Trump’s Racist Tweets and the Problem of Newsroom Diversity

Trust in the editorial judgement of mainstream news organisations is at a crossroads.

Trump’s racist tweets telling four US Congresswomen to “go back” home have brought this into focus and at the crux of the problem is diversity.

I recently gave a talk to a group of journalists on trust and how to build trust in news organisations.

The BBC publicly started tracking trust in 2004 following the Hutton Report which looked into a news report that the Government had “sexed up” claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

The tracking of the public’s trust in the BBC is conducted by an independent organisation (Kantar Media) and takes the form of an on-going monthly survey of around 1,000 UK adults per month.

Trust is possibly the most important element of any news organisations. If the public do not trust you, it literally doesn’t matter if you have the biggest scoops, best reporters or most insightful journalism.

The BBC knows the importance of trust and works incredibly hard to build on its reputation of being the most trusted news source in the UK.

A year and a half ago they published a short piece online titled: “Learn how the BBC is working to strengthen trust and transparency in online news”. I know, hardly a clickbait headline, but nestled in it is something fascinating.

Within the piece it pastes a number of links on how the BBC is trying to increase the diversity of its workforce. The piece offers minimal explanation of the connection the BBC sees between workforce diversity and trust and yet it has posted four links to diversity in the piece as evidence of how it is trying to increase trust.

So let me offer one explanation of the link between diversity and trust based on my own personal experience:

If the public sees a news organisation which is predominantly run by white middle-class men living in the South East of England its ability to be impartial and objective on issues that affect women, people of colour, and parts of the UK outside of the South East is brought into question.

I saw this firsthand working in Scotland. Trust in the BBC declines the further north you go in the country as it is perceived to be an “English” organisation as opposed to a “British” one. Increasing programmes made outside of London is one way the corporation tries to address this issue.

Having a diverse workforce actively increases trust in the editorial decisions a news organisations makes, this is not just true of the BBC but of all news organisations.

Which brings me to the current controversy of the moment; whether news organisations should describe tweets and other utterances by President Trump as racist or “racist” or “racially controversial” or even leave it up to individual reporters to decide. The BBC seems to be taking all four approaches while other news broadcasters and news organisations are taking other approaches.

These are not easy editorial decisions. Focusing on the BBC I personally think the corporation has made a mistake and news organisations should call Trump’s recent tweets racist. But that is not the point of this piece and there are a number of good articles already written on this subject.

This blog is dedicated to the subject of diversity in the media.

The problem that the BBC and other news organisations have when they have to make these difficult editorial decisions is whether the public trusts them to make the right decision.

Within BBC news’ senior leadership there are only two people of colour at the top level, Kamal Ahmed and Rozina Breen. The editors of all the major news programmes: Breakfast, One O’clock, Six O’clock, News at Ten, Newsnight, Today Programme, Panorama (I could go on) are all white. And just for the record the two people of colour I cited only achieved their higher positions in the last year, and I think it would be hard for any two recent appointees to be seen as a critical mass and push back against an organisations cultural norms and practices.

(I am haven't got time to go into the racial makeup of all of Britain's news organisations but needless to say the BBC is not an outlier)

The problem is, even if the BBC has come to the right decision on how to report Trump’s tweets, the public perceive that the final editorial decision was made by an overwhelmingly white editorial senior board. It is this lack of diversity that undermines the trust in any decision which has been made.

We all want trust in our news media, and the ability for the British public to trust the national broadcaster is vitally important. In order to achieve this we need more diversity in the most senior editorial positions.

As a lawyer friend of mine loves to say; “Justice should not only be done, but also seen to be done”. Without adequate diversity we are falling down in the second part of this statement, irrespective of how good the final editorial decisions are.

Television Statistics and "Diversity Gaslighting"

Are you the victim of “Diversity Gaslighting”?

Every year most major British broadcasters publish their diversity data. And without fail we are told by the broadcasters that their diversity numbers are increasing and/or they are hitting their targets.

Yesterday it was the turn of the BBC to publish their diversity statistics and true to form the statistics showed that in general things are improving for BAME staff, and when it comes to disability the corporation are still more than comfortably hitting their targets.

For those of us working in the media industry the statistics just don’t seem to chime with our reality. 

I am sure it is not deliberate by the broadcasters but it is almost as if we are being told our collective lived reality is wrong.

To sum it up in a phrase it feels like we are victims of “Diversity Gaslighting”.

WHAT IS “DIVERSITY GASLIGHTING”?

For the uninitiated “gaslighting” is normally used to refer to a relationship where a person with power denies another person’s reality, to the extent the weaker person starts to question their own judgement, senses and even sanity. 

“Diversity gaslighting” for me is when the powerful broadcaster seems to contradict the reality of under-represented staff.

“Diversity gaslighting” is brought into sharp focus every time a new picture appears online of a production crew. The staff in the picture are nearly always overwhelmingly white and there is never a visibly disabled person among them. Some of the pictures are so undiverse - such as a photograph of the Line of Duty crew - they even make national headlines. 

And yet despite the innumerable pictures supporting BAME and disabled people's lived experiences that they are working in a very white able-bodied industry the broadcasters keep on publishing data which says things are getting better. The experience can make even the strongest person question their perception of reality.

ANALYSING DIVERSITY STATISTICS PROTECTS OUR MENTAL HEALTH

Not to sound overdramatic, but like all gaslighting, I think it is detrimental to the mental health of many people from under-represented groups.

It makes us internalise all the times we are rejected, all the times we don’t get promoted, all the times we are “let go”, all the times we don’t get employed and all the times we hit a glass ceiling. 

If we believe the statistics that everything is getting better then the only explanation for an individual’s failure is they are personally to blame.

It is why yesterday when the BBC published its diversity statistics I had several friends and former colleagues at the corporation contact me and ask me to analyse the stats and try and take away the “corporate spin”. 

They might not be saying it in so many words but what I hear them effectively saying is; “Restore my sanity, Marcus. Tell me I am not going mad.”

I hasten to add these are not bitter and twisted “failures”. Some of the people I spoke to even appear on the BBC’s high earners list.

And so in that spirit I have tried to reconcile the numerous undiverse production crew pictures with the published BBC stats which show 15.3% of BBC staff are BAME, 10.2% of staff are disabled, every single diversity target has been met, and for BAME staff at least, things are improving in almost every single division.

BREAKING DOWN THE FIGURES

Going through the BBC figures the first thing to note is the BBC has combined BBC Studios and World Wide into a single statistic compared to last year when they were separate.

This is incredibly important because BBC Studios is effectively the division responsible for making programmes while BBC World Wide is the division responsible for selling BBC content globally and has nothing to do with programme making.

In 2018 9.6% of BBC Studios staff were from a BAME background while a whopping 19.2% of BBC World Wide were BAME. If you combine the two departments 14.0% were from a BAME background in 2018.

In 2019 14.0% of the staff in the two combined departments are BAME (remember the stats for the two departments are no longer published separately). 

That means that in all likelihood there’s been no progress in the vital programme making division - I cannot say this with 100% certainty because the new ways of compiling the figures make this impossible to confirm.

However I would say to any BAME staff involved in programme making, who may be questioning their reality that things really do not feel like they are improving - question yourself no more.

MORE EVIDENCE BAME DIVERSITY IS NOT IMPROVING

This is backed up by another two statistics.

The BBC also publishes statistics broken down by “job family” this includes “Commissioning” and “Programming”. These numbers are massively skewed because they include World Service and Global News which has 52% BAME (you would expect the Swahili Services, Persian Network etc. to have a high BAME element). 

Due to the skewed nature of these stats it is not very informative to look at the absolute numbers, however it is very useful to look at any relative changes from year to year.

BAME stats in Programming has increased from 15.3% to 15.5% and in Commissioning they have gone up from 13.9% to 14%.

These are very small changes which most people working at the BBC would hardly be perceptible.

WHAT ABOUT LEADERSHIP ROLES?

When you examine BAME figures in leadership roles in programme making it is a similar picture.

In 2018 BBC Studios (remember the division which makes TV programmes) plus BBC World Wide had 64 BAME members of staff in leadership roles.

In 2019 the number stands at exactly the same, 64 individuals.

Again if you look at leadership in the Programming “job family” there’s been a slight increase from 11.9% to 12.0%. But remember the Programming department includes BBC World Service and Global News. Between 2018 and 2019 BAME leadership in the World Service rose from 34.3% to 47.3%. This would almost certainly mean that the 0.1% increase in Programming generally is due to the World Service and could even mean that BAMEs in leadership roles in the rest of the UK Programming “family” have actually gone down.

ARE THE BBC LYING WHEN THEY SAY BAME NUMBERS HAVE GONE UP?

BAME numbers at the BBC in general have definitely gone up. And there are some very notable “wins”. 

The biggest cause for celebration for BAMEs in leadership positions is in the "Commissioning job family”, which has shot up from 7.4% to 12.9% between 2018 and 2019. The BBC has had a particular focus on this area and it seems on the face of it to be bearing fruit.

And in non-programme areas there has been real progress. In the“Technical/Engineering job family” BAME numbers increased from 13% to 14%, in the “Sales/Marketing job family” BAME numbers increased from 10.6% to 12.7% and in the “Support/Admin job family” went up from 16.2% to 17.4%.

WHAT ABOUT DISABILITY?

Now at the start of this piece I said I’d also look at the disability statistics.

It really won’t take long:

Things are getting worse.

Overall numbers have dropped from 10.4% to to 10.2%

And disabled people in leadership roles has fallen from 9.5% to 8.7%

You are also more likely to leave the BBC if you are disabled compared to your able-bodied colleagues

Despite all this the BBC is still hitting its disability target of 8%! 

I will save the debate on whether the 8% target is the correct one for the BBC to set for another blog post.

SO ARE THE BBC GUILTY OF “DIVERSITY GASLIGHTING”?

In light of these statistics, that the situation for BAME programme makers has basically stood still and for disabled staff it has effectively gone backwards is the BBC guilty of “diversity gaslighting”?

Having worked at the BBC for twenty four years I think the BBC is trying to speak to multiple audiences at the same time including politicians, competing broadcasters, the general public and people who work in the media industry.

Also like any large organisation it is very hard not to put a positive spin on any statistics it publishes about itself. 

Intentional or not the end result is that often the message that is heard the loudest is not the one that supports the experience of under-represented staff. So rightly or wrongly it can feel like “diversity gaslighting” to many people in the industry even if it is not deliberate. 

THE WAY FORWARD

The first thing the BBC must do is acknowledge the reality of BAME and disabled staff. 

It is not enough to say things are improving - slowly - when for all intents and purposes for large parts of the organisation they are effectively not moving at all. And most critically they are not improving in the most important areas of the organisation.

Winning the confidence and trust of BAME and disabled people working in the industry must be a top priority because it is only with their good will that progress on diversity can be made.

And it is literally in everyone’s interest in the UK that the BBC solves the issue of diversity.

SIDE NOTE

The BBC publishes possibly the most comprehensive diversity statistics of any organisation in the UK. That is not hyperbole that is just true. They are not perfect but they should be commended and many broadcasters and companies could learn from their example.

Those of us interested in diversity must resist the temptation to knock the BBC simply because they supply the data for us to scrutinise them properly. The fact is almost every point I have made in this article could be made to a greater or lesser degree about all of Britain’s main broadcasters. 

“Diversity gaslighting” is not owned by any one broadcaster.