 I have received apologies from Stephanie Callaghan for today's meeting and James Dornan is substituting and is joining us remotely. The first item on our agenda this morning is to choose a new convener. The procedure is explained in the choice of convener paper, which is paper 1 for this meeting. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish National Party are eligible for nomination as convener of this committee, and I would invite members of that party to nominate one of their number for this post. Emma Harper. Thank you, convener. Good morning, and I propose Clare Haughey as convener. Thank you very much. Do we agree to choose Clare Haughey as our convener? We are then agreed, so can I have a question? I am going to vacate the chair now and pass over to Clare. In order to make that as seamless as possible, if we can just suspend briefly, that would be very helpful. The second item on our agenda today are decisions whether to take items 4 and 5 in private. Are members agreed? Yes. Thank you. We now move to the fifth evidence session as part of our inquiry into female participation in sport and physical activity. This session will focus on coverage and representation of women and girls sport by the media. We have a number of witnesses with us today. We have Bobby Hain, managing director of broadcasting at STV. Catherine Hulahan, managing editor at ITVB. Joan McClellan, director of Scottish Newspapers Society. Margaret Mary Murray, head of commissioning at BBC Gallic Digital Services and Inclusion. Catherine Salmond, editor of The Herald. Louise Thornton, head of commissioning at BBC Scotland. Welcome to you all this morning. We are going to move straight to questions. If I could start with you, is women's sports in the second best in sports, women's sports journalism? If so, how can this perception be changed? Who wants to start with that one? Thanks, Louise. First of all, I would say absolutely not, certainly not in the BBC. We bring our level of professionalism to all of our broadcast coverage, but what I would say is that we are on a journey. We are the biggest media provider in the UK. We provide free-to-air access, we bring audiences together around our big sporting moments, and that is across men and women's sport. With that, we can draw big audiences and help sports to grow. We have certainly seen over the past decade how women's sport has grown and flourished. A lot of that is to do with the fact that we can offer that big moment free-to-air coverage. Our lessons as the BBC are about the importance of free-to-air, the importance of having a listed system that is future fit, and being able to have long-term commitment in terms of sport. Dipping in and out of things is less preferable to be able to commit to coverage and to growing an audience for certain sports. The final part of that is working in partnership. Our licence fee is frozen, and we are seeing a real-term cut in 30 per cent in our income. Obviously, with the growth and success of sports comes an increased commercial cost for rights, so in some ways you can be a victim of your own success in that. The commitment that we have to sport and women's sport is absolute for audiences, but to deliver it effectively we really need to work in partnership to do that. I would like to pick up on Louise's point. I thank the committee for enabling us to offer evidence. I look after the BBC's Gallic Language Services, and since the inception of BBC Alaba in 2008, BBC Alaba has been committed to growing women's sport across the three strategic sports that we deliver, women's football, women's rugby and shinty. We are delighted to learn earlier this year that Kirsty Lobman has been appointed as the Kamnack Association's first female development officer. We have been on that journey since 2008. As Louise says, it requires commitment, a strategic approach and resourcing, which means ensuring that we have adequate funding for production. As part of the mix, we have supporting rights, but we also have commitment to production. Ensuring that the production values that we bring to the coverage of women's sport are as good and professional as we offer for any sport. We have been on that journey since 2008, and we have seen the profile of women's sport grow in that time. As Louise says, we are on a journey. On the print media, we often see women's sport on the back pages. It is easy to see coverage of sport in general through the prism of football. You could easily say that you do not see many sports other than football on the back pages. If you go back over time, I do not think that there is any question that women's football was very much a second-class citizen to the men's game. The growth of women's football has shone a light on all forms of female sport. If we look at other sports, I do not think that female participation has been in any way seen as a second-class at all. Athletics, tennis, to name only two. It depends on what sport you are talking about, but in general terms, to answer a very broad question, women's sport has never been seen as a second-class activity compared to the men's. When women do well, they get the same billing as the men's do, as many medal winners have shown. Is it that other sports are second-class in comparison with football? As a rugby supporter, the times that rugby gets on the back pages compared to football are relatively small. Over many years, in all forms of sports coverage, be it press or broadcast, football has been the dominant thing and men's football has dominated, to the extent that women's football was illegal in England. The whole debate has changed because of the parity that women's football and women's rugby is now achieving. I am editor of the Herald. The newspaper industry in itself has changed dramatically, probably in tandem with the coverage of women in sport. We are now a digital first operation. For us, to justify the amount of exposure that women's sporting events need to get to be able to grow is really difficult for us because it does not work for our model. There is not the audience there at the moment, whether you are looking at a page view model for newspapers or a digital subscription model, which is what the Herald is looking at. There simply is not the audience there at the moment for us to justify the volume of attention that we give to other sports, which are unfortunately in this setting male dominated. For that exposure to grow, to allow the sporting world of female events to grow, we need a sustainable financial model. We are completely and utterly measured on metrics. The metrics do not add up. If I was to throw everything that I had into covering female sports, it still would not yield the financial returns for our business model. What would help would be a robust financial situation similar to the local democracy reporting scheme that we have in Scotland. Some sort of support from the Government to fund reporters that cover female sports, to allow the exposure to grow, to give us a situation where we would be in a properly commercially valuable situation. I just thought that that was really interesting insight. Thank you very much for calling me. I just wanted to follow up on that. What active measures do you take to monitor engagement and what have you developed any trends over time? It would be interesting to contrast maybe the print with broadcasting and that interesting idea that maybe if you were to frontload coverage through the public service broadcasting model, that would then cascade into the commercial media in particular. For us, our analytics are live. We have our live dashboard there telling us exactly how long people are spending on stories, how many people are reading them, how many people are choosing to subscribe to a story based on which one they read. For us, the yield on female sports is really, really low. In terms of broadcasting, have you seen any evolution in engagement and coverage over time that might in the longer term present an opportunity for print media? Yes, absolutely. It's the short answer. When I took this job, one of my priorities was to work in partnership with my colleague Margaret Mary Murray and to build on the great work that BBC Alba has done with the women's game for football. Margaret Mary can talk to this, but the investment has come from BBC Alba over many years. In terms of the audience and the audience interest that our audience data team can measure for us, we could see the interest in women's football increasing significantly. Over the past two years, we have invested in a joint collaboration with BBC Alba. For example, in the first year in 2021, we covered 10 programmes for women's football. Last year, we covered 43, and then we have seen our metrics increase fourfold for that. When we look at that in line with the international coverage and the coverage of the lionesses, we can see that there is a huge market for women's football. Covering it all under our sports scene brand has been really successful for us, so running a highlights programme, providing red button English language commentary when BBC Alba have the live games, and then BBC Scotland is going to stream up to 26 games on iPlayer. For us, perhaps similar to Catherine, the investment in digital and the growth in audiences consuming multi-platform content, that is really where we are seeing a growth audience. That is interesting. Is there an experience with STV and ITV? Have you had a similar experience? We would add to the original question, too, to say that we certainly do not see our coverage and reporting of women's sport as, in any way, second-rate to men's sports. I would make three points briefly, first of all, on coverage. I think for us, our model is slightly different. We are not in the business of acquiring rights and making productions. Our operation is an opt-out basis, so we have a UK network of which we are part. Our programming obligations are largely around news and current affairs, which is at the first point to make. The second point is about variety of sport across the board. I think that in making sure that we are reflecting activities beyond football and ensuring that we are reflecting the profile of our society, we have very consciously and deliberately targeted better representation over the last few years. For example, for 2023, for our news programmes, we are targeting a gender balance among contributors and also a profile of ethnically diverse contributors, which in the case of the ethnic minorities would be 12 per cent, which is higher than the previously published census data in anticipation of new data coming later this year. The final point to make is the contribution that broadcasters on other areas can make to reporting, because I think that that is a really important point too. It is about seeing inspiring women athletes, women players and the women's games on TV and the reporting of that. It is also important to recognise that we need a mix of people making the reports. On TV, we have a long tradition of encouraging and nurturing female talent behind the scenes and on-screen in order to do so. I would add to that for ICB border, which covers the Scottish borders and Dumfries and Galloway. The landscape there is slightly different for sport. Rugby is a dominating sport, ice hockey and curling. We tend to be driven by the rights where there is action on television. The women's sport is absolutely on a par with male. If not, for example, the curlers would get top being on our programme as opposed to perhaps a lowerly male football. The answer is no, it is not lesser than male sport. We are restricted to what we can broadcast. We cannot send cameras to every sporting event across the region. We are not. That is not our model. The sports that are broadcast under the Sports News Act this deal, the more there is, we would be happy to show it. Emma Harper. To pick up on what Catherine is saying about the ITV border, I am a Strunrar lass, I live in Dumfries now. ITV border is our go-to for Cirland and for the Sawisharks ladies team. I am interested if you track the data that Catherine Salmond is talking about as far as digital access online. You are right, rugby is massive in Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders for women and men, and again just to the Ice Hockey and the Cirland. Is that something that you monitor the tracking of what people are watching then on the tele? We do not specifically monitor, in terms of a breakdown by sports or even gender, all we monitor is gender balance across the output of ITV border news, gender balance and other diversity measurements, like disability and age and so on, but not the individual performance of individual sports. I wanted to ask Louise about a point that you have made and it kind of relates to what Margaret Mary said. In evidence last week, some of the witnesses were very supportive of your work and said that you had great coverage, which was amazing. Obviously, you have got this collaboration going on and Louise, you had made the comment that you have got a lot output going out just now, but the numbers have increased of who is watching. Is that the key here, if the output is going out, are more people going to watch than maybe Louise or Margaret Mary can come in? I think that we have seen over the last 10, 12 years both audiences and crowds growing. We saw just recently two national team games being played to really big crowds. I think that the coverage across the media on television, on radio and streaming services really helps to raise the profile and create stars of the future. We saw Emma Watson score her first goals for Scotland and she will be a household name from now on. It is being on the journey that, through the exposure on the media, you ensure that audiences become accustomed to seeing women's sport across the schedule as something that is normal, and it is something that is incredibly entertaining because the athletes and the sports people involved are at the top of their game and it is a brilliant watch. That in itself creates a momentum and an attraction for people to watch the sport in person but also to join in to the media coverage. We are going to move on a little bit and pick up what Bobby Hain was talking about there, about broadcasting and reporting and the roles within that. I am going to move to Tess White to start off. My question is to Catherine Sammond, if I may. Women are severely underrepresented in sports journalism so only 3 per cent of staff jobs on sports desks in Scottish print titles are filled by women. In your opinion, what barriers face women accessing the sports desk and what in your opinion could the industry do to overcome those barriers? In my opinion, things are changing when I think of how things were when I started in the industry. I am the first female editor in 239 years at the Herald so that is maybe an indication of how things are changing. Sports desks were and John will vouch for this pretty much all men and very much a masculine culture that probably mirrors some of the audience spectating culture within particularly football. Things are definitely changing behind the scenes. We have more pleasant newsrooms in that respect so I am confident that that has taken time but we are moving forward and the change is visible. For women, we have a problem here that when we advertise for sports jobs and this has been pretty much the whole time that I have been a journalist, very few women apply for sports reporting jobs. In my previous employer, we were linked with weekly newspapers in England where they ran journalism apprenticeship schemes and they brought young journalists in and gave them exposure to all aspects of the newsroom. Very, very few female want-to-be reporters ever wanted to go on to the sports desk. It is something that has fascinated me and I do not have the answer. To me, the barriers in my newsroom and my sports team are not there. I have an incredibly enthusiastic head of sport who is desperate for more women and is actively trying to seek them out but they are not coming. I do not think that there are barriers. I think that there may have been in the past but they are definitely not there now but there does not seem to be a huge appetite for young reporters to want to join the sports teams in an online print setting at the moment. I will take a step before that because I am going to put my other hat on as a lecturer in journalism at Stirling University. I have been running final year projects and helping with our employability agenda for that time. What I see as the cohort comes through and we have probably got about 80 going into the final year now, we do one-to-one conversations with the young student journalists about what they are going to do in their final year and what their eventual career goals will be. I can definitely count on the fingers of one hand if that is the amount of female students who say that they want to go into sports journalism. I do not have to ask at the beginning of a year to know that the vast majority of the blocs will say that they would like to go into sport, particularly football, and very few, if any of the female students will say that they are interested in sports journalism. That may change over time with higher exposure to things such as women's football on television. However, as it stands, the new entrance going through universities, the young female students are not interested in doing sport. On top of the female students list are usually social subjects, mental health issues, society stuff, and a bit of arts, but not sport. This year our offer holders open day for the first time, and the young women said to me that she was interested in sports journalism, and I said, you will go all the way because you are needed and you are wanted, but she is an exception. Before my second question, there is a women in journalism research project that challenges that premise that you have just stated that women students get pushback from lecturers. Are you familiar with that piece of work? I am certainly not familiar with the claim of lecturers pushing back at female students not to do sport. That would be quite the opposite. Certainly, if I put my old hat back on as an editor, I would have been only too delighted to be able to bring a variety to the sports desk because it would change the dynamic and change the kind of coverage. I haven't seen that research in depth, but it certainly is not the case at Stirling at all. My second question to John as well, John. Sports presenter Eili Barber tweeted last year following misogynistic jokes at the Scottish Footballers Writers Association Awards that she'd never felt so unwelcome in the industry I work in. In your opinion, what specific challenges are faced by women in sports journalism? Catherine is in a better position to answer that. From what Catherine said, it is true that sports desks are dominated by men in print. That's still the case. Your figures aren't that far wired to Mark. From the point of view of somebody who's already in the industry and looking across the room and saying, where do I want to go next? Perhaps seeing a phalanx of blokes means that that's less of an attractive place. That apart, as Catherine says, there are no barriers. From a senior point of view, the more women that can involve themselves in sports coverage the better. You may have seen the kind of material that Heather Dure has been producing for the Scottish Daily Mail recently. That's added something completely new to their sports coverage. In fact, it has added a significant level of public interest to what's happening inside one of our major sports. That's a great thing. Thank you. Thanks, Tess. Emma Harper. Thank you. Just to pick up on what Tess White is saying, I see that there are women who are pundits on the telly, their posts, maybe they were professional footballers or rugby, or is there an opportunity for people who have played sport, whether it's professional or not, to enter into a career of journalism? How would they go about that as far as needing a degree, needing the stages, is it college, university, post-grad? What are the opportunities for women who have maybe retired from professional sport to maybe become journalists? I'm looking at Margaret Mary, because you're nodding. I think there are huge opportunities. Across all of this is the added, you can't be what you can't see, whether that's in print or in broadcast, ensuring that we give platforms to women journalists, broadcasters, pundits, analysts, commentators, as well as the players. Across BBC Scotland's portfolio in Gaelic and in English, we have seen a number of former athletes players become pundits, analysts and journalists. As far as I know, I don't think that you need any formal qualification other than being brilliant at what you do and being recognised as being brilliant at what you do. I don't know, Louise, do you want to? Yeah, I think if Tom Connor, our sports editor, was in this chair, he would have numerous examples of how he and his team have developed female talent. I could list Amy Irons, Leanne Cricht and the names that we have coming through. What we don't do is just drop somebody into a situation and expect them to be the full package. There's periods of training and development, but our absolute aim is that we have 50-50 representation on our programming. We achieve that in sport scene results. We would like to get that across all our programming and our commentary. The way to do that is to develop and grow and invest in the talent. It's clearly there, as Margaret Mary says, but you need to invest and you need to support all the way through. I guess with broadcasting as with anything, the more you do it, the better you become. As Louise was saying, with that support across teams, you gain confidence. We see, again, in this spirit of partnership, Gallic-speaking reporters and presenters working across Gallic language services and English language services. People like Iona Ballantyne, who presents a magazine programme for BBC All Up, also reports for Radio Scotland and for our digital services in BBC Scotland. I might add, if I may, a mention of the programme Expert Voices, which STV has developed, which is an outreach programme encouraging people who have not been contributors for one reason or another on media, but are somehow experts in their field. This is a programme that applies across all aspects of life, and we will target a sport-specific version of what we do. These are sessions held, typically, 20 or 30 people at a time, where we encourage people to understand what it means to be on TV and to give them some training and coaching and, importantly, confidence from people who have been on that journey, for example. Maria Lyle, the Paralympian, took part in a recent session on people with disabilities being on TV, and that was a very successful session. We have had over 700 people come through those sessions in the past year or two, and around 100 of them have appeared on STV programmes, either news or our current affairs programmes, to help to encourage more players and coaches and people involved in the game, people who work with some of the sporting bodies, for example, the public service, people who make podcasts but are not on TV yet, because they are in audio only. That is an audience that we are reaching out to, to encourage more people to feel confidence and empowered, to talk about what they love through expert voices. We mentioned earlier that perception of the sports desks and that they are male-dominated in the previous culture within them. I think that I will probably come to Catherine on that. Do you believe that that is potentially a perception that we need to continue to challenge, to make women who are coming through university degrees in other places that actually this is somewhere that they can come to work, if that is indeed something that is playing on their mind? Do you think that there is a link between women's sport representation in printing and on the TV and on the radio and things, and the number of women who are coming to work in sports journalism? As Margaret Mary said, if you can't see it, you can't be at the side of things. I'm not sure what the perception is now. I would like to think that social media has changed an awful lot, since I started as a journalist when there wasn't social media. You did go into newsrooms, whether it was as a work experience as a student. The men were on the newsdiscs, and they were quite gruff, and they could be quite, I don't know, dismissive of a young female reporter. I've been on the receiving end of that, but that's fine. I think it's really important now for the visibility to inspire and to show change. I do think that social media helps. We might come on to where it doesn't help, but it definitely does help. John mentioned there Heather Dewar. You've mentioned countless other prominent female sports journalists. It does influence change there. We try hard, and we are trying harder to work with universities and to try to get people in. I've been at events with John where I've spoken about things to students. I think that that is mirrored across the Scottish print and online offering that the newsrooms I know would all be like that, desperate for the best talent, whether that's male or female. If there are aspiring female sports journalists out there, they are definitely, I think, given the perception that we are approachable. I don't know if that was the case years ago. I remember that last university incident. I remember at the time that Moira Gordon was quoted extensively after that, and Moira was very, very clear that she had never encountered bad behaviour in all the times that she had worked at Scotsman Publications. She was only one woman on the sports desk. Certainly my recollection of my time there was that there was no poor culture among the sports teams there, either the evening news or the Scotsman. I think that the senior sports staff would have been and would still be horrified if they were being accused of encouraging some kind of macho culture in which a woman felt uncomfortable because the woman who was in the middle of it all did not feel uncomfortable. They were honourable, decent people, working with the people who were there. If we could have got more people who were keen to join Moira, that would have been to our advantage, not this advantage. I think that it is clear that a gruff macho culture does not mean being mean to women and putting them off. A lot of women can hold their own quite comfortably among gruff macho men. It does not mean that they cannot see themselves being able to have a job there. I really do think that that needs to be established. The idea that there is some weak female tradie journalist out there thinking that I would love to join there, but I am scared of all those men. I just do not think that that happens. I really do not. John has got direct access to students if they are feeling like that. Women can hold their own among a group of men talking about football. Absolutely. Or any other issue for that matter, given the number of gruff journalists, I am sure that we all deal with every week. Not to put in. Someone is going to tweet about that, aren't they? To move on to a slightly different topic. Some of the gruffest of the politics. I could not possibly comment. I am interested in how we address additional challenges that women may face coming into journalism, whether they be from a minority ethnic background, from any form of disability for members of an LGBTQ plus community. I was speaking to a friend of mine who considered sports journalism before they went on to do something else at university. They also have a hearing loss. Going into a lot of sports punditry, that impairment put them off going into that side of things. What do your organisations do to encourage people from a diverse range of backgrounds to consider taking up a career in sports journalism? How can you continue to support them through that journey as well? Louise is looking at it. First of all, it is hugely important, isn't it? It is important for every single organisation that we have an inclusive culture and an inclusive recruitment policy. Those are two things. The other part of what we do in our organisation is about challenging stereotypes in our output. You cannot be if you cannot see it. We must make sure that our output across all our platforms looks and feels like the audience. We need to make sure that the culture of our organisation, whenever you come in to the BBC, I have had somebody start yesterday. The first thing we do is try to make sure that that feels welcoming. We have already understood if there are any accessibility needs or any adjustments that we need to make, and that will have been done right at the start. In terms of how we recruit, and perhaps Margaret Mary as inclusion lead can speak to it more effectively than I can, it comes right back down to the way you look for people, the way you write your job advertisement, the way you hold your interview panel, what does your interview panel look like. We think about all those things at every stage because it is crucially important that we get a really healthy mix of people in the decision making teams, in the production teams and also on the airwaves as well to really represent our audience. Too much to add to that. Other than that, for everybody, inclusion and the culture of the workplace is absolutely critical. We are speaking about gruffness in journalism, but we should, as organisations, ensure that at whatever level you are working or at whatever stage in your career you might be working in a supportive and inclusive environment within the workplace. As Louise was saying, we have to ensure that our output and our workforce reflect the diversity of the population. The BBC has published targets that we are working very hard to meet and ensure that our workplace and our output are as representative as possible. I agree that not just in sport but across all jobs we just want the best candidate and once you have the best candidate then it's how we can accommodate and enable them to work to their best ability. One thing I might add is that we have talked about STV's inclusion and diversity targets and the journey that we have been on and the target that we have, which is not just for our on-air representation but also the profile of our colleagues around the country. That has seen real progress because it is one of those areas where you have to have a sense of what you are doing and people have to understand what you stand for and your values need to be clear. However, having some form of target that is calibrated and clear and transparent is very helpful because it is a very strong focal point. The other thing I would say is that perhaps it is a function of television newsrooms which is that we absolutely encourage our journalists who are not dedicated sports journalists to do sports stories as well where they have an interest. I am thinking of Ivanna Haaland in our Edinburgh newsroom who is a very sports-interested journalist but is a general journalist but will cover sports. Selena Jackson joined us in the Glasgow newsroom. She had a piece on the footballing sisters Brogan and Cody Haye who were in the Scottish Cup action on the lead up to the Scottish Cup semis in the last couple of weeks. I think that there is not just dedicated sports journalism as a way to reflect your interest in the subject but opportunities for people around the country who do have an interest in sport also to be reporting on it. Have you got time for another? No. That's fine. That's the winner. Follow Kane. Thank you very much, convener. My question is quite a direct question reflecting on something that Catherine Salmond had suggested in her opening contribution around modelling potentially around the local democracy reports network. I think that as politicians we find that network very helpful. Very often if we want to tell a story, not so often if we are trying to avoid a story right enough. In terms of your vision of how that might work, would that be about trying to target and focus that into recruiting more women into journalism? I suppose that drilling that down into a local level like the democracy network and ensuring that we can cover those grass roots sporting clubs and events and those sorts of things. It's twofold, isn't it? Do you want to encourage more female reporters or do you want to increase the coverage of female sport? Because there is something that sticks in the throat of a lot of sports reporters, women, who are told women should cover women's sports. If it is a case for me of increasing exposure to women's sports and we just need the best journalists to do that, it would be brilliant at the same time if we could grow our female reporting numbers while we grow our exposure and coverage of female sports, but the two are not. It's not women for women's sports. For me it would be let's increase the audiences that are engaged meaningfully with women's sports. You fund or part fund a model where reporters are focusing on the sports that really need to grow to survive. We just don't have the audiences there at the moment and our metrics are live. They are to the minute. Am I correct in saying that the local democracy network was partly funded through the licence fee or through the BBC charter? There may well be models for a Government to consider at reserve to devolved level in terms of how we might do some of this. I think that this genuine collaboration and a willingness at the moment to do this definitely within my newsroom. I feel sorry for all these old stuffy men that we're talking about in the past because I'm not really sure who they were. There were a few but sports desks have always been really passionate places. They have to be. The hours that reporters put into, particularly anti-social hours to covering sport is phenomenal. My team at the moment is a really forward thinking digitally focused mixture of young, old, fresh, gruff, whatever you want to call them, but they just really want to see those sports audiences grow and for the future of Scottish journalism to be clear in our digital models. Anything that is an idea that could be formulated would definitely get our support. To move on to Sandesh Gulhane, who's got a brief supplementary on this theme. Thank you, convener. I have just one question and I'll direct it to Louise Thornton, if I may. One of the things that we heard last week was about top female athletes in sports which aren't normally very well represented. Judo, for example, mountain biking, sports that are very big at the Olympics. But these ladies are not household names because we don't seem to be covering. So, Transworld Sport, for example, for when I was a kid, everyone around my age knows Kabadi, but it's not exactly a mainstream sport, but it's because it was covered. So, are you looking at all to try to use your position as a BBC to cover a sports package where we can see women excelling from this country, for example, in sports that you do throughout the year, so it's not just one big bang at the Olympics? Thank you for the question and the short answer is absolutely. I have the privilege of being able to commission across all the platforms, so I commission across BBC One, BBC Scotland Channel, but also into iPlayer, Radio Scotland Sounds and on to our digital and social platforms. So, apart from what you might see around the big moments on television that we all come together for, we have a significant amount of budget pointed at what we do on sport online. Sport online is a huge platform for us just for the Scotland part of sport online. We attract about 2 million viewers a week for that. That's not insignificant numbers. So, with the budget we have allocated specifically to that, that allows us to do exactly what you're saying. So, we've invested in streaming netball. We covered the judo win, we did do that on our digital platforms. We've covered gymnastics, we've covered female boxing. So, this is where we use the ability that we have with those platforms to do things that we might not be able to schedule on television or we might see an opportunity for a sport that we think there's a particular interest in. Unlike football, which happens all throughout the year, you can build a habit for some sports just happening at certain times throughout the year. So, that's our approach there. We've got a whole list of sports that we do cover on that platform. Alongside that, what we try and do is also identify talent and really tell the stories of particular talents. So, if we were to take some top Scottish athletes leading up to the Commonwealth Games, we would not just invest in the coverage on television. We would actually be going to training camps and following their stories there. We've been following Hannah Rankin, who's a young boxer, maybe not a household name at the moment, but hopefully a household name for Scotland in the future. So, that's where we think we can really add value. That allows us also to work out where to put the investment for women's sport when we really see audiences come through and we have a success with something. Women's carling is a great example. We stream women's carling and we do lots of digital coverage around about that. But netball, I think, is a really interesting example. We've had some success with streaming netball, and that's something we would like to do more of in future. Thank you. So, we'll move on to our next theme, and I'm going to ask Evelyn Fraym to ask the first question, please. Thanks, convener. Female pundits can often get a lot of criticism and horrific backlash to the way they've presented, said, whatever. If that happens, how do you support them and what do you have in place to protect them? I'd like to ask Louise. Thank you. Yes, particularly social media can be a very misogynistic place. Can't it? Some platforms more than others. First of all, we've got absolute duty of care to our staff, like any organisation, but we are particularly aware that when women are on social media, things that men just simply aren't. Certainly I've had that experience myself. I used to run a platform called The Social, and any time a woman posted a piece of content, we would be on standby. That is exactly the same that we do for our top talent. It doesn't matter what level in the organisation you're at, if you're a person who's posting on social media, our editors have duty of care with that person. First of all, there's a conversation round about what anyone's going to post and what potential ramifications there could be. Obviously, we monitor our output, and we take action. We will block people, we will ban people, we will take people from our platforms if they've broken social media guidelines. We were part of a campaign, I just must get the name right, Hate Won't Win, which was all about supporting female talent in the sports world. That was in partnership with Sky. It's sad that we have to do this, but it's just a matter of fact. To Catherine's point, those people are professionals, and they are aware of the environment in which they operate. We're all human beings, and it can be incredibly hurtful if people post on social media. We take every action to support them on a human level, but as an organisation to monitor and make sure that we take action on our accounts if there are hateful comments. The Council of Europe's report on gender equality in sport and the role of the media found that female athletes are often portrayed in a stereotyped, comical, sexualised manner in the media. Note that this portrayal impacts negatively on female participation in sport. What guidelines do you have in place to prevent this from happening and what processes are there if it does happen? Anyone would like to come in on that. What guidelines are in place? I don't recognise that description of our output in all honesty. We obviously take feedback and analysis very carefully, particularly of specific Scottish output hours or anyone else's. Naturally, we have the off-com code, which is a very detailed set of responsibilities that applies to broadcasters generally, public service broadcasters in particular. We have a sense of impartiality and fairness, which stems from the code, but goes to our values over 60-plus years now as STV. When I think of the examples of supporting the promotion of sports and individuals, young upcoming athletes, for example Katie Shanahan, who is a double bronze-winning swimmer in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, on her way to the Olympics, hopefully, we ran a feature on her in the last couple of weeks. Chloe Grant, who is the first young woman to be inducted into the All Women Formula One Academy, and other similar stories just in the last few weeks, I think they're generally very fair, absolutely appropriate, and don't suffer from any of those allegations that you've described. I think we have a real sense of who we are and who we talk to and who our audience are. As STV, with the biggest news audience on a night, up to half a million people watching, we've got a really big responsibility to all of the people in that programme and also to our audience to be fair and reasonable and accurate in the way that we support and promote the stories that we do. I would agree with that, speaking prior to people order. The whole programming is all about celebrating the region, celebrating success and celebrating individuals. We feature an awful lot of female sports achievers, both in disability sports and in neighbour body sports. They're on a par with men and there's absolutely no mocking or second-class status. It's a given that they're treated properly. Can I ask, do you ever get it wrong? I take your point, Bobby. You're not in tune or not in line with the characterisation of that report, but do you ever get it wrong? Do the public ever say to you, you've got this wrong, you're not happy with this and how do you deal with that to anyone? I don't think that we get it wrong in the way that you're describing. I'm not familiar with any complaint along those lines. We do come in for criticism, particularly from fans of one side or another, in very established sports. Those are partisan supporters. They're very passionate about what they do. Depending on your view, you might think our reporting is either biased in one way or another. I think that's quite a different arena from the kind of allegations you're talking about in terms of fairness or a sense of common courtesy and reasonableness in how we deal with people and how we present people. That is not an allegation, I've seen levied against what we do. I would echo Bobby's point. I think that, as we've mentioned, unfortunately some people, some fan, football fans, sports fans, general audience members do still hold misogynistic views and will tweet or contact the BBC to express those misogynistic views. Everybody that we work with, that we put on the air, that we put on our programmes, that we feature are absolute examples of excellence of women in sport. We bring the same level of broadcast professionalism to the women's sport as we do the men's sport. I don't recognise the stereotype that you're talking about because that's everything that we're trying to dispel. Of course we adhere to our editorial guidelines, but our overarching mission with sport in general and particularly women's sport is to celebrate, is to challenge those stereotypes and is also to promote an open conversation about the issues that you are talking about. Very brief. Thank you. Microphone, thanks. Just to pick up on what I will be very brief, what Louie said earlier, we're on a journey to improve coverage of sport and I agree with Catherine that it's not about women doing women's sports and men doing men's sports, it's about covering sport and supporting sport and physical activity for folk to be healthier as well. I'm just interested in how rugby, the six nations women's is on right now. Scottish Rugby doesn't say Scottish Rugby women or Scottish Rugby men, it's Scottish Rugby. So would you say that that would be a way to support how we convey supporting women in sport basically is to take out the issues of gender and just make it Scottish Rugby for instance and whatever six nations is going on is that that's how we demonstrate and support that. It's a really interesting question because we would always laze with the sporting bodies to just identify the best way to talk about the sport so my instinct is yes to talk about the sport but our audience research tells us that people aren't necessarily fans of women's sport, they're fans of a sport so how do we achieve parity for men and women? We create really fantastic 360 coverage around about a sport and that's what with our women's football coverage everything is coming under our sport scene brand however we do know from the associations that they really welcome having a specific women's highlights programme the games are played at different times the leagues are different so that's where we sort of separate things out and we flag up this is we have our men's highlights programme and we have our women's highlights programme now that's the way it is at the moment we would always have a conversation with the sporting bodies and organisations about what they prefer but our coverage of the women's six nations has been fantastic and I think it's really generated a lot of excitement just under the brand of six nations as you say I'm going to move on to our next theme and I'm going to move to Paul Sweeney I just was really taken by the comments earlier about the idea of building some sort of ecosystem which could support young women coming into journalism and I think Mr O'Gahannad had mentioned previously we'd spoken to women who are participating in sport perhaps elite athletes but can't sustain themselves in that sport because it's not got sufficient financial heft yet to actually earn a living out of full time so I was just wondering these people who are fans of the sport are participating in it have a great creative and innovative ideas about how to promote it and just minded to what you said around this local democracy initiative could this be a model perhaps that could support women who are athletes in a sport which is emerging but also have a potential to promote the sport through journalism as well and it's a potential opportunity for the country to look at building something there it's not just in terms of the broadcast I think broadcasts do an interesting amount of work to bring forward pundits commentators from the sport with the insights they have but maybe not so much in the print side is this something that we could potentially look at building? I think there's a whole conversation on the finances to be had and as I said before, I do think that there's a willingness to have it so yeah, would be my answer to that, yeah? That's great, just a thought I had there. Thank you very much. I think one thing is quite clear from the discussions between the Public Interest Journalism Working Group which I was on and the Scottish Government which is that the direct funding of journalism between government and the organisation is not something that either side would particularly wish to encourage I think there's an obvious conflict of interest there if there's a direct financial link between those who are holding you to account and you and I don't think that many of you would support that what the local democracy reporter scheme did was create a middleman if you will. Sorry, yes, in the moment. I think that that's something which the Public Interest Journalism Group in proposing a Scottish Public Interest Journalism Institute was trying to explore with the Scottish Government and I think that's something which still has legs that there's no money involved in it just now and the working group behind it is still trying to find ways in which the institute can be established but some kind of clearing house where support can come in and then be dispersed to those organisations for whatever purpose it may be whether it's local democracy expansion or coverage of minority sports or coverage of women's sport in general that would be something which would have legs and a lot of support from our side but I think it's finding the mechanism that's the point and I think it's also fair that we know that the BBC has its own financial challenges just now and I think that going back to the licence fee constantly is probably something which is not tenable either so there's a lot of work needs doing for this involving third sector but very much I think finding sustainable ways to enhance quality trusted coverage is very much what's needed in a whole variety of sectors, not just sport I think we'd all lament the decline in financial capacity within print media over the last few decades but I think there's a tension there as described that you need something that is being pulled on by the reader but there's a tension about how do you then put it in front of people if it's not a media it's like a chicken or egg scenario isn't it where to promote curling for example it was a huge thing back in 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games in Scotland was crazy for curling for about six months so clearly where it's put in front of people there is an interest it's just how do you then cede that demand There is a point to be made for sustainable business models for Scottish journalism it doesn't have to be just the big sporting events that yield rewards for us you can have a very focused audience on a niche sporting topic I've seen it done at newspapers further up north the Highland League have gained an awful lot of digital revenue out of being that newspaper that brand that is all over it so it isn't just a we only cover the big ones niche is actually really good for us if you can get a targeted audience and there's work for us to do on that definitely some of the women in sport topics do fall into that but again there's a little bit more to be looked at at the figures at the moment because they aren't there for us The great thing about the digital ages there's no limit to space In the print era we were constrained by where we got 12 pages of sport and so it's all got to go in there and there was a competition to occupy that space so for example in our sport I know a bit about this hockey where the participation levels particularly amongst young women are massive I mean there's over a thousand young people are playing hockey at Watsonian hockey club now every Sunday so the audience is there and the space is there to give it quality coverage what's required is the people in the middle to cover it and the audience is there to be had but the cost is the journalism it's just the journalism because the production costs are relatively small but the audiences are there to be had at the moment hockey relies on one or two individuals and Scottish hockey covering its own stuff which is fine but it's not the same as going to an independent trusted platform where you'll get a balance There maybe is an opportunity where there are those people who would love to spend their day writing about their sport as well as participating in the sport but they don't have the opportunity maybe there's a way of joining that up I just think that's maybe something we can consider David Torrance Thank you, convener and good morning to all the witnesses we've heard about what you're doing just now but do you have targets to invest in future women's sport and increase coverage I mean if your organisations have now set targets to increase the coverage of women's sport We don't have targets BBC Alibot is a partnership that the BBC operates in partnership with MG Alibot MG Alibot have been the funders of our television sports portfolio which has grown over the years not to a target but this year we have increased our coverage of the SWPL from 20 games to 26 games so incrementally we're growing our commitment to women's sport but not to a target so we have not targets but not specifically for individual sports or forms of sport but as I mentioned earlier on we do have targets for diversity and gender balance across our programmes and we're making good progress towards those targets and as I said earlier on they were originally drawn with a view to a 2023 target and based on the census data that we anticipate we will review those targets 50-50 gender target will stay but the profile of ethnic minorities within our output and within our colleagues base will change in a new target later this year for BBC Scotland so our commitment to women's sport is as I said it's a long term commitment because that allows us to buy good packages of rights and to build audience so working with BBC Alba increasing our volume of games for the SWPL and having active conversation around national team performance and then our commitment to six nations women's rugby as well that's on-going but just generally the big priority for us is round about what we're doing on our streaming platforms and making sure we're achieving 50-50 balance there and then across our coverage in terms of punditry, commentary I guess our target really there is to hit that 50-50 and have that talent development piece all leading up to that in terms of representation Louise, you mentioned earlier about digital platforms and the diversity of women's sport at your cover and I'm just wondering if any other witnesses how could you increase your diversity in sport for women the coverage of it a good coverage of different sports and different areas of sport I've mentioned a few of them previously everything from Lucinda Russell and the Grand National winner appearing on the programme a couple of weeks back Anastasia Vipe and Law who's a figure skater from Dundee recently Emily Nicol who's a netball Centurion now for Glasgow siren so I think we have a range of people and different sports and I think what is very important for us is not just a gender balance in sport but also a range of sports from the very established and very popular through to more minority sports that you may not see on TV as much and when you add in people like Eilish McColligan or Laura Muir who are very established I think seeing that range and the people on different parts of their sporting journey goes to an earlier question around how can we support people this is a long term project that we need to support people we need to be with them on their journey and their success story and we need to be making sure that we are reflecting that as part of our daily reporting Can I just ask this a quick question on that if you don't mind me jumping in there David Torrance you've mentioned a lot of women's athletes sports people throughout your evidence but are you talking there about featuring them on news articles or within sports packages but not actually showing their sports I think it's both I think in some cases wherever we are highlighting the people I've mentioned and I should re-emphasise this is just from the last few weeks so this has become very much part of our output we will report on their performance and their contribution to that sport and where it's possible we will use footage if it's available from that sport and we'll reflect the outcome of the competitions that they are in so I think it's a bit of both a lot of our news and it's a very STV editorial style is based around people it's about stories that are very people centric but of course it's people doing things and where it's to do with sport this is not just about people through the lens of who they are although that's important to us but naturally it does highlight and give presence and promotion to the sport itself but without actually covering a game, a match or whatever it's a much more focused on that individual it's around the sport and the individual but it's more individual based that's for sure thank you so what could the Herald or indeed the broader print media be doing to enhance the coverage of women's sport so for us we're very much on our own journey on what content we cover that is compelling people to pay for digital subscription so for us in sport the days of covering match reports or pressers as they were do nothing for us they do nothing for us digitally because that's content that's everywhere every sports journalist was at that event so for us it's always looking at a different angle to all of our journalism and sport crossing into news and to business in a way that perhaps sport was seen as sport reporting and we're doing that a lot now which would come on to the point of how exports people could perhaps come into journalism comment pieces and analysis pieces and looking similarly to the conversation that we're having here but in our pages on our website is the type of stuff that is doing for us so while it may not be we covered this match just for example the wider discussion and the bigger thinking about sports journalism definitely has a place within our content and it is the type of discussion that we are encouraging with our writers so we are breaking from traditional sports reporting I suppose in my long winded way what I'm trying to say there increasing women's coverage in sport on to whether it's on digital platforms or mainstream media is it just financial because we've heard about restrictions in the licensing fee and the revenue you get from advertising or online and people buying is it the financial impact that is restricted when you're covering more women's sport or is there any other problems in that area that you face as an organisation it really comes down to because professional journalism costs money and our organisations could cover as many things as they wanted if they could pay the people to do it but as revenues go down then the ability to cover as many things as they can is limited so it does come down to the finance and at the other end of it is whether or not it's generating enough revenue at the other end to pay for the staff and it's always been the case and the reality is that 70% of all new advertising goes to digital platforms all going across to Atlantic so you can expand sports coverage and it's not going to change that when the vast majority of advertising is going down a programmatic digital platform route so it's finding ways in which you can guarantee that the finance is there to sustain the coverage and capture the audiences along the way without any real the incentive is to provide the coverage and to get the audience rather than any real notion that you're going to generate a profit out of it if you can wash its face then great an issue that's probably particular to broadcast can be round about the level or indeed existence of equality feed from the sport and that can often rely on the investment actually being in the sport itself so yes we have a pressure on our budget we can't do everything we'll always look for opportunity where we think there's a particular Scottish interest Scottish events, something we're doing well at exciting talents we'll always look for an editorial justification for what we invest in but often it can be a conversation with the organisation to find out if they do indeed have a feed that we can broadcast on our digital platforms I've got two other members who want to come in with questions David and I'm conscious that we're getting to the end of our time so I'm going to come to Paul O'Kane and then to yourself Tess White Last week we had a panel of elite athletes and we did actually ask them what would they want to put to you as in terms of broadcast and in terms of wider journalism and I think we've covered quite a deal of that today but at one of the points that was raised by Ailey Doyle was actually about how we refer to women in terms of their careers she felt quite aggrieved that actually when she turned 30 she was referred to as being at the end of her career and that she was coming to the end of her life in the sport and in reality was she just won an Olympic medal and went on to run until she was 35 so I think I'm keen to understand perhaps is there a cognisance of that in journalism or widely about that being quite demoralising and trying to engage with individuals about their own career and their own progress and trying not to make generalisations I think that's a hangover I think because it's not a male-female thing, I think it was generally if you were over 30 then you were getting over the hill when I played First Division rugby I was 31 and I felt I was over the hill and indeed I probably was but I think what's changing as far as athletes are concerned is the level of support and understanding which is lengthening careers so now you've got people like Johnny Sexton playing for Ireland at the top of his game at 37 and it's not uncommon now to have players of all kinds playing top competitive sport well into their 30s so the notion about age is changing that 30 is no longer the benchmark I mean now we have competitions which are for over 35s how can you have an over 35 vets competition when people are still able to compete at international level so I think age is probably something that's changing across the board and not necessarily applicable to females I mean Ailey Doyle would have I think contended and I'll quote of her baton she was always getting asked when I was retiring how long I was going to go on to parts where asked those questions so I think she would feel that it was a very gendered experience in that respect so I don't know if anyone else wants to add I think that some of that is life for a woman and I can understand what she said there and there's questions that get asked of female journalists that don't get asked of male journalists I would say since checking on all of our content and trying to be professional is how we approach everything from sport to any content that we do but it doesn't surprise me that over time women probably have had a different experience from reporters but as I say I think there's a huge cultural shift in journalism and I hope that that will be reflected If I may convener in terms of broadcast was the other issue that we was put to us I suppose by those with athletes Particularly in terms of we're perhaps more used to and I think we've heard some of that this morning seeing presenters and the talent if you like in broadcast being female but Gemma Faye had put quite starkly to us that very often she didn't feel being as well treated if you like as her male counterparts in terms of the research and information that's provided when taking part in a broadcast where she would have to do a lot of her own research it was very often provided to the top talent in terms of men and I think she found that quite a negative experience and I think she was keen to understand what are you doing in broadcast to try and level that playing field and I suppose treat talent in the same way across all programmes First of all that's very disappointing to hear and I'd love to hear more detail from Gemma on that I would say that what we're doing is we treat everybody equally and our managers are trained to treat everybody equally we've talked about inclusion we've talked about culture that sounds like not a great example of culture to me and I would hope that since her experience things have changed you know there are more women in the sports team than ever there are more women on television and radio than ever operating at an extremely high level the same level as their meal counterparts we look at everybody's pay on a yearly basis we do fair paychecks we have rate cards that we apply and we aim to treat everybody with the same level of professionalism so yes, disappointed to hear that but as I say everybody that I know that works in the sport team is absolutely 100% committed to 50-50 inclusive hiring, inclusive managing so I would probably need to understand a bit more detail on her particular experience to make her a more full comment on it I think that in our in our case we have again going to our STB values in our equality ambitions of 50-50 gender balance not just across the company as a whole but actually making sure that in the senior parts of our business we have good representation both in gender and ethnic minority representation and I think again we would pick up very quickly if there was any differentiation and I'm not aware of it in our business in the way that people approach their roles or indeed are supported in those roles but there's a point that went earlier on if I think about one of our north reporters Stephanie Daly, she and Chris Harvey share the sports reporting duties both of them will report on sports featuring both genders there is no difference in the approach that they take or the support that they have to do those on a day-to-day basis Building on Paul O'Kane's point about gendered language feedback that we receive from the elite women athletes was that there is a focus on age and there is a focus when they're being interviewed on are they married so and I accept that Catherine said that you do your sense check which is great and you're the first female editor in the herald so you do do your sense check but if you can't manage what you don't measure so is there an awareness of gendered language and is it something that you're conscious of and are you managing it thank you so start off with Bobby please I'm not aware that there is gendered language and I think that we have a very self-aware team it's a very professional and experienced team across our newsroom it's led by Linda Grimes Douglas our head of news and I think that in general any cliches or laziness have long been eradicated from what we do by a clear sense of what we're trying to do in be respectful and fair and very purposeful in what we're doing but not relying on as I say cliches and tropes that you'd simply go to over time so I think we are making journalism and programmes that are respectful and that do not attract that kind of criticism which again would come across my desk because we are very clear reporting I think on the sense of the profile of our output as I've mentioned a couple of times we're very clear on how that works we haven't moved to individual stories and language because those are checked thoroughly before transmission on a piece by piece basis so it's not really an area that we measure but I do agree with the sentiment that if you want to make change you absolutely have to measure something and set targets in order to do so and convener may I ask that question to John thank you across the industry there's no measurement of it but then again we we don't operate in the same kind of tight controls as the broadcasters do I take your point that if you can't measure something it's difficult to know exactly where you are with it but I would say that asking questions about people's broader life should apply to all athletes and not just females and that not asking questions of male athletes is a failure as much as anything else so but I think that it's something which as we move forward requires heightened awareness about making lazy assumptions in stereotyping anybody that doesn't matter who they are thank you very much Tess, can I thank all the witnesses here this morning for your honest and thorough contributions I'm sure the committee will find your evidence very helpful when we pull together our report on this inquiry at our next meeting on the second of May we'll continue your scrutiny as well as taking formal evidence as part of our scrutiny of the complex mesh surgical service and that concludes the public part of our meeting today