A bot warns FT journalists when they quote too many men

The Financial Times is warning its journalists if their articles quote too many men, in an attempt to force writers to look for expert women to include in their pieces, reports Jim Waterson of The Guardian.

Waterson writes, “The media organisation found that only 21% of people quoted in the FT were women, prompting the development of a bot that uses pronouns and analysis of first names to determine whether a source is male or a female. Section editors will then be alerted if they are not doing enough to feature women in their stories.

“The paper, which covers many male-dominated industries, is keen to attract more women readers, with its research suggesting they are put off by articles that rely heavily on quotes from men.

“Staff were told that, in future, automatic textual analysis could warn FT journalists about the lack of female voices in an article as it is being typed.

“A separate experiment to ensure more images of women are used to illustrate FT articles has shown ‘women are more likely than men to click through on a picture of a woman and less likely than men to click through on a picture containing only men.”

Read more here.