Gay People Are Different

Last Sunday I made one of my very rare appearances in front of the camera as a guest on the programme “Shoot The Messenger”, a round up of the weeks current affairs big stories on the cable channel VoxAfrica, the easiest way to describe it to anyone who hasn’t seen it before is a black version of the BBC's Andrew Marr Show. I was on to do the paper review.

Whenever you do a paper review you end up knowing the papers far better than you would normally and noticing stories that any other lazy Sunday morning would pass you by. So it was that a story came to my attention that made me question my whole approach to diversity issues and how we should tackle stories in news and current affairs.

According to a YouGov survey commissioned by Stonewall, gay men and women in Britain are far more likely to end up living alone and have less contact with family in later life than heterosexual people. Unsurprisingly gay people over 50 have far fewer children than their heterosexual counterparts, (approximately a quarter for gay and bisexual men and half for lesbians compared to whopping 90% for their heterosexual counterparts). Older gay people are also far more likely to live alone (40% compared to about a quarter for heterosexuals). This has massive consequences for an aging population and how we look after our elderly in the coming years. Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, is quoted in the Observer saying; "We're facing a care time bomb of institutional ignorance about what a community that makes a £40bn a year contribution to public services will soon – quite properly – be demanding."

The reason why this story struck me is that working in current affairs I have covered the issue of Britain’s aging population several times. It’s what we call a current affairs “hardy perennial”, like the military, the unemployment rate and the NHS it’s an issue we keep on coming back to. However in all the years I have covered the story of an aging population I have never once thought; what does an aging population mean to gay people?  I had never thought of it as a “gay issue”. It might seems a bit naive to say on a blog dedicated to looking at issues about diversity but all people are not the same and that obviously applies to elderly people as well.

Nearly all large current affairs issues affect the whole population but how it impacts on individuals’ lives will nearly always differ depending on your class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, age etc. All too often in television we treat all people the same and don’t delve deeper into how diversity changes the issues. The YouGov survey of the gay elderly provided a new insight into an old problem. Covering diversity makes for better journalism and in my world better journalism means better television. And that is something we should all be trying to achieve. 


After all that however I ran out of time to discuss the gay elderly on the paper review on "Shoot The Messenger". Another guest had spotted a story about plans to prosecute absentee fathers for their children's crimes. Depressingly that seemed too relevant a story to pass up for an African and Carribean British focused programme.

A Problem Of Trust

I have worked in television for over 20 years. During that time, I have never met a racist person in my professional life. Neither have I met anyone with a pathological hatred of disabled people. And while I’ve heard a few questionable jokes, I’d be hard pressed to label anyone sexist.

For the most part I like the people I work with. They are liberal and open-minded. There are some whose views I don’t agree with, but heated arguments are part of the currency of working in news and current affairs.


My colleagues invite me to their homes for dinner parties. They ask me to join them for drinks and trips to the theatre just as much as anyone else.

They know that I went to the local comprehensive and an ordinary redbrick university. They don’t seem to look down on me or treat me any differently from the people who went to private schools and graduated from Oxbridge.  This is why writing the next statement is so difficult and puzzling: the broadcast industry is prejudiced. 

The broadcast industry seems to dislike women, clearly has an aversion to ethnic minorities (especially blacks and Pakistanis) and positively hates disabled people.

How do I know that I – and people like me – are hated?  Despite all my nice colleagues, every time I go to a management meeting in London or Glasgow, I realise I am consistently the only non-white person sitting at the table.

And it’s the only logical conclusion I can draw from reading the latest and final annual report published by the Broadcast Equality & Training Regulator (BETR).

According to the BETR report in 2010 women are struggling in broadcasting despite the fact that 44% of people who work in broadcasting are women.

When it comes to senior management, men outnumber women two to one. If you look at executive and non-executive board members men outnumber their female colleagues three to one.

As for ethnic minorities it seems, surprisingly, as if the industry likes them a lot more than women. Ten per cent of people working in broadcasting are non-white.

At first sight this doesn't look too bad considering that approximately 12.5% of the UK working age population is non-white. However, do a bit of digging and it’s clear this figure reflects the obvious - that most of broadcasting is based in London, where 24% of the population is non-white.

All of a sudden 10% vs. 24% doesn’t look too good. Dig a bit further and go up the pay scale and BME numbers keep dropping; only 8% of managers and less than 6% of senior managers are non-white; by the time you get to board members, it drops to a paltry 4%.

But if BME people thought they weren’t liked, then disabled people are positively loathed by the industry.
According to the BETR report, 16% of working age people in Britain is disabled, yet they comprise only 2.3% of the broadcasting workforce. Again, the numbers keep falling the further up the hierarchy you go; less than 1% of executive board members are disabled.

As a black man working in television these kinds of reports can start to make you feel paranoid. Everyone in broadcasting is nice to your face. But take one look at the statistics and you can’t help but feel that, at best, they like you because you are “not like the rest of them,” or, at worst, television is full of closet racists.
However, I doubt very much that the people who invite me to join them at picnics and concerts after work are really closet neo-Nazis performing a massive charade. I also realise that if my paranoid fears are well-founded, then as a BBC executive producer I too am responsible for employing other black people, women and disabled people.  Am I doing my job properly or am I being discriminatory?  Surely not.
Assuming that other broadcasting executives are like me, and the industry is not full of secret two-faced bigots, what is happening?

Why are the figures so bad for BMEs, women and disabled people?

I believe the answer to the apparent contradiction of a profession loaded with nice liberal people who at the same time seems to pathologically hate anyone who is not white, able bodied and male men can be found in the same BETR report. It’s all about trust.

Throughout television and broadcasting we have to trust the people we employ. We don’t just need to trust their technical proficiency.

We need to trust their taste as to what makes a good programme and their editorial judgement. Almost every week I give a director a large sum of money and tell them to come back with a great programme. Yes, s/he has to pitch the idea to me, yes I read treatments, yes I have meetings during the course of the production process. All of this is designed to mitigate risk and increase the possibility of success.

But essentially any media executive has to eventually trust the person they employ – irrespective of how much micro-managing they can and may want to do.

Trust is such a difficult beast to pin down. What makes you trust someone? Salesmen know from experience that trust can be decided by the way a person walks, talks or just the cut of their suit.

Other industries have tried to certify trust by implementing professional qualifications. In broadcasting, there are few academic and professional qualifications.

So while all the nice people I come across try and be as fair as possible when employing people, I believe it all comes down to whether you trust the person.

And that’s where all manner of subconscious fears, prejudices and feelings come into play.

Now, according to the BETR, companies that invest in training and developing their staff invariably do well on measures regarding Equal Opportunities. In other words, they employ more BMEs, women and disabled staff.

What this tells me is that if you believe in your staff and believe they can be professionally trained, you are less likely to rely on gut instinct when it comes to trust.

In short; you can train people to do a good job regardless of their background, race, gender or disabilities. You don't have to only have faith and blind trust.

That trust also pays dividends. According to Lucy P. Marcus of the Harvard Business Review the more diverse a boardroom is the more profitable it is.

Diverse boards are more flexible, draw on the widest pool of talent and are better at solving difficult business problems. And if diversity is good for the boardrooms I am sure it is beneficial for the rest of a company.
So from now on I am no longer going to be paranoid as to whether people really like me or not, or whether the industry is really full of two faced closet sexist-disability-hating-racists.

Instead, I'm going to be more concerned about their training budgets and how much they invest in their staff.
The big question will never be whether you like me enough to invite me round for dinner, but whether you trust me enough to put me in charge of your next multiple-million pound project.

If you believe you can invest in people and train them to get that trust, you are more likely to employ a diverse work force.

If you are still going on vague gut instincts then we’re unlikely to see any progress in diversity in broadcasting anytime soon, and that would be a real shame.

First Published In Television Magazine RTS September 2011

TV Audiences & The Secrets Of Twitter

When I was 12, I met my first “girlfriend” – Angela. I met her at a basketball camp. She had Gerri-Curl and a better jump shot than I and, crucially, she was the only girl that would talk to me.  I thought she was amazing.  I say she was a “girlfriend” but in reality the totality of the “relationship” consisted of watching the American Sci-Fi television series V about an alien invasion in our respective homes and talking about it on the phone as we watched it “together”.

But while young men and the occasional 12 year-old boys might have been the target audience for the Sci-Fi series, I doubt the programme makers were thinking that young black British girls might be interested in watching their alien invasion saga. As a programme maker, discovering who your audience really are can be a surprise.

I have started to discover some surprises about my audience recently through the power of the Twitter hash-tag. Hash-tags allow you to pull together people who are tweeting about the same subject to see what other people are saying about the same issue.  Increasingly, programmes are using twitter hash-tags to enable online / twitter group conversations about a programme as it is being broadcast. Want to know whether other people are thinking the same thing as you when you hear that awful / great intervention on BBC Question Time? Then follow the Twitter hash-tag #BBCQT and you’ll find out.

Broadcasters are turning to hash-tags for a number of reasons:

1. It means that people watch the programmes as they go out (great for advertisers).

2. Hash-tags turn a simple television into a social event.

3.Over 40% of people do other things like play with their phones while watching TV. This keeps their attention on your film even if they are doing something else.

4. Hash-tags help to generate a buzz about a programme.

For people interested in diversity issues on television, what the hash-tags also do is give a great insight into who is watching your programmes and what they think about them. It also causes you to confront your own prejudices as to whom you think is watching your output.

Like Angela, my black “ex-girlfriend” obsessed with Sci-Fi, I’ve found that my audiences rarely fit my target expectations and are a lot more diverse than I expect. For example, earlier this year I exec’ed a 60 minute film called “Portillo On Salmond”. It featured Michael Portillo following Alec Salmond on the election trail as he won an historic second term. With a hash-tag of #PortilloOnSalmond, I was able to see who was watching and what interested the audience. What amazed me was the level of tweeting that occurred when the film showed Alec Salmond campaigning in an Asian neighbourhood.  Knowing what I know now, if we were to cut the film again, I would definitely want the director to feature more of how Alec Salmond won the Asian vote.  It has also made me think about whether to commission a radio programme looking at the rise of the importance of the BME vote in Scotland.

It goes without saying that one has to be careful when looking at your audiences through Twitter hash-tags. There is no doubt that Twitter is not completely representative of the general viewing public – it skews towards the young and web savvy. But the hash-tags are still useful to execs and producers because when a programme goes out no longer is our audience an amorphous blob represented by large ratings figures the next day. We can now see the modern equivalent of the 12 year old Angela’s and myself in the audience and “eavesdrop” on what they are saying about our programmes.  Once other execs and producers realise the diversity of their audiences, I’m hoping, like me, they will be more willing to reflect the audience’s own diversity and cast diverse talent on screen, as well as cover issues that reflect their diverse interests.  Now that will make TV far more personal, interesting and something worth tweeting about.

National Pride On The Small Screen

Al Jazeera is hiring in Kenya and all I can think about are Boeings 747s.

A few years ago I went to visit my family in Jamaica for the Christmas holidays. I try and go roughly every two years or so but this particular year I had left it very late to book my ticket and I couldn't find any direct flights. That was when I discovered Cubana Airlines - Cuba's national airline - and was able to finally spend the festive period with my relatives after a short stop over in Havana. For anyone who has not had the pleasure of flying Cubana Airlines it is a slightly ramshackle affair, the planes are old Aeroflot planes and the service makes RyanAir look positively luxurious. However the feelings of national pride of the cabin crew and my Cuban passengers was positively tangible and that is the point of most national airlines; national pride.

In the 1950's and 60's as different countries achieved independence nationalised airlines proliferated. It was a way for countries to assert their presence on the world stage and demonstrate their economic importance. It was a form of global shorthand saying "we are a country to be reckoned with".

However as the global financial realities took hold throughout the '80's and '90's the vast majority of these airlines were sold off, closed down or were subsumed into larger private airlines. The national names occasionally remaining but effectively they are just shells for other carriers (the Jamaican governments owns less than 17% of Air Jamaica now).  

But while countries have now abandoned this aerial national posturing recently a new form has crept onto the world stage that should concern people from diverse backgrounds working in the media: The nationalised international news channel.

Like the airlines before them the nationalised news channels do not make a profit and they normally rely on the largess of the state. But unlike the national airlines this is not a game that small states can play as they did previously with airlines. Television news is so expensive and the returns are so small it is a game only for the emerging new world powers; Russia, the Middle East and China to name three.

If one needed an example of how these news channels are vying for national pride and global influence one should look no further than East Africa. Qatar’s Al Jazeera announced on the 8th August that it will launch Al Jazeera Kiswahili in 2012 broadcasting to Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. This comes just a month after China Central Television (CCTV) went on a recruitment drive for East African electronic media journalists. The cold war might be over, the space race may be won (and lost), and national airlines might have flown away but clearly news and us journalists are the latest tool in global power struggles.

In many ways this is a great opportunity for all television journalists across the world. Greater competition between channels means more demand for our talents and that obviously translates into better jobs and careers. 

However these new developments are not without their concerns. While Al Jazeera English regularly displays high editorial standards the journalistic integrity of other channels can be more questionable as they put patriotism before objective reporting. It may be idealistic but while I positively welcome news from different global agendas I think striving for truth should be every journalists' objective, not bringing glory to whichever nation is paying your salary. 

At its best news fosters democracy, civil society and our understanding of the world. The news is far too important to become propaganda for the glory of nations to assert their power on a world stage. If the nationalised airlines of old were bad then normally worse that could happen is they would lose your luggage. Bad nationalised news channels can keep corrupt governments in power or even justify unjust wars. But like the airlines hopefully the bad ones will just go away with time.

Why The Riots Need More Black People

OK a slightly provocative title I admit but hopefully it got your attention. To be precise the riots need more black and BME journalists reporting it.

Over the last few days I have received twitter comments, corresponded with people through emails and spoken to friends about the racial nature of the recent riots. A lot of people have told me that I am wrong to draw any conclusions about race relations from the riots. They have told me that it is not a “black and white thing” but an “underclass thing”, they point out white kids and Asian youths are rioting right alongside their black friends. “This isn’t like the Brixton riots in 1981, they aren’t protesting against police racism or anything like that - they are just mindless looters, it’s wrong to ‘racialise’ these events” is what one person told me.

However if you look at any old footage of the original Brixton riots there were white people rioting alongside black people. When it comes to police stop and search, in total numbers more white people are stopped than black people. But there is no denying that there was a strong racial element to the 1981 riots and stop search is an issue that preoccupies the black community.

In the same way black youth are disproportionately involved in these recent riots. Not all rioters are black and not all black youth are rioters (that is obvious) but it is an issue that disproportionately affects the black community and has its roots in a black grievance (the police killing of Mark Duggan). Whether we like it or not these riots are a black issue.

If plastic bullets are used in mainland Britain for the first time, as recent reports have indicated, the targets of those bullets will more than likely be black youth.

That is why recent events have proven the need for good quality black journalists reporting the riots. While I have not been able to kick the habit of listening to the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme when I get up in the morning I have increasingly been turning to independent black radio to supplement the predominantly white mainstream coverage of the riots. In much the same way as my usual diet of BBC and SKY News was complimented by Al Jazeera during the Arab Spring one radio station has now been added to my DAB radio pre-sets to compliment my understanding of the riots: Colourful Radio.

Colourful Radio was set up by Henry Bonsu three years ago, an old BBC journalist himself Henry he has paid his dues; first as a reporter on the BBC’s Today Programme and he finally left the BBC as the presenter of Radio London’s Drive-time show under newspaper headlines of being “too intelligent”.  The station was set up to try and meet the needs of a slightly older, more educated multicultural audience that just isn’t serviced by other “black” radio stations who are normally more youth focused. In the last few days this approach has proved vital to anyone wanting a different black perspective on the riots.

In the last few days they have interviewed Cindy Butts (from the Metropolitan Police Authority) Chuka Umunna (Member of Parliament), Onyi Onyando (Gang member turned writer) and even Olympic black power legend Tommie Smith – “to inspire our youth”. Through their quality journalism they have also been able to get scoops no one else come close to. For example this morning Met Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh said the police were responsible for the "murder of Mr. Duggan". A statement he quickly retracted when further pushed on the issue by the presenter.

While the scoops and the quality of the guests have far surpassed anything you would normally get on a pirate station more importantly the presenters have asked the the questions I would have wanted to ask. Questions that sometimes differ from the questions the BBC, ITV or other mainstream media would ask.

Equally interesting are the phone-calls from the listeners. After listening for an hour each day I feel I get the real temperature of what Black communities in the UK are feeling about this massive news event (the biggest civil disorder in living memory). And like the black community itself  its not one view I'm hearing but a myriad of opinions. I feel I don’t get this when I listen to other phone-ins as by their very nature they normally have a predominantly white audience and so I will only hear one or two black voices at most.

While I will continue to listen to BBC Radio 4, watch Channel 4 News and read every newspaper I can lay my hands on from the Daily Mail to the Guardian recent events have proven the need for black journalists to cover the major news issues and how that can enrich our understanding of the big stories.

Could better TV have stopped the London riots?

Two days before the London riots kicked off Professor Peter King of Imperial College London appeared on a Radio 4 programme called Voices From The Old Bailey. The series looks at old court transcripts and examines what they say about the history of the time. I know hardly sounds like the most riveting radio. However as coincidence would have it last Wednesday they were discussing old court transcripts involving riots. It was on this programme that Professor King defined riots “as an argument continued by other means” (an obvious re-working of the famous quote “War is the continuation of politics by other means”). This is echoed by the fact that the recent London riots only started after the police at Tottenham refused to meet the people protesting over the police killing of Mark Duggan – the peaceful argument became violent – the police have subsequently apologised for not meeting the Duggan “family's needs more effectively”.

But what lessons does this teach people working in the media? If Professor King’s definition is correct then I think the recent riots point to a massive failure by those of us working in television, radio, print and online.

Successful media should act as a platform for Professor King’s pre-riotous “arguments” to take place. Remove that platform, deny people the ability to have that argument and one result according to Professor King’s definition could be riots.

Twelve years ago (a life time ago) I used to provide on such media platform for the black British community; I produced the Schumann Shuffle. Broadcasting every Saturday morning it was a current affairs radio phone-in on Choice FM, tackling the big issue of the week affecting the listenership. For a station that was 99% music based, broadcasting to an audience we were told weren’t interested in politics, it surprised everyone except me and the presenter (Geoff Schumann) that we quickly became the highest rating programme on the station.

We discussed everything including deaths in police custody, legalisation of drugs, and failing schools. My personal favourite however was when Geoff tackled the crisis in Zimbabwe and the 1992 Land Acquisition Act (although we did give it the catchier title of “Can white people ever be African?”). What the experience of producing the show taught me however is that black people are crying out for a serious platform to discuss politics on their own terms. The callers spanned the whole spectrum of the black community; from the suburbs to the inner-cities, from pensioners to school children, and from right wing “hangers and floggers” to the most liberal minded. But most importantly we tried to get studio guests of standing; Trevor Phillips was a regular fixture, Members of Parliament made appearances and high ranking police frequently popped in. When our listeners called in they felt they were the ones being listened to and were being taken seriously. To paraphrase Prof. King; for large sections of the black community there was no need for the argument to be continued by other means.

While there is no doubt that I look back at my time on the Schumann Shuffle through rose tinted glasses, the fact of the matter is that back then there were far more media platforms for arguments reflecting the concerns of African and Caribbean people. Black Britain was a current affairs programme on the BBC and the newspapers The Voice and New Nation both had quality journalism with decent circulations. I doubt anyone could seriously argue that BBC 1Xtra plays the same function now (although it does have some great documentaries targeted at a youth audience).

When it comes to the riots it is often all too easy to blame the politicians put it all down to vague socio-economic factors or demonise the lawless looters themselves. As black people working in the media however I think it is incumbent on us to ask what responsibility we should bare, or at the very least how we can make things better. Giving rioters and “potential rioters” a forum to air their grievances peaceably would be a good first step.

Looting For An Identity

I’m sitting in my office in BBC Scotland with my fellow news colleagues watching images of London burning as rioting and looting takes place in Hackney, Tottenham and Brixton. As one of the few Londoners in the office and definitely the only Black person in the office, the question my fellow journalists keep asking is why? They point out that deprivation in parts of Scotland is far worse than anything in London, pockets of youth unemployment in Glasgow is far worse than any black youth unemployment rate, and even life expectancy is worse in Scotland. Yet no one is rioting in Glasgow. Simple liberal explanations of blaming the riots on racism and socio-economic deprivation just don’t seem to explain the full story.

As the apparent sole representation of all things black and London, my answer is “identity”. Specifically, the need for “role-communities” not “role-models”. Let me explain:

I’ve been working in Scotland now for over three years. What I love about Scotland is just how broad Scottish identity is. You can be an intellectual, read ancient Gaelic poetry and love long country hikes and feel very Scottish. At the same time you can enjoy eating deep-fried mars bars, drink buckfast (a potent mix of caffeine and alcohol popular on Glasgow’s streets), and regularly get into fights on a Saturday night and still be 100% Scottish.  It’s equally Scottish to wake up listening to BBC Scotland Radio’s Good Morning Scotland (the Scottish equivalent of Radio 4’s Today programme) or listening to something a little lighter on Radio Clyde. And whether you support Scottish independence or think Scotland should always be part of the United Kingdom, it doesn’t matter to your identity - no one can use that to tell you you’re not a proud Scot.

Scottish identity is a broad church.

So what has this got to do with rioting by black youth in London?  The fact is that black British identity, and more importantly the black British community, is the complete opposite.

Since the 1980s, there has been a great deal of effort to increase representation of black people on TV, Radio, online and in print.  That effort has been crucial.  However, what it has not managed to do is to challenge and broaden the black British identity.

Whether on TV, Radio, online or in print, the Black community is invariably very narrowly defined. It is generally portrayed as a dysfunctional community that is dominated by youth culture, the underclass and constant undertones of criminality.

However as a result of efforts since the 1980s, we now see some successful elements – those great black individuals on screen who have “made it”. The problem is that these black people are not seen as being part of a functioning black community.  They are nearly always portrayed as being fully integrated into the broader white community; islands of success divorced from the gangster laced black community which they managed to escape from, and now might visit occasionally.

The message this sends out to young black kids is dangerously clear, as the riots have demonstrated. They have to make a choice: either be part of a narrowly defined dysfunctional black community (populated with hoodies, grime and undertones of criminality); or leave that community behind and become fully integrated into a functioning wider white community. Choose between a culture of crime or a lifetime of community self-loathing. In TV terms a choice between MTV gangsta rappers or the single black character in a Mike Leigh film. This is a choice that media representations by well meaning liberals of “positive black role models” does not address and can sometimes inadvertently reinforce.

Is it any wonder then, that when someone from the black community is killed, the outcome is a riot? According to the media the dysfunctional black community is populated with potential rioters, all the black youth have done is internalise this identity and reacted accordingly.

That, I believe, is why youth are rioting in London and not in the most deprived areas of Glasgow. It’s a lack of a broader, functional community identity.

In this context, the media has an (if not the) most important role to play in addressing identity, and therefore these riots. Yes, the police need to take action, and re-connect with the black community. That’s necessary. But it’s not sufficient. It is only the media that can really start to widen the definition of black British identity. The havoc being wreaked in Tottenham and other black communities throughout London demonstrates that we need to go well beyond finding a few “positive role models” or teaching our children about individual, one-of-a-kind black heroes from Martin Luther King to Barack Obama. We need to present a black community that these youth want to be part of that is as broad as the Scottish identity – one where Goths and nerds can co-exist with rappers and all feel an equal claim to the term “black”. One where a suburban middleclass black family can feel their community is as “legitimately” black as any inner city black family.  One where black people can do PhD’s without the feeling that they are “acting white”.

These broad black communities already exist; I suspect that a lot of black people in the BBC and other media offices actually do come from these communities. Our job is to stop shining the spotlighting on just a few individual role models from these communities, and broaden our focus to “role-communities”. Only then will we give our children a true choice of what it means to be black, without the need to resort to riots.