New survey shows the extent of class privilege in UK journalism
UK journalism has a class problem. This statement will not surprise most people familiar with UK newsrooms. What is astonishing, though, is the scarcity of empirical data that could help us better understand the extent to which class inequality affects journalists and their work.
For the first time, research by my colleagues and me for the report UK Journalists in the 2020s uses a representative sample of UK journalists to measure their socioeconomic background. The vast majority of our respondents came from a privileged background, measured by their schooling and by the job held by their main household earner when they were a child.
Previous research on this issue was based on considerably more limited data. In July 2009, a report commissioned by the then Labour government found that journalism was one of two professions that had experienced the biggest decline in social mobility (the other being accountancy).
Research by the Sutton Trust established repeatedly (most recently in 2019), that leading news editors, broadcasters and newspaper columnists are about six to seven times more likely to be privately educated than the general population, a typical marker for privilege in Britain.
Some of the best data we have regarding UK journalists’ social class was collected by the National Council for the Training of Journalists, who since 2017 has regularly published reports on the diversity among UK journalists.
However, as the report’s author Mark Spilsbury concedes, the findings have a considerable margin of error. The report uses data from the UK Government Labour Force Survey, and only extrapolates its figures for the small fraction of journalists within that workforce.
Our report, for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, draws on a survey that media researchers Neil Thurman, Sina Thäsler-Kordonouri and I conducted between September 27 and November 30 2023.
We used data from the 2021 Census for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and from the Roxhill Media database to estimate the total number of UK journalists to be 68,279. Given how notoriously reluctant journalists are to respond to surveys, already swamped as they are with similar requests, we sent our questionnaire to 16,497 randomly selected participants.
We considered journalists to be those who worked for a media outlet with an identifiable focus on news, and who earned at least 50% of their income from journalism or worked at least 50% of their working week as a journalist. To be included in our survey, respondents also needed to work for a news outlet with a UK base and that was aimed, at least in part, at a UK audience.
After data cleaning, we retained a final sample of 1,130 respondents, a sufficient size to achieve a confidence level of at least 95% and a maximum error margin of 3%.
Our survey is part of the international Worlds of Journalism Study, which uses the same core questionnaire across 75 countries. The survey covers a wide range of topics, including journalists’ demographics, working conditions and their experience of safety and wellbeing.
For the UK study, we added two questions regarding journalists’ socioeconomic background. First, we asked what job the main earner in their households held when the respondents were 14 years old. Second, we asked about the school journalists attended: fee-paying private or state primary and secondary school, non-fee-paying selective secondary school (such as grammar school) or a school not in the UK.
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The question on parents’ occupation allowed respondents to write in the title of the relevant job. We coded the replies manually using the nine categories of the Office for National Statistics’ 2020 Standard Occupational Classification.
Seventy-one percent of journalists in our sample came from a privileged background, with the main earner in their childhood household holding a job within the three top categories of the classification. Only 12% of our respondents came from a working-class background (sales and customer service occupations; process, plant and machine operatives and elementary occupations).
We lack the data for an outright comparison with the general population. But the 2021 census gives an indication. It shows that 23.3% of the main earner in all households in England and Wales held a job in the highest AB social grade, about equivalent to the top three categories in our classification. Nearly double (43.9%) fell into the social grade C2 and DE, roughly equivalent with our bottom three categories.
Journalists’ privilege also shows in their schooling. Twenty-two percent of journalists in our sample attended a fee-paying secondary, and 13% attended a fee-paying primary school. Around 6% of the general pupil population in England attends private schools, and fewer in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Does privilege matter?
Our data does not suggest that a privileged upbringing makes it more likely for journalists to hold a top management position. Where it does make a difference, though, is whether they work for national media or outlets with international presence (like the Guardian or the Financial Times). Of those who do only 9% come from a working-class background, while 72% come from a privileged one (the rest come from the middle groups in our classification).
In contrast, 20% of journalists working for local and regional outlets (including regional arms of national outlets, such as BBC Wales) have a working-class background, and 57% grew up in a more privileged household.
Our survey also shows other areas of inequality. An interesting one is age. Both women and journalists from an ethnic minority background seem to drop out of the profession after the age of 50. Journalists with an Asian or Black background in particular remain underrepresented compared to the overall population, as they were in 2015.
Female journalists are also still less well paid, less likely to have a permanent contract or to hold a top management role than their male colleagues. They also more often report feeling stressed out. Their disadvantage against their male colleagues may well be a reason.
One reason for the privileged background of so many journalists will be that journalism has become a thoroughly academic profession. Nine out of ten journalists in our sample were university educated.
In an increasingly complex world, there may be good reasons for those who report on it to undergo an academic training. However, as some scholars have argued, trust in journalism not only depends on accurate and reliable reporting, but also on emotional and social factors that are essential for the relationship between journalists and audiences.
Given the lack of trust in news and rising news avoidance among UK audiences, the inequalities our report found should be of concern. If journalists are found to belong to a privileged elite they are less likely to be trusted by the general public. Reliable data on the inequalities that shape the journalism profession is a necessary start to tackle this problem.
Imke Henkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.