A study into the representation of minorities in television adverts has found that more than half feature black people, but disabled people remain severely underrepresented.
Jack Thorne, the creator of Adolescence, has called for “self-examination” from advertising bosses after Channel 4’s Mirror on the Industry study found that representation of the disabled, elderly and pregnant lagged well behind that for people of colour.
The research was carried out by the agency Tapestry, which for a sixth year audited the top 500 adverts across all broadcasters over two separate four-week periods.
Jack Thorne
It found that the proportion of adverts featuring black people jumped after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, from 37 per cent in 2020 to 51 per cent in 2022, and has remained stable since.
