DIVERSITY FAILINGS AT THE HEART OF BBC’S IMPARTIALITY WOES

Diversity needs to be at the centre of any review into BBC’s impartiality and guidelines on the use of social media.

On Monday 11th March the BBC’s Director General, Tim Davie, announced that an independent review will be carried out on examining the corporation's social media guidelines.

On Sunday 26th March the Labour Party announced its own BBC review panel. The brief of Labour’s panel covers several areas ahead of the BBC’s next charter renewal in 2027, but again one of the key issues is impartiality.

Even before they start it is easy to pick holes and be cynical about both proposed reviews:

How independent can a review into the BBC really be when the BBC itself sets up the terms of reference and will decide who sits on it?

Can a Labour review with three of the announced four members heavily associated with the Party (James Purnell, Lou Cordwell and June Sarpong) really be expected to be free of bias when reviewing issues such as impartiality and political interference?

The announcement of both reviews come in the wake of the Gary Linekar Twitter controversy, where the BBC initially suspended him for Tweeting about the government’s rhetoric around immigration only to reinstate him less than a week later. Irrespective of any criticisms of how either review has been set up or will operate, what they clearly point to is the growing need for a review into the BBC’s editorial guidelines, with specific reference to how it interprets and implements the principle of “due impartiality”.

However, what most people seem to be missing in all the discussions around BBC impartiality is the centrality of diversity.

Over the last three and a half years the BBC has made four major public editorial U-turns around the issue of impartiality. All four of them have been about diversity and/or minoritised groups:

In October 2019 the BBC reversed its ruling that Breakfast News presenter, Naga Munchetty, had broken editorial guidelines when discussing whether one of President Trump’s Tweets was racist.

In August 2020 the BBC finally apologised for one of its news reporters using the N-word after initially defending the decision.

In October 2020, in what the BBC described as a “clarification” as opposed to a “U-turn”, the corporation said that staff would be allowed to attend Pride marches and this would not compromise their impartiality after initially saying they would not.

And finally in March 2023, the BBC made - what was seen by most - as a U-turn when it initially suspended Gary Linekar over his Tweets about the government’s rhetoric around immigration, only to reinstate him less than a week later. (The BBC was at pains to describe this not as a “climb-down” but “proportionate action).

All four editorial issues have the issue of diversity and inclusion at their core. The first two being obviously racial issues, the third being about LGBTQ+ rights and the fourth, immigration, being a heavily racialised subject.

The biggest problem that the BBC has, when it comes to its editorial guidelines in general, and “due impartiality” in particular, is diversity.

It is the editorial issue literally hiding in plain sight.

This is about how a centralised organisation, which is meant to represent the whole of the UK, fairly represents the concerns and interests of, and about, minority groups while maintaining due impartiality. I saw this problem close up with regards to regional diversity when I was head of BBC Scotland Current Affairs in 2014 covering the Scottish Independence referendum. The fall out of which the BBC is still suffering from.

We do need to set up an independent review into BBC’s editorial guidelines and impartiality, but unless diversity is at the very centre of the review it will fail irrespective of who sits on it.

Award ceremonies reveal the uncomfortable truth of British journalism

Last night I attended the Royal Television Society (RTS) Television Journalism Awards. Having sat on one of the judging panels, I was keen not only to find out about the results of our lengthy deliberations (the final votes are by secret ballot) but having been unable to attend the prestigious ceremony for several years due to COVID-19 I was also interested to see “IRL” how the industry I have spent almost thirty years in is faring, especially in terms of reflecting diversity.

 

Those of you who know me will know that I believe diversity is essential to strong journalism – and has been especially essential this past year with British coverage of key events under significant domestic and global scrutiny – from the Ukraine war to the death of Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, over the last year we have seen examples of UK and international journalism making serious mistakes, precisely because of a lack of diversity.

 

Spoiler alert: I can’t say that I came away from the RTS ceremony last night feeling better about the current state of the industry.

 

In many ways, I should have known. There are vastly different perceptions of progress on diversity in the industry, and those who are in the public eye seem to be focused on creating a narrative of progress.

 

A few hours before the award ceremony I had been in a briefing call with another television and news veteran. They will be hosting an event I have agreed to participate in, focused on diversity in broadcast journalism. During the briefing, the host asked me to focus on the “positives” that we should be talking about as “we don’t want to be too critical”.

At the RTS ceremony itself, I was honoured to be sat on the same table as one the most powerful people in British television. The senior executive was eager to convey how well their particular organisation is doing when it came to racial and gender diversity, both in the level of their employees overall, and at senior management. The executive did admit with some regret that levels of disability are very low, but this was caveated with the idea that the actual level might be higher and there is a problem of “people not wanting to declare that they are disabled”.

I recognised this narrative. In 2012, I convened my first RTS Diversity Committee meeting, and was assuaged by an executive about their particular broadcaster: “You know, if you look at our staff diversity numbers, they are really rather good, but our disability numbers are not good.” Sadly, this was not true, and over time it was revealed that the organisation was simply using metrics that gave them the results they wanted to believe to be true.

 

I wondered if the ceremony, then, would reveal the change since 2012.

 

There are some pieces which suggest a potential shift. The BBC recently promoted Ravin Sampat to the position of executive news editor with a brief to oversee UK story teams, and Lebanese-born Lilian Landor was appointed Director of the BBC World Service in 2021. While at ITN, there have been similar key appointments at ITV News, and the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, (who I work for) were heavily involved in working with Channel 4 on its  “Black to Front” project which not only highlighted the non-White talent at Channel 4 News but also helped progress certain careers afterwards

 

However, in the infamous words of Lenny Henry commenting on the Bafta Television awards in 2013, it soon became apparent that the RTS Television Journalism Awards 2023 would be; “all White on the night”.

 

Many of the awards, such as Network Daily News Programme of the Year, went to entire production teams, meaning there were often several people on stage at a time. A lot the teams had a smattering of people of colour. And of course, it is impossible to always know someone’s race and ethnicity just by looking at them, and so sitting in the audience one cannot say for certain what the race and ethnicity of all the winners was.

 

But with the notable exception of Clive Myrie, who won Network Presenter of the Year, almost every person who accepted an award and gave the acceptance speech – even on behalf of the teams – appeared to be White. There was just one person who had a visible disability, Jeremy Paxman, winner of Lifetime Outstanding Contribution Award, who needed to be assisted onto the stage.

Three quarters of the way through the ceremony another person sitting on my table, a former senior television executive, leaned over and whispered in my ear; “Marcus, they are ALL White”.  Later, a respected media commentator who had been present messaged me: “Good to see you tonight. I was utterly shocked how White that event was. Quite incredible”.

 

Clive Myrie’s win was notable and it is important to recognise his contribution to television journalism in the last year. He has been a mainstay on British and international screens with the reporting of the Ukraine war. However, he comes in a long line of single news presenters of colour being the exception in an otherwise predominately White industry. The likes of Trevor McDonald, Rageh Omaar and Krishnan Guru-Murthy - all great journalists, reporters and presenters who rightly deserve the numerous awards they have received over the years - are Myrie’s predecessors in more than one way. This means that while Myrie’s achievements should be seen as impressive on an individual basis, they cannot be seen as an indication of progress in terms of increasing racial diversity in newsrooms.

 

What the RTS television journalism award ceremony seemed to reveal, in fact, is one overarching, and slightly uncomfortable, truth.

 

That while there has been some progress in terms of newsroom diversity, the journalism that is most respected and valued by the industry; the journalists that cover the biggest news stories; the journalism that commands the largest budgets; and the journalism that shapes national British debates and frames the way Brits view the world remains overwhelmingly the preserve of White people. In this respect, there has been almost no progress in over twenty years.

 

But here is what really kept me from sleeping as I returned to my warm bed last night.

Awards ceremonies always have winners and losers. Emotions are always high, even when it comes to journalism awards, despite our well-known stoicism. But it was the huge gap between the desire to be optimistic and self-congratulatory of many when it comes to diversity, versus the private realism and shock of others in the room – whether White, Black, disabled or able-bodied – that was incredibly stark.

 

Perhaps most remarkably, it was the fact that those who have the opportunity and potential to change this, far too many of them appear to be in denial, truthfully or otherwise, of how poor the industry’s diversity problem is, and how little substantive progress has been made in the last few decades.

 

The ultimate question has to be, “Can there ever be real change?”

 

The answer to that has to be a resounding “Yes”, but only if we acknowledge the position we are in right now, and that continuing the policies that have failed to bring about real progress will not do it. To quote Albert Einstein "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."