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.