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.