Lenny Henry and the Woolwich Terrorist Attack

In the last month two seemingly unrelated events occurred:

1.       Lenny Henry went to the Sony Radio Academy awards.

2.       A horrendous terrorist act took place in Woolwich.

At first sight the two events could not be more different from one another. The first is an incredibly high-class black tie affair. The second highlights some of the worse aspects of human nature. However there is a thread that links the two.

At the Sony Radio Awards Lenny Henry commented on the Bafta award ceremony that had taken place only a few days previously. “There weren’t any black people at the Baftas; there was no black talent,” Lenny told the Daily Telegraph. “In 200 years’ time, our children are going to look back to now and say: ‘Remember that really weird period when there weren’t any black people in any programmes?’ It’s unthinkable, but now we’re having to live through it.”

Lenny Henry was pointing out what every black person working in TV already knows, although it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of it: Despite advances in some areas when it comes to high profile, prime time programmes television is still very white.  

The Friday following Lenny’s comments just reinforced his point. On BBC1 was The One Show (two white presenters), followed by A Question of Sport (white presenter and six white panellists), Would I Lie to You? (white presenter and six white panellists), Have I Got News for You (white presenter and four white panellists) and The Graham Norton Show (white host and four white guests). On BBC2 it was Gardeners’ World (two white presenters) and QI (white presenter and four white comedians), followed by Newsnight (white presenter).

Now you may well ask how on earth is this related to the terrorist attack in Woolwich?

The News Statesman magazine, writing before the Woolwich attack, had this to say about Lenny Henry’s Bafta comments and the lack of black people on primetime TV and in high profile media positions:

“The most serious example is in news and current affairs. All the presenters on Newsnight and the three main Radio 4 news programmes, nearly all the TV newsreaders and nearly all of the editors and main reporters are white."

"Why does this matter? First, how can the experiences and realities of non-white viewers be represented properly when nearly every major personality in television is white? The situation is especially worrying when all the figures of cultural authority – newsreaders, current affairs presenters, people who run all the TV and radio networks – are white.”

The Woolwich terrorist attack was carried out in multicultural Britain. It occurred in a multicultural part of London with a large black British community. The soldier who died was white, the witnesses came from a variety of different backgrounds and the people arrested were black.

The day after the terrorist attack I happened to speak to two black friends who work for rival news broadcasters. They were both bemoaning the fact that despite this attack having such an obvious multicultural dimension all the people making the important editorial decisions as to how to cover the story were white.

Now I was not involved in covering the story in any way and from a viewer’s perspective it appeared as if BBC, ITN and SKY covered it well. But when you are watching a news story you are witnessing the editorial leads that have been followed, what you don’t see are the editorial leads that have been dropped. These editorial decisions are shaped by editors’ and journalists’ values, experience and background.

The issue is we have no idea what the News would have looked like and how the story may have been covered differently if we had had a more diverse group of people making those editorial decisions, and the problem is we never will.

Lenny Henry is right that we need more people of colour at the Baftas. The only criticism I have is that it clearly doesn’t stop at the Baftas.

Is "Racism" A Dirty Word In TV?

Broadcasters have to be very careful with some of the language we use in our programmes. Just last week the BBC Radio4 programme “Thinking Allowed” was heavily reprimanded for running an item on Cambridge University rowers losing their cox. The presenter playfully described them as “cox-sackers”. A listener complained and the BBC Trust judged it to be “a grossly offensive play on words”, which was broadcast at 4pm, “when children might be listening”.

I have worked in broadcasting for over twenty years including the BBC and commercial radio and I am acutely aware of the strong opinions viewers and listeners have about language; Whether the ‘N’ word should be beeped out of rap records, when you can use the word ‘F---‘ and if it is ever acceptable to use the word ‘C---‘ in any circumstances.   

Over the last twenty years I think broadcasting in general and the BBC specifically have become more relaxed about language and words that may have been cut from drama scripts previously or beeped in documentaries increasingly find their way to our screens and radios. But recently a new word seems to have become forbidden: “Racism”

Last week Panorama broadcast a programme with Sol Campbell investigating the fact that the unemployment rate for young black men is almost 50% (more than double that of their white counterparts). It is a shocking statistic and I think it is critical that flagship current affairs programmes like Panorama explore these issues.

The programme wanted to find out the reason for this shocking statistic. What I found interesting was that throughout the programme they never once mentioned the word ‘racism’. At the very start of the film Sol Campbell asked “Is it the bosses fault that they don’t understand the young black male or is it the young black males who has to sharpen up how they conduct themselves?” Never once did anyone say that young black men might be the victims of ‘good old fashioned’ racism.

The fact that racism might be a problem hung awkwardly in the air but was never addressed. Like a bad swear word it was the ‘R’ word that dare not speak its name.

But this isn’t a problem just for Panorama. “Racism” has almost become a dirty word in polite society. The word has been banished to the preserve of describing ignorant east European football fans or UKIP candidates making Nazi salutes. But “racism” is rarely or ever used to describe “ordinary” employers who fail to employ young black men.

I experience the same problem on the raft of committees and panels I sit on to try and increase diversity in the media. Black and BAME people are under-represented in the media generally and we virtually become an “endangered species” the higher up the career ladder we climb. Invariably media organisations discuss how we can address this issue; we talk about championing best practice, mentor schemes and entry level bursaries. Many of these initiatives are great and they play a useful role in addressing under-representation of diverse communities in the media.

However I think we do black people, and people from diverse communities, a disservice if we do not acknowledge that many of us are victims of prejudice and have overcome prejudice to achieve what we have achieved.

We will never be able to solve the problems facing black people (whether they are unemployed young black men or black people hitting glass ceilings in the media) unless we can actually identify all the issues involved. Using the “R” word would be a good start.  

Do We Need Positive Discrimination?

Is it time to consider positive discrimination to tackle the problems of under-representation of diverse communities in the media industry?

I know most of us interested in increasing diversity in the media recoil at the word “discrimination” (whatever word we may put in front of it). And we spend the majority of our time fighting against it discrimination. “Positive discrimination” seems like an oxymoron along the lines of “positive evil” or “helpful prejudice”. 

I for one have always felt that to increase diversity in television we must increase the equality of opportunities, challenge prejudice when we see it, and enable people from BME backgrounds, people with disabilities, LGBT’s and women to reach the top on their own merits. And I still think that.

However recently I’ve been looking back at my life and re-analysing some of the important turning points in my career. As a result I’m wondering whether my view on “positive discrimination” is slightly hypocritical. Maybe, without even realising it, I have been the beneficiary of “positive discrimination”.

I received my big break in television after I graduated from university and was taken on as a junior researcher for the BBC consumer programme Watchdog. At the time Watchdog was restructuring its team and how it took in viewers’ phone calls and correspondence. They needed two new junior researchers which they advertised for. I was told after I got that job that over 800 people applied for just these two positions. Key to me getting the junior research job was the fact that I had done a summer’s internship at a film collective based in north London called Ceddo.

Now for all intents and purposes Ceddo was a “black” film collective. It made art house feature films including “Omega Rising” (a film about the history of Rasta women), “Burning An Illusion” (about the love life of a black woman in 1970’s Britain) and “We Are The Elephant” (looking at the student uprisings in apartheid South Africa).  Denis Davis, the director of “Omega Rising”, had met me as a fresh faced enthusiastic teenager at a video course and invited me to do work experience at the film collective.

I didn’t think about it at the time but over the summer I was there I don’t think I saw any none black people working at Ceddo. And looking back on it I doubt I would have been invited to work there if I wasn’t black. The purpose of Ceddo was not only to make films from a black British perspective but to identify black talent, encourage it and bring it on. In that respect when Denis Davis told me that I could work at Ceddo there was an element of “positive discrimination”. Looking back at my career path I wonder if I would be working in TV now if Ceddo hadn’t taken me under their wing.

Twenty years later and the role that work experience plays in people getting a job in the media is more important than ever. In a recent survey by the National Council for the Training of Journalists four out of five (83%) young journalists said they had to do some work experience before getting their first job. How people get these work experience places is vital to increasing diversity in television and across the media.

Ceddo no longer exists and I’m not aware of any significant black British film collectives in existence any more. But what organisations like Ceddo ensured was that there would always be some work experience places reserved for young enthusiastic black students like myself.  While I feel a natural aversion to “positive discrimination” we need to find a way to ensure that black people, and people from diverse backgrounds generally, get work experience places.

The black film collectives played a useful role in training and encouraging black talent. In their absence what should we do to identify talent from different backgrounds and give them as much backing as possible?