How Diversity Could Have Solved Media Bias in the General Election

There is a story that in the 1980’s Alcoa, now the world’s largest aluminium company, was in trouble. 

The work culture was broken, riven with industrial disputes; profits were falling and they were producing bad aluminium with lots of flaws.

It was thought the company was beyond repair and in a downward spiral.

In desperation they appointed a new CEO, Paul O’Neill. 

Everyone expected O’Neill to be like the previous CEOs and announce how he was going to concentrate on profits and increase worker efficiency. After all, that is what shareholders wanted.

Instead he said he would make factory safety his number one priority, and set a goal to achieve zero injuries.

He not only reached that goal, but today, Alcoa is one of the most profitable and efficient companies in the world.

The secret? O’Neill realised that worker safety was an indication of how everything was operating. Injuries are actually a real issue in aluminium production as you have hot molten and heavy machinery everywhere.

In O’Neill’s eyes, accidents were a sign of workers not following standard procedures every time. Accidents were a sign that machinery was not being updated and repaired when it was meant to be. Accidents were a sign managers were not concentrating on getting the best out of their team but taking shortcuts.  The high number of accidents were a warning sign of far deeper problems.

The secret was to get safety right - and everything would, and did, fall into place.

So why am I telling you this story about aluminium and safety on a blog about diversity in the media?

Well as I am sure you may have noticed last week the UK had a General Election. And the BBC, and other broadcasters, are currently defending themselves against charges of media bias and poor editorial judgement throughout the election campaign.

In my view, the issue of diversity in the newsroom is analogous to safety in the aluminium factory.

If you are getting diversity wrong it is a warning signals that there are deeper issues. If you get diversity right everything else falls into line.

Before the UK’s General Election the diversity warning signals were going off loud and clear.

In the weeks and months leading up to the General Election, broadcasters made a raft of editorial mistakes around diversity - from ignoring important stories by marginalised communities such as Grenfell tower until it was literally burning down, to the Naga Munchetty affair in which it is widely acknowledged the BBC made a terrible editorial mistake in judging her in breach of their editorial guidelines.

But instead of seeing these issues as foreshadowing far deeper editorial problems, the BBC and others, brushed them aside as “diversity” problems, marginal to the main news.

But they are not. Diversity problems are indicative of deeper problems. Why?

Recognising and aiming for diversity is understanding that that there can be multiple perspectives on a single issue and if you can’t recognise those perspectives, let alone balance them, chances are you will make mistakes under the heat and scrutiny of a General Election.

Reporting a General Election requires making extremely difficult editorial judgement calls. Similarly reporting diversity also requires making hard difficult judgement calls. The inability of some media organisations to call racism what it is - racism, and instead always put the word in quotation marks is an indication that the media organisation is uncomfortable in making difficult judgement calls.

The brilliant work of Raheem Sterling and Jamelia in highlighting how journalists often take lazy approaches when reporting race and and stories involving black protagonists doesn’t just shine a light on prejudices it also shines a light on how journalists are prone to group think.

I could go on but suffice to say I believe these examples illustrate how news organisations must get diversity right if they want to keep their journalistic standards high.

Diversity and inclusion is not about simply wanting to get a few more ethnic minorities and disabled people in the newsroom.  It is about fundamentally shifting a whole newsrooms’ approach to how it covers the news.

Get it right, and just like getting safety right at Alcoa, British broadcasters could become the best and most profitable in the world.