Last week BBC News announced a restructure of its management board reducing the size of the top team from eleven to eight. My understanding is that all board members had to effectively interview for their jobs and the end result was the position of Editorial Director was abolished and with it Kamal Ahmed’s position on the board was made redundant.
Kamal Ahmed was the only person of colour on the news board, which means the board is now 100% white.
Cue much consternation.
The Telegraph led with the headline: “BBC faces backlash after breaking own diversity pledge and appointing all-white board”.
The Guardian went with “BBC makes editorial director Kamal Ahmed redundant in restructure - Changes leave corporation in breach of own rules on minority ethnic representation”.
Forty eight MPs and peers wrote an open letter to the BBC complaining at the lack of diversity at the highest level at the heart of its news. Roughly the same number of BBC journalists wrote a similar letter internally to the Director General and the Head of News, Tim Davie and Fran Unsworth.
While all this was going on my phone has been ringing off the hook (can smartphones even do that?), BBC insiders have slid into my DMs and I have lost count of how many people have asked me if I am going to blog about it.
So here goes the mandatory blog post…
First of all, I was a BBC manager myself - not quite as senior as Kamal Ahmed - but I have been involved in my fair share of management restructures, both at the BBC and at other media organisations. For this reason I 100% support the BBC to be able to restructure its News management board as it sees fit. Restructures are always horrible processes to undertake but they are sometimes necessary - especially if you are trying to make savings, which the corporation is currently trying to do.
I also support the corporation’s right to make any one member of the board redundant from the board irrespective of their race, gender or any other characteristic. Anything else would be arguing for “box ticking diversity” and a person should not simply be on a board because of what they are, but for what they can do.
However, that does not mean we should just look at recent developments and simply accept them. Also the distinction between what a person is and what they can do is not always so black and white (excuse the pun).
Firstly, something is deeply wrong when the racial diversity of the top board of a public news organisation in a multicultural society rests on the shoulders of just one individual. Issues around diversity can never, and more importantly should never, rest with one individual. I have written previously about the burden of representation being too much to bear when you are the “only one”, as well as the impossible positions it puts “the one” individual when it comes to specific decision-making of championing diversity while appearing objective in the eyes of the rest of the board.
We should not forget, for instance, that Kamal Ahmed was in position when the BBC news board approved the sanctioning of Naga Munchetty for labelling one of President Donald Trump’s tweets racist. He was also on the board when it defended the use of the N-word by a reporter being broadcast on breakfast television. These are both also editorial decisions that the corporation subsequently had to reverse.
It would also be fair to assume the BBC news board also supported Samira Ahmed’s pay structure - considering she works for them - a pay structure which was found to be illegal in court and in breach of equal pay legislation.
The BBC news board also continues to hold a blanket ban on any of its journalists participating in Black Live Matter events.
I have no idea what Kamal Ahmed’s personal views are on any of these issues and what role he played in either supporting them or arguing against them internally. But what one can see from outside is the previous structure did not seem to avert the corporation making managerial and editorial decisions that have come under heavy fire from both black media professionals and the public at large.
For this reason I am not arguing for a return to the status quo.
Indeed, my concern is that if the news board had been restructured and Ahmed had kept his position on it we would not be having this conversation.
The fundamental point is that we need a critical mass on the news board if we want to change the culture and for BBC news to properly reflect the diverse audiences BBC news serves. And that goes far deeper than one person on or off the board.
It remains a highly problematic position that not one of the BBC’s broadcast major news bulletins (Breakfast, One O’Clock, Six O’Clock or Ten O’Clock) is overseen by a person of colour. It remains highly problematic that not one of the BBC’s major political programmes or current affairs programmes - from Newsnight to Panorama - is headed by a person of colour. As far as I am aware, I am the last person of colour to executive produce a Panorama and that was over five years ago.
It is a highly problematic position where one person of colour leaving a senior position leaves any organisation with none, in whatever their respective area of expertise was.
It is not until there is a critical mass of people of colour - not just in the news board but throughout the organisation - that the corporation will be able to reflect the diversity of its audience, and the people who they are ultimately responsible to through the license fee. In many ways fighting for one position is almost a distraction.
Kamal Ahmed being made redundant should be a wake up call. Not a wake up call that people of colour should be above the possibility of redundancy. But a wake up call that we should never be in the position that our options are too often one or none.
One last point - all executive positions are not the same.
While I have tried to show that this is an issue which is far larger than Ahmed and just the news board there is one point that needs to be addressed.
There are currently two positions on the BBC news board that still need to be filled: HR Director, and Senior Controller, News International Services.
At least one of the positions is expected to be filled by a person of colour, and it is highly likely it might even be both as this would fulfil the BBC’s 2019 onwards policy of having two people of colour on every board.
The problem is the HR position will have no direct say over important editorial decisions. And while the international news position is vitally important, (I have written before about the dangers of seeing the world through a white gaze of white foreign correspondents), this position too will have no direct influence over domestic news.
As one senior journalist of colour working at the BBC recently messaged me “Our audience challenge is in the UK - neither international nor HR solve that. (The BBC) needs strong editorial decision making there.” All of the diversity examples I stated above were to do with UK editorial or management decisions.
We need BBC news to reflect the diversity of the entire country it serves. The fact its board is currently all white may soon be rectified but that does not mean its diversity problems will have been solved.
(Correction: An earlier version stated that the BBC journalists wrote their letter to Tim Davie and Fran Unsworth anonymously. I now understand the names were only removed when it became public.)
No comments:
Post a Comment