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.

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?