There is a 19.6% gender pay gap at ITN announced Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News ( part of ITN). She was clearly enjoying rubbing her employer's nose in it. She then handed over to a colleague who grilled the head of ITN demanding repeatedly that he apologise for the way women were being treated unfairly. But of course, data on the gender pay gap can be misleading as I explained to students at Bath Spa, to my cost, just before Christmas.
The 19.6% figure is the mean average gap but even Cathy Newman knows why we use the median number which is closer to 18%. If you don't know why listen to the Bath Spa lecture HERE.
But 18% is still very high. About half of the gap is down to just 17 employees. If the top 20 earners at ITN ( 17 of whom are men) and very few if any of whom are actual journalists as opposed to managers were removed that gender pay gap would be eliminated. Given that ITN is committed to halving the gender pay gap within the next five years if a senior managerial post falls vacant and you are a man I would not bother applying.
So what is the rest of the gap down to? Infuriatingly ITN does not break its gender pay gap down by age. But you can bet that its gap reflects that of society at large. That is to say among staff under 40 there will be no pay gap. It is not a matter of men and women getting different pay for different jobs. It is simply that the longer serving staff - who will be better paid- having risen through the ranks will be disproportionately men. Thirty years ago when I started in journalism most folks in my profession were men. When Old Jon Snow the anchor of Channel 4 Fake News started in about 1870, nearly everyone was male.
As time goes on and old farts like Snow are, finally and not before time, pensioned off the proportion of long serving and better paid staff who are female will increase and the gender pay gap will narrow. It is happening across the workplace. It will happen naturally at ITN. It is inevitable.
This is not a story about men and women getting paid different wages for the same job but one of overpaid liberal media folks pursuing an agenda which can only be based on denying hard facts. Channel 4 Reports on itself, fake news discusses fake news and produces fake news.