NPR's On-Air Source Diversity: Some Improvement, More Work To Be Done

[Commentary] Results are in from the third year of NPR's sourcing project -- designed to understand and ultimately improve the gender, geographic, and racial and ethnic diversity of people heard on NPR as outside sources of news and opinion. The news is mixed.

In fiscal year 2015, which ended Sept. 30, there was a notable increase, compared to two years earlier, in the percentage of black sources, and an incremental, statistically insignificant increase in the share of female sources. Most disappointingly, there was virtually no change in the share of Latino sources. Asian sources improved slightly (again, a statistically insignificant change). The third-year results reflect a variety of experiments to improve source diversity that took place in 14 newsroom divisions over nine months. Looking at race and ethnicity, the findings showed a decline in the overall percentage of white sources, to 73 percent, in fiscal year 2015, compared to 80 percent in fiscal year 2013. As the dominance of white voices dropped, the share of black sources rose to 11 percent, from 5 percent, and the share of Asian sources rose to 8 percent, from 5 percent. But the share of Latino sources stayed flat, at 6 percent each year.