The Truth About Women, Oxbridge And The BBC

Recently there have been some big appointments at the BBC with four new appointments to the Executive Board. With a new Director General has come a new broom. So as well as Tony Hall as Director General, James Harding has been appointed Director of News & Current Affairs, James Purnell – Director of Strategy, and Danny Cohen - Director of Television.

In fact all the male Executive Directors on the BBC Executive Board are white, privately educated and went to either Oxford or Cambridge. 

 

At first sight this looks like a familiar story and it is a criticism that the BBC often faces when it comes to the issue of diversity: You have to be a white man to rise to the top, there is a glass ceiling and if you didn’t go to Oxbridge you don’t stand a chance.

However this typical criticism is only half the story and if we are going to increase diversity we need to dig a little deeper, look at the other half and figure out what lessons we can learn from it.

 

There are in fact three female Executive Directors on the BBC Executive Board and they are not all white; Helen Boaden – Director of Radio, Lucy Adams – Director of HR and Zarin Patel – Chief Financial Officer. There is even a forth if you count Fran Unsworth who is Acting Director of News and will step aside when James Harding takes his position.

 

What is interesting about the women is that when it comes to universities they are almost the exact opposite of their male counterparts. Unlike the men not one of them went to Oxford or Cambridge University.

So what does this tell us about trying to increase diversity at the BBC and the media in general?

First of all does it tell us that when it comes to people from a diverse background is it a disadvantage to have gone to Oxford or Cambridge? This I doubt very much and flies in the face of my own experience of working in the television industry for twenty years. At the Executive Producer level and above people who went to Oxbridge (men and women) are still vastly over represented, Mark Thompson when he left the BBC even commented that there were "too many" people from Oxbridge working at the BBC. Fiona Bruce, Stephanie Flanders, Jay Hunt are just three Oxbridge Alumni that spring to mind.

 

However what I believe the careers of Helen Boaden, Lucy Adams and Zarin Patel tell us is that, unlike their male counterparts' career paths, for people from diverse backgrounds our career paths are more complicated.

Often when it comes to men there is a set career path that has already been prescribed and can be followed. The career paths for people from diverse backgrounds are often far more varied and complicated. Not going to Oxbridge is often just the start of an "unconventional career path".

It is also a testimony to how amazing these women have been in breaking the glass ceilings they have broken and risen to the top. The type of character traits one needs to overcome the obstacles in one field (i.e. not coming from an Oxbridge background) are often the same traits you need to overcome obstacles in other fields (be that race or gender).

As a black man who is trying to break glass ceilings of his own in the media industry (and who didn't go to Oxbridge) it inspires me that you can rise to the top of the BBC if you didn’t go to Oxbridge. 

 

Oxford and Cambridge might be two of the best universities in Britain but when it comes to women and people from diverse backgrounds it would appear that other universities are just as good (if not better) at equipping them with the skills to rise to the top. 

And lastly, if we believe we have to be part of a special “club” (be an Oxbridge alumni) to break the glass ceiling often this can be a self-fulfilling prophecy which limits the scope of our ambition.

 

If the BBC, and the media industry generally, want to increase diversity in the work force we should concentrate less on the stories of the successful white men, and instead look at the people from diverse backgrounds who have broken the glass ceiling. We should ask which universities did they go? What skills did they develop from these institutions? What has been their career path? 

By the age of 18 at my first day at Sussex University my career path had already diverged from the most powerful white men at the BBC, but for women, disabled people and BME people there is more than one way to get to where we want to go.

Are we using the wrong map to achieve diversity in TV?

As an executive producer I spend a lot of time in edits viewing directors' rough cuts of films. The biggest issue is always working out the correct structure of a film. Once the correct structure is in place, everything else can fall into place. It means that over the last ten years of being a series producer and exec' I have become obsessed with narratives. Although I oversee films on a variety of different issues they normally fall into a few narrative archetypes. These archetypes can be found in fairy tales, bible stories and Shakespeare's plays. 

So what has this got to do with a blog on increasing diversity in the media? (Warning: this blog is a little longer than my usual posts so bear with me) 

It is often said that "history is written by the victors" (that normally means the dominant majority in power) but I think it's deeper than that. It's not only the stories that are written by the majority, but the very language and narrative structures that we use are dictated by the "victors". 

               

Sometimes this can be a little difficult to understand so let me use the metaphor of different types of maps to explain. 

For example you could have three different types of maps of the same area; an A-Z Street map, an Ordinance Survey map or a weather map. Now if you asked me to plot out my journey on the different maps my route will always be the same. However, using the first map I would emphasise how I had to go around a complex one way system; with the second map I would point out how hard it was to go up all the hills; and using the last map I would comment on how pleasant my journey was with the warm air front and gentle breeze. 

Most of us do not design the maps we use (nor do know how to) we just use the map that is given to us. But what if we are given the wrong maps? It can have disastrous consequences. Let me talk about a small minority - fishermen. The types of maps that are useful to 99% of the population are useless to fishermen, they need weather maps and maps that indicate high tides and low tides. 

So let's return to narratives. Like maps different narrative structures can emphasise different points, and like maps sometimes the type of narrative structures that serve the majority culture very well will not serve the minority's point of view at all. 

Narrative structure can give you two different interpretations of the bible story of Samson, which ends with him destroying the Philistine temple and killing himself and the Philistines around him. You can either see him as the first "suicide bomber" in history or as a hero (or both). 

That might be an extreme example but one closer to home might be the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin". In the original structure it highlighted the injustices of slavery inflicted on innocent black people. In another structure (normally favoured by black people) it is an example of why passivity to racist oppression is wrong and far from admirable.

As film makers from diverse backgrounds I believe our job is to not only to tell the stories of people from diverse backgrounds but provide them with the right tools and narrative structures to help them tell their own stories. 

If we were cartographers we would be the ones designing weather maps to help the minority of fisherman. Other cartographers would ignore these kind of maps as 99% of the population don't need them. 

The responsibility of black and minority people working in the media is immense. It's the difference between Uncle Tom being a role model or a term of derision, it is the difference between Samson being a hero or a terrorist.

100 Years of BBC Diversity

We have been set a challenge. And for everyone who is interested in increasing diversity in the media it is one of those “once in a lifetime” challenges that we have got to take on.

Two weeks ago the new Director General of the BBC Tony Hall asked a simple question:

 “What do we (the BBC) want to be in 2022, when we are 100 years old?” 

It was a question he posed to BBC staff but in these days of mass communication these sort of questions always have a number of different audiences and it would be naïve to think he wasn’t also asking people outside of the BBC for their views on the future of the corporation.

 

So how do we want Britain’s largest media organisation to look like in twenty years’ time?

What would a “diverse” broadcaster ideally look like? Is it just a case of meeting different diversity targets? A simple question of meeting the different percentage goals to accurately reflect the different diverse communities in the general population? Does it matter where in the BBC the people from diverse backgrounds work?

 

When the BBC is 100 years old do we want it to have the same structure it has today? (In the ever changing media landscape the chance of that happening is remote). In its recent history to ensure the BBC more accurately reflects the Nations and Regions it serves structural changes were need. New buildings were built in Glasgow and Salford, network commissions were guaranteed to N.Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Salford and entire productions were relocated. Are structural changes necessary to achieve better representation of diversity behind and in front of the camera if we are to achieve the diversity we want in 2022? And if so what are those structural changes? 

When it comes to indies how do we encourage more diversity in the independent sector? Should we be seeking out BME owned or female owned indies for example? Commissioning editors have been placed in the different Nations and Regions to encourage network commissions for non-London based indies, do we need “diversity commissioners”? What does the BBC’s commissioning structure look like in 2022 to encourage the most diverse ideas getting through?

 

Culturally the BBC is nothing like it was at its birth in 1922. One only has to hear the clipped voices of the broadcasts and know a little bit of broadcasting history to know that it took a minor revolution for women to read the news to realise how far the BBC has come culturally. But culturally how would we want the organisation to feel like on its 100^th birthday?

These are all big questions and I’ve only just scratched the surface. But if we are really committed to increasing diversity not only in the BBC, but throughout the industry, we not only need to think of the right questions but need to start coming up with answers.

 

In the few public speeches Tony Hall has given since becoming DG he has stressed two things; the first is that programmes, the output, are more important than anything else, the second is the importance of working in teams. 

In those two simple priorities he has captured the challenge for all of us interested in diversity. What do we want the BBC’s output to look like and what do want the teams that make this output to look like?

 

Tony Hall has asked us the question, now is our chance to provide some answers.

Thatcher and Black Britain (A forgotten legacy)

As a black person my memory and experience of Margaret Thatcher will be quite different from a white person’s memory of her. Times like this serve to highlight just how important diversity in the media is.

Black people are not the only people who have their own unique perspective on Margaret Thatcher and her legacy.

Two nights ago BBC Scotland broadcast the film “Thatcher and The Scots” it was a repeat of a film I had first executive produced in 2009. The film examined Margaret Thatcher’s legacy in Scotland, how she had changed the country and how Scottish people now feel about her.

Scotland’s relationship to Thatcher is very different to the rest of the UK’s relationship with her. The majority of Scots never voted for her but in many ways her policies were thought by many Scots to disproportionately affect them negatively. (The demise of heavy industry, the weakening of the trade union movement and centralisation of power in the south east).

While Scottish viewers were obviously able to relate to the other films and news coverage which has been broadcast since her death I would like to think that “Thatcher & The Scots” was the only film that really spoke to their own personal experience and how it was different from the majority of the UK.

Margaret Thatcher’s death and the film “Thatcher & The Scots” points to a universal truth that we must never forget when we discuss diversity in the media; Large events effect everyone, but how you are effected differs depending on who you are. When making television programmes we must remember this truth when reporting on large events and issues such as Thatcher’s legacy.

Like Scottish people the majority of black people did not vote for Thatcher. During the her time as Prime Minster seminal events in the black British community occurred with many being either directly or indirectly caused by her policies (or more accurately – reactions to them) including the Brixton riots, Britain’s first black MP’s and the Right to Buy enabling large sections of the black community to become home owners, and some would argue have led to the gentrification of historically black communities including Brixton and Notting Hill.

Diversity in the media is about recognising the realities and experiences of as wide cross section of the population as possible and then reflecting that in our output. I feel that we succeeded in doing that in Scotland with films like “Thatcher & The Scots” but I’m still waiting to see the film “Thatcher & Black Britain”.