Professor Suzanne Franks

Department of Journalism

I am interested in the area of women in journalism, both the portrayal of women in the media and the experiences of women in the newsroom.

My background as a broadcast journalist over many years (mainly the BBC) has informed my ongoing interest in this field. Sometime ago I published Having None of It: Women, Men and the Future of Work (Granta). This was an exploration of the nature of work and the ‘choices’ that women faced at home and in the workplace.

I left full-time journalism and completed a Phd in 2007. In 2013 I published Women and Journalism (I.B.Tauris) under the auspices of the Reuters Institute at Oxford. For the past few years at City I have participated in the ExpertWomen project which researches how women are used in mainstream broadcast news as experts and commentators. We recently launched a website for this work. The most up to date figures relate to the reporting of the Covid19 crisis which at least initially showed a substantial decline in the proportion of women appearing on the news.

My next forthcoming publication is a contribution on the representation of women for the Routledge Companion to Journalism Ethics.