shortages of women, minorities and conservatives are shaping digital content in ways you can't see.









we<u+2019>ve learned a lot this month about how facebook picks its trending topics: a team of curators monitors lists of stories organized by an algorithm, boosting, banning and remixing headlines in real time. those curators may or may not suppress conservative news, something that<u+2019>s sparked questions about how the social network shapes the content users see.









facebook is, of course, free to decide what to publish,<u+00a0>but a public conversation about its methods is still a good thing, especially if that discussion focuses on more than political leanings.









anyone troubled by the notion of bias at facebook,<u+00a0>including the conservative leaders who met with ceo mark zuckerberg on wednesday,<u+00a0>should also be upset<u+00a0>by its lack of diversity and<u+00a0>the homogeneous workforces of many tech companies. these cornerstones of the social web play significant roles in determining what is and isn<u+2019>t news. if the default worker is white, male, straight and liberal,<u+00a0>that increases the risk that journalism<u+2019>s future will repeat the mistakes of its past.









it<u+2019>s no secret that traditional journalism has a diversity problem. the american society of news editors<u+2019> most recent census found that just under 13%<u+00a0>of daily newspaper journalists were non-white and 37%<u+00a0>were female. broadcast newsrooms are slightly more diverse, with 22%<u+00a0>minorities and 41%<u+00a0>women. as for ideology, only<u+00a0>7% of journalists<u+00a0>in a 2013 indiana university survey said they were republicans. four times as many said they were<u+00a0>democrats and over half were independents.









a diverse press corps matters for lots of reasons, but here<u+2019>s the most important one: there<u+2019>s no such thing as an objective journalist. most of us strive for fairness and accuracy in our methods, but every choice we make <u+2014><u+00a0>who we interview, what details we include, where to deploy our newsroom resources <u+2014> reflects our own subtle biases. so, when everyone shares the same cultural identity, it<u+2019>s easier to overlook important stories or to misrepresent entire segments of the population.









practicing journalism means makes countless choices. the same it true when it comes to writing the computer code that powers facebook and other digital platforms. programmers, like journalists, help determine what goes viral and what vanishes into the deep recesses of the internet.









facebook is more racially diverse than typical newsrooms: 55% of employees are white and 36% are asian. blacks, hispanics and people who identify as mixed race make up the remaining 9%. women, meanwhile, represent 32%<u+00a0>of the total facebook<u+00a0>workforce. they fill just 16%<u+00a0>of tech positions and represent 23%<u+00a0>of senior leadership.<u+00a0>facebook staffers also show signs of leaning to the political left: they've been far more likely to support liberal candidates and causes, according to one analysis<u+00a0>of campaign donations.









just like good journalists strive for fairness, good programmers follow professional standards,<u+00a0>but neither can escape subtle personal biases. take, for instance, when software used by little league baseball to write game stories attached a male pronoun to (female) pitcher mo<u+2019>ne davis. there<u+2019>s also evidence that programs used to screen resumes and loan applications may learn the biases of their creators.









when it comes to the modern information ecosystem, these subtleties matter more than ever before. we are, as the nieman lab<u+2019>s joshua benton wrote last year, awash in a <u+201c>wave<u+201d> of distributed content <u+2014><u+00a0>material created for platforms other than the news organization<u+2019>s website. snapchat discover, apple news and facebook<u+2019>s instant articles are just some of the ways news now finds it audience.









groups like the national association of black journalists, the association of lgbt journalists and the journalism and women symposium (of which i<u+2019>m a member)<u+00a0>have worked for decades to diversify journalism. yet<u+00a0>the facebook flap is a powerful reminder that pushing for change in newsrooms alone<u+00a0>isn<u+2019>t enough. diversity matters for both the organizations producing the content and the organizations helping it find an audience.









facebook<u+2019>s employees should continue choosing the topics they believe are the most relevant, but users must demand that the people who make those choices <u+2014> and the people who write the computer code that helps determine<u+00a0>what choices are available <u+2014> represent the full diversity of the human experience.









meg heckman, a writer on gender, politics and technology, is a lecturer in journalism at theuniversity of new hampshire. follow her on twitter @meg_heckman.









in addition to its own editorials, usa today publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our<u+00a0>board of contributors. to read more columns, go to the<u+00a0>opinion front page<u+00a0>and follow us on twitter<u+00a0>@usatopinion.
unskewing facebook will take all kinds: column
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