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DIVERSITY

3 QUESTIONS TO

JESSICA LOPEZ

DEPUTY IN THE CHIEF EDITOR'S DEPARTMENT,

DIVERSITY EDITOR

Why was this new job created in 2022?

At the end of 2021, Global News Director Phil Chetwynd and

Global Chief Editor Sophie Huet handed me a six-month

project to recommend ways of boosting the representation

of women and improving how we cover diversity issues in

all AFP content. To do this, I spoke with journalists and ma-

nagers across the Agency, media experts, and journalists at

other media to understand what actions were being taken

elsewhere. I then drew up a report suggesting various ways

of improving how we do things. One of the proposals was

to create a job within the central chief editors’ team, al-

lowing a big-picture view of all our global coverage and

close coordination with text, photo and video editors in all

AFP regions.

Management decided to create this job and I applied for it,

so I could carry on the work from the previous six months.

I started in September 2022. I try to keep on top of all AFP

coverage linked to male-female equality and social, ethnic

or gender diversity. I also look at issues related to disabi-

lity, age discrimination, etc. I take part in the daily editorial

conferences, speak to bureaux, and coordinate packages

of stories on these topics. I am also a member of the Diver-

sity Committee established in 2021 to improve diversity

within our own teams

My goal is to be seen as a point person on these issues

At the same the central chief editors are encouraging

concrete actions to improve diversity in our coverage we

have set up training sessions conduct regular editorial

webinars and update styleguides where necessary

These are topics that are constantly evolving We have to

remain open to the debates underway in our societies wi

thout taking an ideological position ourselves What unites

us is our profession

We need to be vigilant on how we describe people the

words we use the images we use the people we quote so

we can give a better and more balanced reflection of the

world we live in This is the core of our work as journalists

and also a key demand of clients

Did AFP provide a better picture of social

reality in 2022?

The Agency has been working for several years on ways of

better portraying women and diversity. Already in 2017,

even before the #MeToo movement took off, then Global

News Director Michele Leridon commissioned a report from

two journalists, Aurelia End and Pauline Talagrand, on how

women were represented in AFP production. From this re-

port came several changes to our editorial guidelines and

also an investigation into AFP content led by media sociolo-

gist Marlene Coulomb-Gully. Her work showed that women

are only mentioned in 24 percent of our stories in French

and represent only 20 percent of the experts we cite. We

also pulled together data, using an algorithm developed in

conjunction with the London School of Economics and other

media, that showed women appear in one in five pictures on

the photo wire. This is a huge discrepancy when you think

that women represent 50 percent of the population.

These studies date from 2020 and I would like to believe the

figures have improved since then because we are paying

more attention to the way we talk about women, pushing

for more diversity in the experts we quote and film, and the

angles we choose This is not about quoting women just

for the sake of quoting women News value should always

come first But we have to allow women and minorities to

play other roles in the media active decisionmaking roles

not just the roles of victims maternal figures or activists

And they do exist

So this is a longterm project and difficult to quantify Ne

vertheless we can say that we are more conscious of the

importance of these issues today and I hope this will only

accelerate in the future

We have already notched up some successes AFP won an

award in 2022 for its coverage of womens sport and equa

lity in sport from the Alice Milliat foundation named after

a French sportswoman who fought for womens rights in

sport a century ago

At the end of 2022 Forbes Magazine cited AFP as one of the

top 10 French companies for sexual equality and the best

global media

"At the end of 2022, Forbes Magazine cited AFP as one of the top 10 French

companies for sexual equality and the best global media."

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