Rewriting Black History

The British Library Newspaper Collection in Colindale is currently digitising 40 million newspaper pages from its vast 750 million collection, eventually anyone around the world will be able to search and access centuries of newspaper stories. Ed King, the head of the collection, describes the library as a “national memory”. 

The decisions of editors should be a clear demonstration of what is important  to their readership and their wider community. Newspapers give a unique insight into our values and beliefs at any given moment in time and record a level of daily life that is captured nowhere else. Want to know what happened yesterday, last week, last year or fifty years ago? Nine time out of ten an old newspaper is the best place to go.

And if newspapers are a record of how we live then television and radio are no different. How well would we remember Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech if no one had filmed it? And I can’t thank the nameless TV news editor enough who realised how important it was to send a cameraman down to Tilbury docks to film the first set of West Indian immigrants coming off the SS Empire Windrush in 1948.

The importance of newspapers, and news in general, is obvious in the context of national memory. As a news and current affairs editor I am acutely aware of the importance of what a national broadcaster like the BBC decides to record and what we think is not worthy of recording.

However after reading Carlton Dixon’s article on The Real McCoy at 20 on The TVCollective website last week I realised that it is not just news and newspapers that are our national memory but all different genres. What makes us laugh and what makes us cry, and what we like to watch on a Saturday night are just as important in documenting our history as any newspaper article. If future generations want to understand the origins of the current recession we are in it might be more insightful to watch a few of the property programmes that proliferated in the last ten years rather than a few news programmes. If historians want to understand black people’s place in society few newspapers will have recorded it as well as The Real McCoy did (and the same goes for Goodness Gracious Me with regards to Asians). I have no doubt that programmes like the Cosby Show will be just as important to understanding the history of African Americans in the 80’s as 60 Minutes on CBS.

So if newspapers, and the media generally, are our “national memory” then not documenting an event is the same as forgetting. History finds it hard to recall things it can’t see, read, touch or hear. As people from diverse backgrounds we have a responsibility to document today’s stories for the historians of tomorrow. 

The first and biggest problem of course is how many of us from BME backgrounds are actually “writing” tomorrow’s history.  It is essential that there is more diversity in the media both in front of and behind the camera. This is the only way that we can ensure that not only our history is recorded but also its interpretation is not solely left up to people from white middle-class backgrounds.

The second problem however is while the British Library Newspaper Collection is storing the UK’s “national memory” who is storing ours? Right now in Brixton a purpose built museum is being built to do just that (The Black Cultural Archive) and is due to open in 2012. It will be the first purpose built museum of its kind to document the presence of black people in Europe.  I hope it will serve to be the “national memory of black British people”. (You can follow their progress on twitter @bcaheritage)

If we do not solve the first problem then we won’t even have a need to solve the second problem.

I’m looking forward to more people of African decent being employed in the media, and with the BCA archiving that history I will be first in line when the museum opens next year.  In fifty years time I hope to be taking my grandchildren to study the history we are filming today. 

Are Black People In Need Of Charity?

Two of my best journalists are currently working on an investigation into a possible miscarriage of justice. It is still in production so I can’t write too much about it but we are investigating whether an innocent man could be serving time for a number of murders that he didn’t do. In plain English: An innocent man may have been wrongly convicted as a serial killer.

You can imagine it is a big story.

Behind the headlines I hope will follow the programme’s broadcast however is another story. A story that may serve as a lesson for people interested in increasing diversity in the media.

The “miscarriage of justice” story was first brought to our attention through the work of a UK charity working with prisoners. Charities obviously have their own agendas and so as journalists we can not take their work on face value. A lot of my team’s work has been to make sure we report the story as objectively as possible and subject it to the same level of journalistic scrutiny we would to any other investigation.

However investigative journalists using charities and NGO’s seem to be a growing trend. In October 2010, two Guardian front-page investigations originated from NGO’s, BBC’s Panorama investigation into e-waste being dumped in Africa relied heavily on the charity Environmental Investigations Agency and when I watch documentaries on Al Jazeera I regularly play “spot the charity” they rely on NGO’s so much.

I believe that when it comes to increasing diversity in the media we could learn from this charity model. In the last six months the one investigative story covering BME issues that really caught my eye was how British teachers are failing black middle-class pupils. (It was reported in both the Daily Mail and The Guardian). However this investigation did not come out of any work journalists did but arose out of the hard work of academics and researchers working at the Institute of Education. You’ve guessed it the Institute of Education is a registered charity.

With shrinking budgets in newsrooms and across conventional media generally the question is; Are we looking in the wrong direction when it comes to increasing diversity? Instead of always looking at directly changing large media companies should we be trying to influence charities or even setting up charities of our own? Instead of smaller media budgets always being seen as an obstacle to increasing diversity could it be an opportunity?

According to Paul Lashmar, the Acting Head of Journalism at Brunel University, “NGOs have started hiring investigative journalists to provide the media with material that they are no longer willing to fund”. He wasn’t talking about increasing coverage of diversity issues but if other charities can see this as an opportunity should people interested in diversity be setting up charities with the agenda of uncovering great stories around disability, race, ethnicity, sexuality or class?

In the next few weeks my current affairs team should have a great programme based on the initial research by a charity into a possible miscarriage of justice. If another NGO can give me a great story that increases my diversity on screen it won’t be out of charity that I will be taking it on board.

How TV Saved My Life

Sometimes I wonder if increasing diversity in the media is really that important. In the grand scheme of things how important is it for a few more people from diverse backgrounds to get jobs in television? Who cares if there are more black, brown and yellow faces on our screens?

It was when I was having one of these “what’s the point of all” moments that I read the new Queens Honours list for 2011. Most of the newspapers covering the Honours list focused on Bruce Forsyth's knighthood. But what caught my attention was the OBE that was awarded to Beverley De Gale.

Beverley De Gale is the founder of the African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust and has campaigned for years to increase the number of people of African decent to enlist on the national bone marrow register.  When she started campaigning, less than 0.2% of people on the bone marrow register were from African or Caribbean backgrounds. Now it’s roughly 10%.  An amazing achievement. Her work not only helped people needing bone marrow donations it also served to highlight that not enough BME people donate any kind of body parts from blood to organs after death.

But, crucially, Beverley De Gale’s  achievements and OBE may not have happened – or may have been significantly less – without diversity in the media.

The African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust first came to prominence back in 1996 when her campaign and the plight of her late son Daniel were the lead story in a brand new BBC current affairs programme called “Black Britain”. “Black Britain” had a predominantly black production team and a remit to bring stories that affect the black British community directly into our front rooms.

If I'm ever asked for an example of why we need more diversity in the media I need look no further than Beverley De Gale. I believe the issue of the low donor registration amongst the black community made it to TV precisely because there were black people working in the production office and the BBC had made a commitment to tell their stories.

Now I am not arguing for the return of “Black Britain”, or culturally-specific programmes, nor am I arguing that only black production staff should work on black issues (I’m sure I can write about that in a future post).

But what I am arguing is that at its most basic, increased diversity in the media literally saves lives. Just ask all the black British people who have received bone marrow transplants in the last 15 years.

I have no doubt that there are other amazing BME people like Beverley De Gale across Britain. If we are serious about diversity in the media our job is to identify them and tell their stories. A few more black people receiving OBE’s would be nice, saving the lives of hundreds of BME people would be even better.

Learning From The Ladies

Working in news and current affairs can be slightly obsessive. You constantly think that somewhere in the world there is a breaking story that you are missing or an investigation that you should be undertaking.

In my paranoia of missing the next big story I have been known to surreptitiously check the news on my iphone at dinner when I think no one is looking. My four favourite iphone apps for doing this are: the BBC (of course), Al Jazeera (it’s good to get a different international perspective), The Economist (for its concise analysis) and the New York Times (it is the most widely read newspaper in the world).

It was actually while checking the news on my iphone Guardian app over a recent meal that I learnt about one of the biggest diversity stories of the year: The New York Times has just appointed Jill Abramson, its first female executive editor in its 160 year history.

With Helen Boaden (Director of BBC News) at the helm of the largest broadcast news organisation in the world and now another woman appointed the head of the world’s most read online newspaper, this is a great achievement in increasing diversity.

As I read the article about Jill Abramson’s appointment, her extraordinary background and the massive challenges she will face, a little story at the end of the piece caught my eye.

Anne Marie Lipinski was the first female editor of another major American newspaper – The Chicago Tribune. During her 7 years as editor there, she set up the “Large Ladies” dinner – a place where influential women in the world of newspapers could meet once a year and share their experiences. She describes it as “a small, but very hearty group”. During a chat with Helen Boaden, I remember her mentioning that years ago she too helped set up a group where woman in BBC news could meet informally.

As far as I am aware, neither of these two groups were overtly campaigning or had any specific goals and aims. Their purpose was simply to allow people – who were working in environments where they were massively outnumbered –  to meet and not feel so alone. The feeling that you are not alone is vital if you are going to achieve in life and have any sense of perspective. The women didn’t just meet to do short term networking to land their next jobs – they met to nourish their souls. In the end, of course, as Helen, Anne Marie and Jill can testify, it clearly did help some of them at least to achieve a wonderful career as well.

I often write blog posts for sites like the TVCollective and they clearly help forge that sense of community online between non-white people working in TV, and that’s great – it’s crucial. But I believe there is no substitute for creating that sense of community in the real, non-virtual world. You can make stronger bonds over a glass of wine than over a hundred emails.

So if we are going to replicate the recent successes of female news editors and want to see the first black Head of BBC News or the first non-white editor of any of my favorite iphone news outlets, maybe I’d better put the iphone down and just sit down for dinner with my black colleagues in news…

Anybody hungry?