“Despite our best intentions, we won’t know who is in our stories until we count them.” March 5, 2021, 11:50 a.m. Journalism, at its core, is about reporting facts and information to help people become better-informed members of society. The information and ideas in our journalism influences how we see the world, and a big part of that world view depends on whose voices are included. Since its inception, the staff of KQED have worked hard to be reflective of the Bay Area through the stories we cover. We strive to be fair, accurate and truthful. KQED is a highly trusted provider of news for the Bay Area and California, but we have questions about how accurately we represent the people in our nine-county region. We live in one of the most diverse parts of the nation, but disparities exist, including in our own newsroom, and we wanted to know what they were. So we set out to develop a retroactive source audit of our content to know where we stand when it comes to reflecting our communities because despite our best intentions, we won’t know who is in our stories until we count them. A source audit involves identifying certain characteristics — such as gender, race, age, and location — of people who appear in our stories as sources and comparing that information to local demographic data.