This Tuesday, July 19 is published the annual report of Arcom, ex-CSA, on the representation of the company in the French audiovisual sector. This year, the report shows in particular that a small portion of people visible on French television are perceived as “non-white”.
The Audiovisual Communication Regulatory Authority reports each year to the French Parliament on the actions of television and radio services in terms of representation of French society, in a report available by following this link. This year again, television still does not really reflect the diversity of French society.
Disparities according to skin color and gender
The Arcom study, conducted with 19 public and private television channels, shows that only 14% of people visible on television are perceived as being “non-white”. This makes the wise men of Arcom say that television does not represent the reality of French society. Worse still, this representation of diversity recorded a decline of two points compared to 2020. In 2021, the level of visibility of diversity on our screens returned to that which was recorded in 2014, proof of the regression observed in this domain. On BFMTV, France Info, LCI and CNews, people seen as “non-white” are only represented at 10%, the report says.
Another observation drawn up by Arcom is the low presence of women. While they represent more than half of the French population, women are only present on the air at 39%. A proportion that remains stable, however, unlike the percentage of “non-white” people, but at different levels depending on the media. On the non-stop news channels, the visibility of women is well below that of the generalist channels: they represent only 10% of presenters, whereas in the historical channels, the proportion is 44%.
A larger panel
Since 2009, the Arcom barometer has been established thanks to an in-depth study of the programs of traditional channels.
This year, the Audiovisual Communication Regulatory Authority also combed through the programs of all the continuous news channels, namely BFM, LCI, CNews and France Info, which makes a total of 19 channels having participated in the development of this annual report of Arcom.
Over-representation of managers and disappearance of disability
The Arcom report also highlights an over-representation of so-called “higher” socio-professional categories on television. These categories represent only 28% of the French population, yet they are present at 75% on our small screens. As for the so-called “lower” categories, which are the majority in society, they appear very little on television: barely one in ten people, whereas they are the majority in real life.
Finally, the report highlights the very low percentage of people with disabilities: they represent less than 1% of the total number of individuals visible on the small screen. In real life, in France, they represent, according to studies, 10 to 20% of the French population.
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