I rarely quote Enoch Powell favourably but I am reminded of one of his more famous, and less divisive, quotations: ‘For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship’s captain complaining about the sea’ (3 December 1984, The Guardian).
All plain sailing?
Politicians need to navigate the sea they find themselves in, not the one they wish they were sailing in, and that political sea is very white. This may lead voters from ethnic minority backgrounds feeling disenfranchised, even if there are politicians of colour to vote for, because what they are discussing is determined by the almost exclusively white broadcast news editors, and disproportionately white newspaper journalists.
The news controllers are all white
There is not a single major television news bulletin, from the BBC’s Breakfast, News at One, News at Six, or News at Ten to Channel 4 News, to any of ITV’s major bulletins that is headed by a person of colour. I am not talking about in front of the camera, but about those with ultimate editorial control. There is also not a major television political current affairs which is headed by a person of colour. Again, I am not talking about in front of the camera but behind the camera with ultimate editorial control. The one possible exception is Debbie Ramsey, a black woman, who was appointed Editor of Channel 5 News in July 2023.
In 2020 UK Press Gazette published research by Women in Journalism, showing that in one week in July 2020 — at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests across the world — the UK’s 11 biggest newspapers failed to feature a single byline by a black journalist on their front pages. Taking non-white journalists as a whole, of the 174 bylines examined only four were credited to journalists of colour.
It should be noted that the week the study surveyed featured front-page stories about Black Lives Matter, the replacement of the toppled statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, and the Court of Appeal ruling that the Muslim mother, Shamima Begum, should be allowed to return to the UK to fight the decision to remove her British citizenship.
Facts are sacred
As we think about the role journalism plays in our politics, and how elections are covered, it is important to keep this in mind. It would be churlish to say our news agenda is disproportionately determined by a racially non-diverse group of people. It would be more accurate to state the facts: despite the latest census in 2021 showing that England and Wales is approximately a fifth non-white, white people seem to decide our news agenda.
Away from the news
We should also remember that journalism is not the only medium of communication that shapes political discourse. Journalists first revealed the UK Post Office Horizon scandal way back in 2009, in Computer Weekly, with the story and developments being covered in the national press and broadcast news programmes. But it wasn’t until it was made into an ITV drama — Mr Bates vs the Post Office, shown in January 2024 — that it really gained political traction.
Drama, and other non-news genres, are able to bring issues to the political foreground that news and current affairs often simply fail to achieve. And again when you look at the demographics of the people responsible for our British domestic drama we see a startling lack of diversity.
If you look at film and TV in the UK, women make up only 13.6 per cent of working film directors. Things do not get much better for Black and Asian people when you delve into the statistics. Non-white people make up 14 per cent of England and Wales but just 2.2 per cent of TV directors.
And when it comes to disability, things get even worse. Despite the fact that 14 per cent of people in employment aged 16-64 consider themselves disabled, according to the Creative Skillset employment census, only 0.3 per cent of the total film workforce are disabled.
Accurate statistics for the demographics of people in senior positions of editorial responsibility in British broadcasting are thin on the ground but, anecdotally as a person who regularly attends industry events where people in these roles congregate, I regularly find myself able to count the number of non-white attendees on one hand, and the same applies for people with a visible disability.
Democratic denial?
The result of all of this means that the 2024 general election saw a massive irony and contradiction. For the first time in history we had a Prime Minister of colour defending his position, along with more senior politicians of colour than ever before — across the political divide — campaigning, while at the same time the democratic deficit in terms of our media was as bad as it has ever been.
Inevitable?
At this point I want to address what I assume some readers might be thinking: all this talk about the lack of racial diversity and democratic deficit is typical ‘woke madness’. If you are thinking this I have one word for you — Scotland.
It has long been recognised that an English press, based in London, is not able to cover the concerns and reflect the priorities and values of the people of Scotland. It is why newspapers such as The Herald and The Scotsman are such important mainstays in Scottish civic society and political discourse.
I was the head of BBC Scotland Current Affairs from 2007 to 2015. In 2014, ahead of the Scottish independence referendum, it became apparent that the BBC’s flagship nightly political news programme, Newsnight, was unable to cover the issues that Scottish people felt were relevant to them, as they were reported through an English prism. That realisation led to the launch of Scotland 2014 replacing Newsnight north of the border, bringing relevance to the Scottish audience rather than answering to an English-determined agenda.
One size definitely does not fit all
When it comes to racial diversity, this can mean that issues that are important to Black British and Asian people are simply not raised. From reparations for slavery to the return of the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India, there are numerous issues which have proven to be significant to these communities, but few politicians or journalists think any of these topics will be talked about in election coverage.
The inability of the disproportionately white media to address the concerns of people of colour has real consequences for our democracy and possibly the result of who is the next prime minister.
For example, Maria Sobolewska and Andrew Barlcay’s 2021 report ‘The Democratic Participation of Ethnic Minority and Immigrant Voters in the UK’ stated that while 11 per cent of white British people in the UK are not registered to vote, the figure rises to 14 per cent for people of Indian heritage, and 25 per cent for Black African minorities. Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a centre-left thinktank, shows that voter turnout between white and non-white voters in previous elections has differed by 13 percentage points.
In a seminal 2019 paper by Silvia Galandini and Edward Fieldhouse (‘Discussants that mobilise: Ethnicity, political discussion networks and voter turnout in Britain’) the authors show the correlation between the form and shape of political discussions and voter turnout.
Britain needs a media that represents the different demographics that make up this great nation or we will end up with elections based on discussions over which politicians and political parties can best address the concerns of the white electorate.
There are issues that affect everyone but my time working as a journalist in Scotland taught me that sections of the electorate also want to talk about issues that are specific to them. Even issues that cut across demographics need to be framed in ways which are sensitive and cognisant of the needs to different demographics. If we do not achieve that, those sections of the electorate will fall out of the democratic process.
One final thought
In 2008 I was fortunate enough to attend a journalism conference where Professor Sarita Malik, who specialises in researching media, inequality, and representation, gave a keynote speech about the effects of platforming far-right wing parties. She said she found a very limited correlation between election results and the amount of airtime the far-right groups received.
However, there was a far closer correlation between the issues the media covered, and thought were important, and the election results. If issues such as illegal immigration or welfare cheating, which are traditionally issues raised by the far right, are prioritised in media coverage the far-right parties are far more likely to do well, almost irrespective of how much airtime they are given.
Politicians shouldn’t complain about the media, but there is no doubt some journalistic agendas favour some politicians and political engagement more than others.
This essay was first published in "General Election 2024: The Media and the Messengers" edited by Mr John Mair, Mr John Ryley, and Mr Andrew Beck. and available to buy now
