A few days earlier the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella group for leading mosques and other Islamic institutions, also called for Phillips to step down from the same review.
I do not want to get into the suitability of Trevor Phillips being on the review - that is not the role of a blog about media diversity. However, as the former head of BBC Scotland current affairs programmes I think the controversy points to a deep problem of diversity in the media, and who the media view as experts and whose voices are seen as “objective”.
Let me explain...
In many current affairs programmes there are basically four types of "characters":
1. Victims - these are the case studies who illustrate the issue the programme is trying to expose. Getting good sympathetic case studies is essential for the viewer to connect with the issue.
2. Baddies - these are usually a company or industry who are carrying out bad practices and causing the harm being experienced by the victim. The baddie can also sometimes be the local or central government whose policies are causing these victims to be harmed.
3. Goodies - this often includes charities or people trying to rectify the problem being exposed, but can even include the reporter themselves holding power to account.
4. Experts - this last category are the “objective” voices who have a deep understanding of the issue being explored and can explain what is going on. Occasionally on controversial issues two experts might be invited on to give opposing perspectives.
In recent years there have been considerable efforts by broadcasters to increase the diversity of whom these experts are. The BBC’s 50:50 project has had considerable success in increasing the number of women experts on our screens and I’ve heard the organisers are now looking to broaden the 50:50 project to look at BAME and disability on screen diversity.
However what the controversy around Trevor Phillips exposes is that the diversity of the people behind the camera who decide who these experts are and who is and isn’t “objective” hasn’t changed. It should be noted that not one major UK news and current affairs programme is headed by a BAME person and to my knowledge there have only ever been three BAME people who have ever executive produced any Panoramas or Dispatches (BBC’s and Channel 4’s flagship current affairs programmes respectively) I am one of them, and none of us are currently directly employed by a British broadcaster.
Trevor Phillips is regularly invited onto news and current affairs programmes as an expert on issues of race as the objective voice.
Whether you agree with Trevor Phillips’s views on race or not, what the last few days has shown us is that large sections of the UK - most notably parts of the BAME and Muslim communities - view him as a highly polarising figure and far from an objective dispassionate expert.
At the same time I would hazard a guess that people at Public Health England and most of the people who are in positions of power in news and current affairs media - at least until now - saw him as an objective dispassionate expert.
It is this disconnect that clearly indicates that those sections of the BAME and Muslim communities who oppose Phillips are missing from the editorial decision making process. They are not influencing who we should think of as experts and who we should view as having controversial views.
Working in television as an executive producer I have personally had my editorial judgement questioned as to the experts I have used - in one instance because the white male criminologist in a Panorama programme had a working class accent. At these times I was senior enough to shrug off these criticisms and use the experts anyway, but I was fully aware of the unsaid cultural pressure I was under to pick experts that my colleagues thought appropriate.
I am not advocating for Trevor Phillips not to be a guest on news and current affairs programmes, far from it. His experience as the former Head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and his work in race relations over the decades makes his an important voice, and his views resonate with many.
But what we do need is more experts chosen whose views resonate with the sections of the BAME and Muslim communities that disagree with Phillips.
This will only be achieved when we have more diversity behind the camera - diversity of people picking the experts - as opposed to just looking at the diversity in front of it.
Correction: The article originally stated that only two BAME people had ever executive produced BBC and Channel 4's flagship current affairs programmes, Panorama or Dispatches, that has been corrected to three. It should noted that none of the three executives were directly employed to work on either flagship programme when they executive produced them.
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