Retention! Retention! Retention!
The only three words anyone wanting to increase diversity and representation in the media need to know.
Last week David “Sideman” Whitely, a DJ and presenter on BBC1’s Radio 1Xtra resigned from the corporation citing the broadcaster’s use and, possibly more importantly, defence of the use of the N-word.
His resignation made both national and international news being reported in almost every major British news publication as well as in the New York Times and across Africa. Within 24 hours of his resignation the BBC dramatically reversed its decision and admitted it had made a mistake and instituted a new editorial process.
There has been a lot of discussion around the rights and wrongs of the BBC’s use of the N-word and what prompted the BBC to reverse its initial decision. These discussions are important however I want to focus on an aspect of recent events that might seem more mundane at first but I believe is more important if we really want to increase racial representation in the UK media in general and the BBC specifically.
Black People Keep Leaving The BBC
David “Sideman” Whitely is not the first Black person to resign from the BBC.
Other Black people may have not resigned in such dramatic fashion and their departure might not have made global news but every year Black people leave the BBC in greater numbers than their White counterparts. If one looks at the statistics the BBC has hemorrhaged Black and Asian talent.
In 2016 the situation became so bad that The Times ran a piece headlined, “Black and Asian executives quit ‘snowy white peak’ BBC” describing “an exodus of ethnic minority executives and staff” (I was part of that infamous cohort of departing execs).
Unlike Sideman’s resignation, there is rarely one event that Black people can point to for the reason they leave. Angela Ferriera, another Black senior executive who left the BBC, described the reasons Black people leave, not just the BBC but the whole industry, recently in a webinar comment to Kevin Lygo, the head of ITV Studios, “..people were either worn out, sidelined, glass ceilinged, patronised, had a nervous breakdown, or all of these and left the industry”.
Has There Been Progress?
Most of us working in the industry know on an intellectual level that the BBC, and media industry, has a retention problem but sometimes the scale of the problem is difficult to fully grasp on an emotional level.
This was brought home to me when the organisation “We Are Black Journos”, decided to do a Tweet thread highlighting and celebrating the Black people currently working at the BBC. It is a great thread and I recommend that people should click through the link and follow everyone of the people featured.
But it also made me realise that twenty years ago, before social media, we could have made an equally impressive list of Black people working at the BBC and so I started to post my own list of Black people who were working at the corporation twenty years ago. Other people saw what I was doing and started sending me more names. I tried to keep the criteria of the list quite tight - so they had to be working at the corporation for a sizable amount of time and have been employed on or around twenty years ago.
You can check out the current list on Twitter (which keeps on growing) here.
Interestingly, although direct comparisons between the “veterans” list and the present Black BBC employees list is difficult, what is notable is the veterans list seems to contain senior editorial positions such as Channel Executives, Department Heads and Commissioners at a far greater level. And importantly the vast majority of people on the veterans list have not reached retirement age and so all things being equal would be at the height of their powers now.
But my point is not to pitch one generation against the other.
Retention Is Key To Solving Diversity
For me the veterans list is a graphic example of how important retention is when it comes to diversity.
If the BBC had simply been able to retain the talent in the “veterans” list, combined with the current Black employees the corporation’s “diversity problems” would be literally halved. But it is not just about numbers. As I alluded to earlier, looking at the positions Black people were at when they left, and assuming standard career progression, you could argue the BBC wouldn’t have a “diversity problem” at all, at least with regards to ethnic diversity. You would have a critical mass of senior Black people who would naturally address many of the diversity issues the BBC is currently grappling with.
Sideman’s resignation may have caused the BBC to apologise and reverse its decision on the use of the N-word, but what it should also do is focus the corporation's attention on retention. Because Sideman’s resignation meant one less Black employee at the BBC and the truth is... they just keep on adding up.
we'll ... you (as in BAME journalists and other BAME members of the BBC) are being used.
ReplyDeleteIn order to understand BLM and its enthusiastic uptake by the left establishment (ie BBC and academia) , we need to start with the understanding that society is split three ways; about 15% White privileged (WP), about 15% BAME, and about 70% White un-privileged (WU). The over-riding aim of WP is to stop WU from taking WP's position of power away. Hence their co-opting the BAME community to demonstrate that they (WP) are the best people to run the nation, and that WU are stupid racist bigots who should be let nowhere near the TV screens of the nation or any other instrument of power and influence.
What the WP don't want to do is share power, particularly not with WU but also not with BAME. BAME are tolerated as long as they enable WP to claim a moral right to lead, but not if they start challenging for leadership themselves.
It will not have gone un-noticed by you and many others I'm sure that in the current political home of White working class (Brexit Party, then Johnson/Gove/Cummings Conservative Party) there are BAME people in positions of real actual power. Priti Patel and Rishi Sunak to name two, but out here in White Essex/Cambs our MPs include Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverley and afore-mentioned Priti Patel. All re-elected by solidly WU constituencies recently with large majorities.
I'm watching June Sarpong's tenure as Director of Creative Diversity with interest. Is she there simply to bring along black talent so the WP BBC leadership can pat themselves on their backs? Or is she going to start asking a few more pointed questions? Is she going to start asking why so few regional working class accents on TV/radio? My money is on two years bringing Black talent on to the screens and airwaves then leaving because 'nothing has really changed'.
... so, it seems like your strategy of allying with the establishment to supplant the white working class as the favoured employees of choice has hit a problem. The problem being that being favoured worker is not a step to being the boss.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is time to change tack. Simply put, you don't have the numbers to succeed on your own. There just aren't enough BAME people to challenge the stranglehold White Privilege has on the cultural strongholds, which is why they have formed an alliance with you. But if you allied with some of those White Working Class citizens who are also under-represented to change the focus of the BBC and others to representing the nation as a whole then you would have the numbers.
Don't believe the nonsense about the WWC being racist. That is largely put about by the White Privilege group to portray the White Working Class as deserving their low status in life. Of course you can find some examples of White people being racist. I can find some examples of Black people being fairly violent and criminal. But everyone is an individual and people have a right not to be judged by association on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender or any other supposed common feature. And as I alluded to above, Priti Patel is just about the WWC favourite politician because she puts their interests first, so leadership of a combined group of under-represented groups by a person of non-white ethnicity is no problem whatsoever. There's your route to power and influence.
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ReplyDelete... and got your name in the Guardian with David Olusoga giving basically the same message as this piece.
ReplyDeleteTo repeat, its not as though the upper management of the BBC is stuffed with White working class state-educated northerners is it? So I empathise.
There are deals to be done here with other groups who also feel they are unrepresented. Fight separately and you will get nowhere, as you are finding. Even if you win, other dispossessed groups will view your success as token and non-legitimate, a sop to maintain the existing power structure. So how about instead of fighting your own battle, forming some alliances and leading a bigger campaign?
Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, told Times Radio he felt the BBC "is always in a panic about race, and one of the reasons it is always in a panic is that it has no confidence.
ReplyDelete"The principal reason it has no confidence... is that there is no ethnic diversity at the top of its decision-making tree. What you have is rooms full of white men panicking that someone is going to think they are racist."