Reporting Racism: Will The BBC Be Up To The Task Of Reporting On The US Election Results?

 

As the US presidential election draws close we are possibly entering the most contentious racially sensitive time in political reporting. The question is: Is the BBC up to the task and has it learnt from its previous mistakes when reporting racism? 

A year ago the BBC admitted it made a mistake. 

The BBC director general at the time, Tony Hall, unilaterally reversed the decision to partially uphold a complaint against Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty for supposedly breaching BBC editorial guidelines on impartiality. 

Munchety had commented on a tweet by President Donald Trump telling four female politicians of colour to "go back" to "places from which they came", saying in her experience “every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism.”

Tony Hall not only over-ruled the findings of the BBC’s executive complaints unit (ECU), and the conclusion of the BBC’s own editorial policy unit, but he also over-ruled an open email by the BBC’s executive committee supporting the ECU's decision . 

Everybody at the highest level of the BBC had come to the wrong conclusion with regards to an editorial decision around racism and it took people like myself and other independent figures to air our concerns publicly for the director general to reverse that decision.

I raise this not to chastise the BBC for making a mistake. All organisations, big and small, make mistakes and to have the humility to recognise a mistake is important. I raise the episode because I fear the BBC has not learnt from the mistake and could repeat it again.

Learning From Our Mistakes

The media regulator, Ofcom, looked at the BBC’s original decision and the decision of the director general to over-rule the decision. They expressed “‘serious concerns around the transparency of the BBC’s complaints process”.

In short, the concerns was the BBC had only reversed its decision due to political expediency facing a backlash by almost every major Black and Asian media figure in the television industry and over 40 MPs.

This concern is exemplified by the fact that the BBC publicly went out of its way - before Tony Hall reversed the decision - to explain why an open letter penned by myself, Afua Hirsch and others, and signed by major industry figures including Sir Lenny Henry, was wrong. But after the decision was over-ruled the BBC did not publicly explain the editorial reasoning for its new position. This was an example of the corporation's lack of transparency. 

This goes to the root of why editorial decisions, and governance around journalism organisations is different from governance around other types of organisations. 

Editorial decisions, and the guiding principles that form them, are the DNA of a news organisation. A director general over-ruling an editorial decision is not like a CEO simply overruling a marketing strategy at a soft drinks company of whether to roll out a new flavour. 

Over-ruling an editorial decision brings into question the guiding values that a news organisation operates under and how its journalists do their jobs. No one, not even the director general, should be able to over-rule an editorial decision without explaining the theoretical underpinnings of their decision - this is precisely why the BBC has codified its editorial principles in a set of guidelines. 

Why is this important?

The BBC's  editorial guidelines enable its journalists and content creators to know how to make difficult editorial decisions. Importantly the BBC’s editorial guidelines are publicly available so members of the public can judge the BBC’s editorial decisions against them. 

Coming to the wrong decision over Naga Munchetty means either the BBC’s editorial guidelines were wrong or they were interpreted incorrectly. 

Naga Munchetty has personally stated that she think "lessons have been learned" from the experience but a year on the BBC has neither rewritten its guidelines nor issued public guidance on how its guidelines should be interpreted differently when it comes to issues of racism and impartiality. Which means a journalist joining the corporation today will be none the wiser how the rules governing their journalism is different today than it was before the Naga Munchetty episode.

There is clearly a B.N. (“Before-Naga-Munchetty-Decision”) interpretation of what constitutes impartiality when it comes to racism, and A.N. (After-Naga-Munchetty-Decision). At best  BBC executive producers and journalists are having to figure that out for themselves, at worst they are being told secretly what it means, which goes against the entire principle of transparency when it comes to the BBC’s editorial guidelines. 

How To Make Great Journalism 

The US presidential election is now just days away and irrespective of the outcome it is highly likely that the issue of race will play an important role in any reporting around the results. How BBC journalists will be able to report on it and what they can and cannot say will be heavily determined on how they interpret the BBC’s editorial guidelines.

The fear is not that BBC journalists breach the corporation’s editorial guideline, but in many ways the exact opposite. That not knowing how the BBC has changed its editorial position post A.N. they play it safe. The journalists will fear to challenge and call out racism and racist actions when they see them and they will effectively not hold power to account.

BBC’s editorial guidelines give the corporation's journalists confidence in how far to push boundaries and how to interpret difficult concepts like objectivity and impartiality.

In failing to explain WHY it got its editorial decision around Naga Munchetty wrong I believe it has made the work of many of its journalists in the coming weeks and months in reporting the presidential election a lot harder.  

UPDATE: A day after publishing this blog post the BBC published new editorial guidelines. Although they did not mention Naga Munchetty by name in any of the supporting material that accompanied its release it is clear to most observers that it sought to address some of the issues raised by the Naga Munchetty affair and impartiality when reporting racism. 

Unfortunately by not directly addressing the Naga Munchetty issue they have still not clearly explained how their editorial position has changed and it seems that far from clarifying the issue they have simply reinforced their original  position and raised more issues, as journalists now appear to be banned from attending Gay Pride events without prior consent of their managers.