top editor (whether online or offline). This ranges from, at the high end, 74% in Finland and Hong Kong to, at the low end, 23% in Mexico.”
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