THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY: BBC DIVERSITY NUMBERS

In 2012 I was appointed the Chair of the Royal Television Society Diversity Committee.

One of the first things I did was hold a small closed door meeting with some of the great and the good working in television and interested in diversity to figure out what I should do as the new Chair.

At the meeting over coffee and Marks and Spencer's finger food one of the senior BBC executives told us that in reality the BBC did not really have a problem with ethnic diversity. The figures showed that the proportion of BAME staff at the organisation was only slightly lower than the population as a whole.

I was a little surprised so after the meeting I looked at the numbers and realized the big headline statistic the BBC exec was citing was not all it seemed.

Since then I have I have crunched the official BBC diversity numbers every year for journalists and diversity campaigners alike so they might better understand what they mean. Why?

Because if we do not properly understand the numbers we get to the place where some people, such as the BBC executive, say that we do not have a problem - at least privately.

This year I thought I would examine the first diversity staff report the BBC published in 2012 and compare it to the 2018 report and see what progress has been made in BAME employment.

So what has changed over 6 years at the BBC?

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS

In 2012 12.4% of the BBC’s total staff were BAME, in 2018 this has increased to 14.8%.

The other major progress is the percentage of BAME people working for News has increased from 11.3% to 15%.

For this reason it would at first appear that the BBC has made significant progress in addressing ethnic diversity over the last six years. However when one looks at the figures in more detail there is little to celebrate.

IMPORTANT DIVERSITY FIGURES AT THE BBC HAVE GONE BACKWARDS

The two most important departments that one needs to focus on when it comes to diversity and how programmes are made are BBC Studios and Radio & Education. These are the departments which produce the stories that are told, what we watch and how the UK is reflected on our screens and radios. It is at the heart of media diversity. Not all the roles in the departments are editorial - some are support staff, but they are as good a proxy as you can find, given that the BBC has declined to release figures on the percentage of BAME people in editorial roles, despite Freedom of Information requests for this figure.

So what does this proxy tell us? Over the last six years the BBC has restructured and certain departments have been renamed. Back in 2012 "BBC Studios" was effectively called “BBC Vision” while "Radio & Education" was called “Audio & Music". when they first published the 2012 diversity figures the BBC (rightly) had a stated target that by 2017 12.5% of BBC Vision staff should be BAME and 13.0% of Audio & Music staff should be BAME.

In these two departments BAME staff diversity has gone down. In 2012 the percentage of BAME staff working in BBC Vision was 9.7%. By 2018, that number had not risen - it had dropped to 9.6%. Audio & Music is no different. In 2012 the percentage of BAME staff was 11.1%, six years later it has now fallen to 11.0%.

 (Table on left shows BBC 2012 BAME figures for BBC Vision at 9.7%, Table on right shows BBC BAME figures for BBC Studios at 9.6%)

FREELANCERS - THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Worryingly even the 9.6% and 11.0% figures is an over-representation of how many BAME people work on BBC productions.

To its credit, for the first time this year, the BBC published the size and diversity of its freelance workforce.

The figures reveal that for the all-important BBC Studios freelancers outnumber staff by 5 to 1. (In 2018 there were 6910 freelancers employed in BBC Studios compared to 1345 members of staff)

The percentage of freelancers who are BAME in BBC Studios is only 7.7%

Combining the staff numbers and the freelance numbers gives you a headline figure of at least 92% of people working on BBC Studio productions in the last year were white - possibly more.

If the story is so poor, then why is the BBC emphasizing the 14.8% headline figure?  What does it really mean?

In the last decade the BBC has heavily invested in Global News and reaching audiences outside of the UK. It has created exciting and very new successful outlets such as Persian and Pidgin Services. In 2012 BAME staff accounted for 45.6% of staff working in the BBC Global News division. By 2018 (restructured and renamed “World Service Group”) that percentage of BAME staff had accordingly increased to 54.4%. But these services by their very definition need a large BAME work force often based overseas in Africa and Asia. It is these services - targeting the rest of the world not the UK audience - that have significantly increased the headline 14.8% figure. And they have almost no influence in representing the country's rich diversity to itself.

REAL CHANGE OR WINDOW DRESSING?

Finally the figures even suggest that some other rises in relative BAME employment may have been more “cosmetic” than substantial.

Take the BBC News department. Since 2012 the percentage of BAME employed in this specific department has actually slowly risen by a tenth of a percentage or so each year, but between 2016 and 2017 the percentage jumped by 2.1%. In the same period the “White Other” category also grew from 6.4% to 10.7%. Again a huge jump. This kind of jump in figures usually points to a new way figures are classified or a departmental restructuring rather than a real change.

And it would align with another apparent diversity "success" that took place between 2016 and 2017 when numbers of employed disabled people jumped from 3.6% to 10.2%. Many people I spoke to think this is due to a change in how disability is defined although to the best of my knowledge the BBC has still not publicly explained how it achieved this disability diversity “success”.

If the News numbers really did increase by this amount in a single year it would be very useful for the BBC to tell us how it was achieved so other departments could learn by its example. Or if it was simply due to reclassification and restructuring then that would be good to know as well so we can understand the numbers and do not have false hope that there has been progress when none has occurred.

ACTION NEEDS TO BE TAKEN

I was genuinely shocked when I went back to the original 2012 and compared them to 2018 figures.

There will be those people that will say that due to administrative restructures the departments I am comparing 2012 and 2018 figures to are not exactly the same – after working at the BBC for over twenty years I would argue against this.

But this is losing sight of the bigger picture - that by any definition the number of BAME people making programmes at the BBC has decreased. And the headline 14.8% figure is massively inflated by a non-white workforce broadcasting programmes outside of the UK.

And that reveals the crux of the problem. 

Most of the current and former BAME BBC people I have spoken to while conducting this research say they “knew” that there had been no progress on diversity at the BBC and things had gone backwards. They knew it not from looking at the numbers but from their own lived experience of working there.

In 2018, the BBC figures reveal that BAME staff were more likely to leave the BBC than their white counterparts, and even fewer received severance pay when they leave. Most I know have literally just handed in their notice and left, fed up with the lack of progress and glass ceilings.

Promoting headline figures such as 14.8% is misleading at best and might even hinder real action being taken.

I sincerely hope that BBC executives do not privately think what the executive voiced six years ago at the Royal Television Society meeting that looking at the headline figure the BBC really doesn’t have a problem.

Will the Rooney Rule Increase Diversity In TV?

When it comes to diversity in the media everybody seems to love the Rooney Rule.

But does it actually work?

The answer to that question is a massive “maybe” with a large dose of "it might do more harm than good.”

The Rooney Rule is the idea that to tackle the lack of diversity in an organization at least one person from a diverse background should be shortlisted to be interviewed for certain jobs.

This week ITN revealed that on average its BAME staff roughly receive 20% less pay than their white counterparts.

When it comes to bonuses the figures are even worse with BAME employees receiving roughly two thirds less than their white colleagues.

To tackle the problem ITN immediately announced it will be implementing a version of the Rooney Rule, their exact words were; “A key initiative, effective immediately, includes the policy for at least one BAME candidate to be interviewed for every role.”

Similarly just a month earlier (almost to the day) the BBC announced it would be implementing the Rooney Rule with shortlists for all senior roles at the BBC having to include at least one BAME candidate.

ACADEMICS SAY THE ROONEY RULE HAS NOT INCREASED DIVERSITY IN THE NFL

So what has been the experience of the Rooney Rule?

The Rooney Rule is named after the ex-president of the American Football team the Pittsburgh Steelers – Dan Rooney - who championed the policy to be adopted by the NFL in an attempt to increase the number of BAME head coaches.

At the time it was implemented in 2003 there were only three minority head coaches out of the 32 teams. In 2006 the number of head coaches had more than doubled to seven.

But by 2013 the number had dropped back down to three.

Last year the number had gone back up to seven.

And this year despite seven head coach places becoming free only one BAME coach was appointed.

With the numbers yo-yoing like this the problem of trying to definitively say whether the Rooney Rule works is very difficult. We are trying to analyse incredibly small numbers, a few dozen teams and even fewer coaches, and come to a simple answer.

The fact that the policy can be heralded a success one year because numbers have doubled due to four individual appointments and then labelled a failure because five years later the numbers have fallen back to just three shows how difficult it is to judge its effectiveness.

However when academics have crunched the numbers the conclusion seems to be that they “find no evidence that the Rooney Rule has increased the number of minority head coaches.” ("Moving on up: The Rooney rule and minority hiring in the NFL" published in the journal Labour Economics).

ROONEY RULE DOES NOT INCREASE DIVERSITY IF THERE’S JUST ONE MINORITY CANDIDATE

But what the champions of the Rooney Rule claim is that at least it creates equality of opportunity because BAME candidates get to be seen and interviewed.

This is a dubious claim.

In a ground breaking study researchers at the University of Colorado showed that simply adding one minority candidate to an interview list does not help improve diversity hiring.

When there is only one minority candidate in the interview pool the chances of them being hired is close to zero. There are several theories as to why this may be the case, including the idea that they are seen as a novelty or an outlier or more of a risk.

However if the number of minorities being interviewed is doubled to just two then their chances of being hired rockets.

The study showed how the effect is also true for women being interviewed.

SHOULD WE SUPPORT BROADCASTERS IMPLEMENTING THE ROONEY RULE?

The very real fear of broadcasters implementing the Rooney Rule is that it can be counterproductive as managers feel they are addressing a problem when they more than likely are not.

The business magazine Forbes recently looked at the issue and it criticized the use of the Rooney Rule of being a lazy management tool when what is really needed to tackle diversity is “real investment from senior leadership over a sustained period of time to look at the root causes of the issues and develop the cultural shift that will bring success.”

Forbes magazine concludes that if you want to improve diversity “Don’t implement the Rooney Rule”.

I wouldn’t go that far as I don’t think there is conclusive proof either way.

But what there does seem to be conclusive proof about is adding one minority candidate will not dramatically improve diversity, and so if you really want to implement the Rooney Rule you must have at least two BAME candidates short-listed.