‘Once you look over the numbers, you understand the problem’
Q&A with Temur Durrani
Staff Reporter at the Toronto Star
As part of their Mirrored in Media initiative, Temur Durrani worked alongside reporters in the Toronto Star’s radio room to tally the gender and diversity of sources every day, across all news articles produced by the Star the previous day.
Reflect Reality: Can you tell us a little about the radio room and what your job normally entails?
Durrani: The radio room is operated 24 hours a day by reporters. Within eight-hour shifts, we look over a scan of all forms of social media and twitter feeds to see if any breaking news is happening. It's essentially the breaking news desk. If something big is happening, we alert our editors and start writing the initial copy to get the story up and running.
RR: How were you involved in tracking the gender of sources?
Durrani: The Radio Room was asked to help do the count. Although we are generally quite busy, we manage to get the log done overnight when it is relatively slow. We go through the print paper [to tally the gender and diversity of sources]. If anyone has any questions such as whether a source is a person of color or not, they will contact the reporter. We will keep that in the unknown tab, and when the reporter has gotten back, we can update [the log].”
The big concern, in the beginning, was that it would cut into our work, and we would not be able to get our work done overnight, but we never had that struggle, and everyone enjoyed the opportunity to have the discussions and speak to reporters.
RR: What did you learn from doing the tracking?
Durrani: Oh wow, so much. It has helped our reporting. We all know this has been an issue, it is not new. But looking at the numbers has made us very aware. What we have started doing now, we've gone out of our way to search through the databases to find someone who may not be the cookie-cutter source that we need for something. That is the biggest thing I've found from my work and talking to everyone involved with this project, that our reporting has started reflecting this effort. You can take the extra step to find a person of color [ as a source]. You don’t need to think the first person is the right person.
One issue that we came across early on was the [representation] of indigenous people. Indigenous people do not always identify as people of color, so having a separate column would make sense. Tracking gender as binary is also problematic as sometimes sources do not identify as a woman or a man. But the advice I would give another newspaper is ‘do it anyway.' Whatever the format is [for tracking], it doesn't matter. What matters is that at a glance you can see how many people you could have contacted. Once you look over the numbers, you start to understand the extent of the problem.
Another thing I learned is that reporters of color sometimes assume their reporting reflects that fact. That is not always the case. When we would ask them about sources [that were all white] they would say ‘oh no, I didn’t realize.’ It is a subconscious bias. I spoke with one of our reporters about it and he said, “It’s funny, I often think that white people are the easiest to talk to.” It is a question of how you try to actively combat that wherever you can.
