Broadcasters are failing to make minority groups feel represented on TV, with more than half of black people, disabled people and lesbian, gay and bisexual people saying they are underrepresented.
Black people felt especially badly served, with more than half telling regulator Ofcom that they were also portrayed negatively.
While a majority of LGBT people felt they were underrepresented, less than a fifth felt they were portrayed negatively, and most disabled respondents said they were content with how they were portrayed despite not appearing enough.
Only a third of people from Asian ethnic minority groups said they felt underrepresented and only 17% said they were portrayed negatively.
The research forms part of Ofcom’s review of public service broadcasting which covers the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. The review says the figures “highlight the difficulty faced by broadcasters in ensuring that audiences feel represented on screen and fairly portrayed”.
“In almost all instances, respondents as a whole felt that specific audience groups were better represented and more fairly portrayed than people within those specific groups felt about representation and portrayal of themselves.”
The research also revealed that people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are placing greater importance on being represented fairly compared with the rest of the UK, but there is a “large gap” between those expectations and what broadcasters deliver.
There has been an increase in programming covering Scotland of 14% since 2008, when the last Ofcom review was published, but more than a fifth of Scots say their nation is portrayed negatively. The Northern Irish felt most hard done by, with 42% saying they were underrepresented and 26% saying they are portrayed negatively.
The report says: “The nations and their regions are the areas where there is the largest gap between the public expectation of PSB and the operations of the PSBs.”
Despite those concerns, there was also a large contingent across the nations who said they were portrayed positively, at more than a quarter of those surveyed in each nation – more than any other part of the UK except London and the South East.
