Last (Black) Man Standing

Two weeks ago I received an email from a black friend that affected me more than I would have expected.

The email was a group email from a fellow colleague telling us all that after a long time she was finally leaving the BBC and seeking pastures new. Over the years I have received various incarnations of this type of circular from numerous colleagues. So I was surprised that it upset me so.

The fact is that when I started working at the BBC there were a number of fellow black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) colleagues that joined at around the same time as me. I always consider these people to be my peers - a kind of cohort “class of 90’ish”, if you like. The email marked the last one of these BAME peers leaving the BBC. Reading the email, I suddenly felt very lonely.

Then, a week later, I heard the news that Pat Younge, the most senior black person at the BBC, was also leaving. It felt like a body blow.

I recognise that the BBC is not the only media organisation in the UK (or the world) and just because all these BAME people have left the BBC does not mean they won’t have great careers with other companies and broadcasters. They may also return to the BBC later on. But my friend's email points to a more worrying trend.

According to the latest Creative Skillset 2012 Employment Census, employment in the creative media industries grew by more than 4,000 between 2009 and 2012. However, despite this increase, the number of BAME people in the industry actually fell by 2,000.

Let’s dig a little deeper into those figures:

In 2009, across the UK, 6.7% of people working in the media were from BAME backgrounds. Back then this was already under the 9% national figure of BAME people of working age in the UK, but by 2012 that figure had dropped to just 5.4%.

In London specifically, BAME representation in the media industries is 8.9% - the highest in the country. That might seem like good news at first until you consider that the capital’s overall BAME working population is 28.8%. That’s right – BAME people are under-represented in the media industry by a magnitude of over 300%! And it seems as if it’s getting worse.

On reflection, there was a good reason I was upset by my friend’s email. It was just a human face being put on these very depressing but impersonal figures.

However what prompted me to write this blog post was not my friend’s email, Pat Younge's departure, or even the Skillset survey. What prompted it was another email I received inviting me to attend a conference encouraging more young BAME people to enter the media and thereby address lack of diversity.

At least once a month I receive information about various initiatives encouraging more diversity at entry level positions. I even sit on the National Council for the Training of Journalists bursary body which awards grants to young would-be journalists from diverse backgrounds. But if the Skillset survey tells us anything it is that the problem of diversity is not at the entry level positions, but retaining the diverse talent that enters the industry.

To put it crudely if there is a hole in your bucket you need to fix the hole. You don’t keep pouring more water into it hoping that will increase the amount of water in it.

While entry level initiatives are good I think the time has come for those of us interested in increasing diversity in the media to acknowledge that we need to fix the hole.

That hole might be caused by a number of reasons, for example: short term contracts that are renewed for our non-diverse colleagues but are not renewed for BAME people; redundancy processes that seem to disproportionately affect people from diverse backgrounds; or a lack of career progression that causes BAME people to leave in frustration.  There will be other reasons.

Stemming the BAME talent drain will not be easy. But unless we want to lose another 2,000 people from the creative media industries, this must be where we now focus our energies, to begin fixing that hole.