Could Black People Have Stopped Jimmy Savile?

When I was nine I wrote to Jim’ll Fix It and asked; “Dear Jim, could you please fix for me to train with my Olympic hero Daley Thompson?”. When I never heard back from the BBC I went crying to my dad who told me that I shouldn’t worry about it and Jimmy Savile was “a stupid man anyway”.

Five years later when I was older and a little bit more worldly, I remember bringing up that experience with my dad. He told me that “stupid” was “father-language” to a nine year old for “paedophile”. “Jimmy Savile is a bloody weirdo and paedophile” were his exact words. “Just as well you never ended up on his programme”.

Before you get too excited my father didn’t know anything no one else knew - he had just heard all the rumours. These were the same rumours that led Louis Theroux to question Jimmy Savile about paedophilia back in 2000. The rumours of paedophilia surrounding Jimmy Savile had circulated around the BBC for decades and throughout most of the media. They were an open secret.

Now there is a big difference between gossip and fact, and I have no idea who in the BBC or other organisations Jimmy Savile worked for really knew what and when about his illegal activity. And it would be irresponsible to expect people to act on unsubstantiated hearsay.

However the failure to act on what now seems was almost “common knowledge” is a phenomenon that psychologists often see in large organisations and have even coined a phrase for it - “Groupthink”.

Groupthink is a term that was first identified by social psychologist Irving Janis in 1972 and occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment”. In very basic terms, Groupthink causes people in the group not to question the actions of the group properly, and start to take on board values that an objective person outside of the group may think bizarre. Sounding familiar yet?

The inability of some of Britain’s largest organisations to address Jimmy Savile’s behaviour in a way that now seems obvious to any objective outsider seems like a classic example of Groupthink. For readers of this blog it is also one of the strongest arguments for more black people and people from diverse backgrounds to be in positions of authority in the BBC and throughout the media.    

Irving Janis identified several factors that can lead to Groupthink. But two of the largest are when its members are similar in background and when the group is insulated from outside opinions. A group made up exclusively of white middle-aged middleclass men are more likely to be prone to all think the same, have the same values, and conform in assessing their actions. The same is obviously true for all Asian groups, all black groups, single gender groups, etc.  The lack of diversity in senior management in many of Britain’s largest broadcasters increases the risk of Groupthink.

The best safeguard against Groupthink is diversity; diversity of opinion, diversity of values, diversity in thinking. We are more likely to achieve this diversity if we have people from as many different backgrounds as possible in a group. All too often when we discuss diversity in the media people view it as a form of political correctness or think that we are making a moral argument. In reality there is a hard-nosed business case for increased diversity.

The Jimmy Savile saga may in fact be the best argument for diversity yet. We will never know if employing more black people would have stopped him (as the title of this blog post provocatively asks) but if we want the best television and the best organisations we need to avoid Groupthink, and employing more people from diverse backgrounds would be a great start.

When Statistics Hide The Truth

I recently had dinner with a friend who works on public health issues in the developing world. During the course of the meal the conversation ranged over a number of different subjects and I innocently asked her whether health rates were getting better or worse in Africa.

She’s known me almost all my life and gently told me that my question was a stupid one with the following response;

“Getting accurate statistics is almost impossible but even if you could often they don’t tell you the whole picture. Take a city like London, are Londoners healthier than they were twenty years ago? In some parts of the city the expected mortality rate is in the 80’s while in other neighbourhoods it’s lower than that of Malawi. Knowing the average mortality rate for a big city normally hides more than it reveals. If I’m going to improve a country’s health I don’t look at one big picture I look at loads of small pictures”

That warning against using big overall averages is one that I think anyone interested in diversity in television needs to listen to.

According to the big average official statistics when it comes to the number of black and ethnic minority people working in television things seem to be great, they might not be perfect, but the BBC and the broadcasting industry generally appear to be moving in the right direction and reflecting the diversity of broader society.

For instance, the percentage of the UK population that is BME is approximately 13%, while the percentage of the BBC that is BME is 10%. The percentage of the general broadcasting industry that is BME is 10.4%. Overall, it’s not perfect, but it’s also not too bad, particularly compared to other professions and industries.

The problem with the official statistics, however, is that they seem to fly in the face of my everyday reality. I constantly go to meetings where I am the only non-white person at the meeting. Recently I was at the Edinburgh Television Festival and, the festival’s participants were overwhelming white. The idea that 10% of the broadcasting industry are BME seemed fanciful in that context.

So how can these two facts possibly exist simultaneously?

A few years ago, a similar dilemma faced Professor Becky Pettit from the University of Washington. When she looked at official surveys conducted by the American government, African Americans seemed to be doing far better than the on the ground reality she was seeing. As she sets out in her new book, 'Invisible Men', her breakthrough came when she realised that many of the surveys excluded people in prisons. When the prison population was included the picture of how well African Americans are doing was dramatically altered, to be more in line with the reality she was experiencing.  That makes sense – African Americans are a whopping seven times more likely than the general population in the USA to be incarcerated.  The official statistics just didn’t reflect the reality of African Americans. (To use my dinning friend’s analogy it’s as if the neighbourhood with the worst health statistics had just been left off the official numbers)

So is there a simple accounting error that could be giving the wrong picture of how well BME people are doing in the television industry?  Would that explain why my day to day reality seems to be so different from the official statistics?

I suspect that there isn’t one big factor such as the one uncovered by Professor Pettit, but a number of different factors might, taken cumulatively, create a skewed picture.

Here’s one factor.  Different broadcasters define BME in different ways. For example, some broadcasters define BME as anyone who is not “white with a British passport”. This means white Europeans (including white Irish), white Americans and even white Australians and New Zealanders can be included in the official statistics.

A second factor might be that often freelancers and people working for independent television companies are excluded from the statistics. As the television industry increasingly becomes more reliant on freelancers and indies it is very hard to describe any of your statistics as definitive if you are excluding such a large number.

And last but not least, a third factor highlights my friend’s concern of using large average numbers. While the official statistics have now begun to make a distinction between different grades – a good move – there is often no distinction made between where someone works for a broadcaster. This means that production roles with editorial responsibility are effectively seen as exactly the same as jobs with no editorial responsibility.  And this could be one of the reasons why I am the only black person at production meetings. Many other BME people are employed in important positions but, often, they are not involved directly in editorial decision-making. Knowing the average number of BME people working at the BBC or ITV or C4 does little in telling me how well BME employment is in News and Current Affairs, Drama or any other genre.

Despite the big average statistics, my reality suggests that we could all do better when it comes to diversity.  What is your reality? Are the big average statistics hiding the more important smaller truths?

Is TV Driving Black People Mad?

A few months ago broadcaster, journalist, founder of Colourful Radio and generally all round good guy Henry Bonsu appeared on the Radio 4’s Current Affairs debate programme Any Questions, (for people who watch more television than listen to radio it’s the radio equivalent of BBC1’s Question Time). During the course of the programme one thing Henry said stuck in my mind; “unfulfilled ambitions are the biggest cause of mental illness for black people”.

If Henry’s point is true then it could have important consequences for BME people in general and those of us working in the media specifically.

First of all Black British people are vastly over-represented in the mental health statistics. For example black men are three times more likely to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals than the general population.

But what might this have to do with working in the media?

In the book “Status Anxiety” philosopher and author Alain de Botton argues that in most of Europe and the West we increasingly believe we live and work in a relatively fair democratic world. A world of “level playing fields”. The more we believe there is equality of opportunity then the more we believe our position in society is of our own making. When we succeed this is great but when we fail,(fail to get the pay rise we want, fail to get the promotion, etc), the more we blame ourselves. It is this perception of failure that creates, what Alain de Botton terms, “status anxiety”.

The gap between where we are in society and where we think we should be has also been recognised by the medical profession and is termed “Self-DiscrepancyTheory”. It is this gap that can seriously affect our mental health.

One only has to look at the statistics regarding employment diversity in the media to know that prejudice, direct and indirect, exists.

We may all know this in theory but in practice every time we apply for a job or go for an interview we suspend this knowledge and hope for the best, we have to temporarily believe the playing field is level (or at least level enough for us to be the successful candidate).

But every time we fail to get the job, which the statistics tell us is more likely to happen to us than our non-diverse colleagues the more likely we are to suffer from “Self-Discrepancy Theory”. Paradoxically this means that when we fail to get a job due to racism, the more overt the prejudice the better for our mental health. For example if a card carrying member of the KKK fails to give a black person a job the less likely he is to internalise the rejection, his mental health is less effected than if someone he believes to be fair fails to employ him.

That means according to “Self-Discrepancy Theory” prejudice in the media industry could be literally making people from diverse backgrounds mentally ill. Especially as this prejudice is nearly always indirect rather than direct and overt.

There are two obvious ways we could address mental illness caused by Self-Discrepancy Theory and the gap between where we are in our TV careers and where we think we should be. The first is to reduce the gap by lowering our expectations, the second is to eradicate all prejudice in the media industry. The first option definitely is not desirable, I do not want to lower our ambition, and as for the second option while we strive to eradicate prejudice this will not happen overnight.

But possibly there is a third option: We continue to aim high and overcome any prejudice. But when we’re unsuccessful at a job interview or fail to get the job promotion we know we deserve we offer support to each other. We remind each other of the statistics, the fact the deck is stacked against us, of the indirect prejudice that we often face. In that way we don’t internalise the rejection, we live to fight another day and most importantly we hang on to our mental health.

Am I Black Enough For You?

Where are you from?

I suspect every non-white person (and quite a few white people as well) will appreciate the complexity that such a seemingly simple question can pose. In those four words non-white people often have to work out what the person is really asking, and it’s hidden meaning can range from; “where do you currently live?” to “Were your forefathers part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and do you have roots in Africa?”

I was born in London, my mother is Jamaican and my father is British born to immigrant east European parents. I think of myself as a Londoner, even though I have lived in Scotland for almost five years and recently I was lovingly described as an “Afro-wegian” by a Scottish friend acknowledging both my black identity and the time I’ve spent in Glasgow. 

In an increasingly globalised, multicultural world questions of identity are complex and multifaceted. There are rarely any “right” or “wrong” answers when it comes to the question "where are you from?". The answers can change over time and sometimes they come down to fuzzy feelings of “belonging” and amorphous subjective qualities of values and tastes.

While the very fuzziness and multiple answers can work for an individual, and can even be liberating (I love the fact that sometimes I am British and other times I rejoice in my Jamaican heritage), fuzziness works less well when it comes to the television industry.

The question the British television industry often has to answer is; where does a TV programme come from? or more precisely; when is a programme made out of London? The BBC along with other broadcasters have quotas as to how many programmes they make outside of London. On the face of it that can seem pretty straight forward but like identity when can you say a programme is “Scottish” or “Welsh” or “Northern Irish” or just simply made outside of the M25?

For example what is the “identity” of a programme if it’s made by a company based in Scotland but the director and most of the team live in London and it’s filmed in Wales? To answer that question the TV industry has worked out three criteria to decide a programme’s “identity”: 

1. Where is the company based?

2. Where do the majority of the production team normally live, (“majority” is decided by share of salaries, otherwise you could just pack the team with cheap runners from a location)?

3. Where is the majority of the money spent (that means costs such as filming and editing)?

If at least two out of three of these criteria are outside the M25 then it is an “outside of London” programme. If at least two out of these three occur in a specific place, Scotland for example, then the programme is officially Scottish.

As someone who is interested in increasing diversity in the television industry I wonder if we should learn a lesson from how we currently decide if a production is officially an out of London programme.

Could we adapt the regional criteria to see if a programme is officially “diverse”:

1. Is the company (or executive producer) from a diverse background?

2. Are the majority of the production team from a diverse background?

3. Is the majority of the money spent with diverse suppliers (female camera operators, disabled editors for example)?

Regional programmes have to meet two out of three criteria, for diverse programmes maybe we would only have to meet one, or we might want to judge the diversity of programmes by different criteria.

Unlike the broadcasting industry’s approach to regionality I am not suggesting quotas but I am suggesting that we start monitoring. Are in-house production teams and independents becoming more or less diverse? How well are BME owned, or disabled owned, independent companies faring? Are we making more or less diverse programmes? It is only through monitoring that we will know if we are making progress and the first step in monitoring is working out what we are measuring.

I might be happy with a multi-hyphenated identity of being a mixed-race-afrowegian-londoner-living-in-Scotland but we might need to be a little less woolly when deciding if our programmes should be called “diverse” or not. As a Scottish executive producer I often go to meetings where we discuss whether a programme is officially “Scottish enough”, who knows in the future I might go to meetings to decide if a programme is “diverse enough”.