Why TV Should Listen To Black People

Do people listen to you? I mean really listen to you. 

Do people hear what you are saying? Respect your point? And finally after weighing up what you have said do they act on it?

A few weeks ago I attended an EU conference on diversity in the media. There were delegates from all over Europe and numerous issues came up from; what is the right way to describe immigrants to whether the fast pace of news works against diversity?

But one issue that ran through many of the discussions was who do we actually listen to and whose opinions do we respect? This is most obvious when it comes to on-screen representation. For example why are there not more female experts on TV and radio (in a 2011 study only 28% of guests on BBC’s Question Time  were women and the figure fell to 16% of reporters and guests on the BBC’s flagship radio news programme Today). I do not have the statistics for the number of Black and Minority Ethnic and Disabled experts on our screens but a report conducted in 2009 highlighted that of the 104 regular presenters on Radio4 none were black and only two were Asian. There is undoubtedly a problem of on-screen and on-mic under-representation. I believe this is an indication of whose voices matter and who is really listened to.

But it is not just on-screen and on-mic that we have to worry about this issue. Let me give you a scenario that I think most of us have experienced at one time or another:

You are in a meeting and come up with a great idea. You offer your amazing idea to the group and are duly ignored. Five minutes later and the person next to you voices the same idea and everyone listens to them and takes up “their” great idea! They are a star and you are left fuming into your Americano.

According to feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker you have just experienced a “Testimonial Injustice” or to put it another way you are suffering from a “credibility deficit”. Although everyone at different times in their lives can suffer a “credibility deficit” you are more likely to experience this problem if you are not part of the “in-group”. Nine times out of ten that usually means the victim is from a diverse group: the only woman at a meeting, the only black person at the news debrief or the single disabled member of the production team.

I believe that credibility deficits are one of the largest factors behind the lack of diversity in the media.     

Credibility deficits go to the very core of how much someone in valued by their colleagues and peers. The media is an industry where ideas and creativity are all important and good editorial judgement is often valued more than any technical abilities. Having your opinion valued is possibility the most important factor in being employed or your career progressing.

There are numerous reasons why there might be fewer female, BME and disabled experts on TV and radio. It might just reflect wider prejudices in society generally. For example all the major political party leaders (with the exception of the Greens) are men, it is not the media’s fault if this skews the gender ratio of the political experts they use. However my fear is the explanation the media merely reflects inequalities in wider society is only part of the story. The concern is the lack of on-screen representation of diverse expert opinions is the physical manifestation of how much opinions from diverse backgrounds are valued in general. If that is the case then it does not bode well for the employment and career progression of large swathes of the population.

However I don’t believe all is lost and we should not just give up hope. Nan Winton was the first woman to read the BBC news on 19 June 1960, but BBC Audience research concluded that viewers thought a woman reading the late news was "not acceptable” in other words she suffered from a “credibility deficit” and was removed from the role in less than a year later. The view that women lacked the credibility to read the news persisted until 1975 when Angela Rippon was appointed to read the news. Nowadays I don’t think anyone would question the credibility of the news because a woman was reading it.

The experience of newsreaders proves “credibility deficits” can and often do shift. I just hope we are at the Angela Rippon stage and not the Nan Winton stage when it comes to all diversity representation in the media.