When it comes to diversity slowly, slowly does not work

There’s an old proverb which is much loved in the business community, which goes like this:

Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

Nearly all of us have heard it before and it is normally applied to when we are facing a large overwhelming task.

I have been to several meetings, and sat on several panels, about media diversity and I have heard senior media executives saying words to the effect of; “I know progress is slow, but we just need to be patient, we are getting there slowly”. They might not be explicitly using the elephant analogy but that seems to be their approach.

However my experience at both the BBC and CGTN (China’s state broadcaster) has led me to the conclusion that when it comes to certain tasks eating an elephant one bite at a time is not always the best strategy. And when it comes to diversity it can actually do more harm than good.

To understand why, we need to think about this metaphorical elephant in a bit more detail.

DEAD ELEPHANTS START TO ROT

The first problem if you try and eat an elephant slowly one bite at a time is that the elephant starts to rot and smell.

If you think of that in a diversity context increasing diversity numbers slowly does not make for a happy workforce. An organization’s diversity announcements often create expectations. When these expectations are not fulfilled in a timely fashion the majority of diverse talent, both inside and outside the organization, can become disillusioned and disgruntled.

Team morale falling? Low retention rates of diverse staff?

That is the smell of an elephant going off.

DIVERSITY FATIGUE

Another problem of eating your elephant so slowly is people get sick and tired of eating elephant. Even the tastiest meals can get boring.

When it comes to the issue of diversity, getting bored of eating the elephant is a very real problem and is called “diversity fatigue”. There has been some excellent academic work on the issue of how those tasked with delivering change - from HR personnel to team leaders -  simply burn out. The research points to the problem that despite the best of intentions a lot of diversity initiatives run into the ground as people become disillusioned and tired.

The real problem with taking it “slowly, slowly” is that most people lose interest and end up quitting, or they find themselves concentrating on other tasks where they can achieve tangible results.

THE ELEPHANT IS ACTUALLY GROWING

The other problem is that when it comes to diversity the metaphorical elephant actually isn’t dead but is growing and is growing faster than we are eating it! (Sorry I have really stretched this elephant metaphor).

To illustrate my point I am going to use BBC figures – not because I am singling out the BBC - but because they publish the best statistics for any media organization and I suspect they are indicative of the industry as a whole.

For BBC Studios – the department that makes programmes - the rate of increase in Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people (BAME) has been roughly 0.1% year-on-year - over the last few years. When it comes to BAME people in positions of leadership in the last four years this has increased from 8.81 percent in 2016 to 9.48 percent in 2019 (excluding World Service figures which Ofcom does).

At the same time according to the 2001 UK census BAME made up just 8 percent of the population. By 2011 the UK census recorded that 13 percent of the population coming from a BAME background. And now some projections think that by 2051 the BAME population will be over 20 percent.    

This effectively means that as we slowly eat our elephant one bite at a time the problem is in fact getting worse.

CAN WE SOLVE DIVERSITY ALL IN ONE GO?

My experience at the BBC and at CGTN has shown me that there are some issues where large amounts of resources need to dedicated to the problem at the start if we are going to have any chance of success.

In 2007 I was fortunate enough to be involved in the BBC’s big push to increase its out of London productions. The BBC did not exactly solve its regional diversity problem in one go but it set very high targets that it met in a relatively short time frame. And most importantly it put a large amount of resources behind the task.

In 2016 I was key to CGTN moving from a television news approach to a digital first strategy. Again we did not try and do this gradually, slowly increasing the amount of news we produced for our website. Instead we took a completely different approach to how we did our jobs and resources were put behind the task to make it work.

Neither CGTN’s digital approach nor the BBC’s regional diversity goals would have been met if they had taken an “eat the elephant one bite at a time approach”.

Culturally everyone in the organization needed to see some big tangible successes at the beginning to have confidence in the change.

LET’S TAKE A LARGE BITE!

I do not believe that we can solve all of television’s diversity problems tomorrow. But I do believe that we cannot afford to take a slowly, slowly approach.

Instead what I am suggesting is that we focus our efforts on a few specific issues and put the resources behind it so we can achieve real substantive change. For example this might involve concentrating on disability in two or three specific genres. Or focusing on the number of women in key specific roles – such as directing positions. Or focusing on the number of commissions of BAME-led indies.

People need to see real big successes to believe that change is possible.

Someone pass me an elephant leg, please.

(For the record I do not advocate eating endangered species and no elephants were harmed in the writing of this article) 

Retention - TV’s dirty diversity secret. Or why broadcasters need a Truth and Reconciliation moment

When I first started working for China’s largest news broadcaster, CGTN, they had a problem.

From the point of offering a foreign candidate a job, to them actually working took approximately 6 months. The length of time is a combination of the bureaucracy related to a large organisation and Chinese visa red tape.

And yet despite this massive investment in time and effort by both CGTN and the candidate, on average foreign employees stayed for only 18 months.

The retention rate was atrocious.

CGTN’s answer to losing so many international journalists?

Recruit more!

As the Chief International Editor of CGTN’s Digital news I realised that this strategy was not sustainable.

That is why I have become obsessed with employee retention and so far the average time international employee stays with CGTN is three years and rising.

And when I say “obsessed” I really do mean obsessed. I read everything I can on the subject and take personal pride when international staff renew their annual rolling contracts.

Right now when it comes to increasing diversity British broadcasters are suffering from the same issue, staff retention is possibly the biggest problem.

If you look at the statistics from 2016 the rate Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff leave the BBC outstrips their white counterparts, and has been increasing every year.

In 2016 14.6% of people leaving the BBC were BAME.

In 2017 14.9% of people leaving the BBC were BAME.

In 2018 16.4% of people leaving the BBC were BAME.

In 2019 18.4% of people leaving the BBC were BAME.

In the same four years disabled staff have also left the cooperation at a faster rate than their able-bodied counterparts for two of the four years.

I use 2016 as the starting point because that was the year when it first became obvious that the BBC had a serious problem with several high profile BAME senior execs leaving. The situation was so bad in 2016 that the BBC’s own Radio 4 Media Show even had an item exploring the issue and The Times ran the headline “Black and Asian executives quit ‘snowy white peak’ BBC”.

And yet despite the alarm bells ringing in 2016 the numbers leaving the BBC have continued to rise.

Now I am always nervous about singling out the BBC, and I only do so because of all the British media organisations they collect and publish the most comprehensive statistics. But talking to friends working in HR and diversity at Channel 4, ITV and ITN anecdotally it would seem the BBC is not the only organisation struggling to retain BAME and disabled talent.

The response of so many media organisations haemorrhaging “diverse” staff is similar to CGTN’s initial response, and that is to increase staff recruitment. You see British broadcasters doing this in numerous ways, including outreach recruitment schemes, mentoring schemes, a focus on how to make work experience more diverse and constant talk about “improving the pipeline”.

But increased recruitment can never make up for a lack of retention.

This is for three fundamental reasons:

1. An organisation will never be able to increase diversity in leadership positions if they can’t hold on to diverse talent to grow their careers.

2. Older staff create the culture of an organisation. If you cannot retain diverse staff the culture remains "un-diverse", this means you do not get the true benefits of diversity. Plus if the culture stays the same the younger diverse staff will not stay. It’s a vicious cycle.

3. Recruiting new staff to make up for lost staff is very expensive; advertising, interview time, training, losing institutional memory etc. It all adds up.

There is a lot of literature on staff retention in general and even on retention of diverse staff specifically.

But there is one aspect that is rarely discussed, which I have found essential in retaining staff - Honesty.

And this became abundantly clear last week when I was attending the Edinburgh Television Festival when three things come together:

First, Channel 4's head of Current Affairs, Dorothy Byrne, gave a blistering MacTaggart lecture, the festival’s annual keynote speech, in which she talked about diversity.

Second, despite the amazing speech nearly all the BAME and disabled people I spoke to at the festival were either apathetic or downright negative about the industry’s ability to increase diversity behind the camera.

And third, I sat next to the head of programming at Al Jazeera English who had lived through apartheid South Africa.

Now let me begin by talking about the second point - apathy.

As a manager apathy is the biggest danger sign that a member of staff is about to leave. We all want highly engaged, enthusiastic staff. But according to the literature, the second best staff, surprisingly, are angry staff. When a staff member is angry it normally means that they believe that the situation they are in can change, their anger is part of that process of trying to make their job situation better.

Apathy on the other hand means they have given up hope and have lost faith in the organisation and that their situation will improve. Nine times out of ten apathetic staff are surfing job sites and updating their LinkedIn profile.

And even if they are not actively looking for another job their performance goes down and then the exec does not renew their contract because in the words of one senior exec I spoke to “it’s got nothing to do with them being disabled, they just didn’t seem engaged.”

So why should diverse staff be feeling apathetic when people like Dorothy, and almost every senior television executive, are espousing the virtues of diversity?

That is when it struck me, talking to the South African Al Jazeera executive.

When it came to the end of apartheid it wasn’t enough for people to simply say; let’s move on.

What was needed was a processes called “Truth and Reconciliation” where people who had been in positions of power during apartheid talked about what they had done wrong and victims of apartheid could also talk about their experiences without fear.

Now I am not suggesting public show trials where TV execs confess everything they have done wrong in the past, (although Endemol if you’re reading and want to pitch this as a new format, let’s talk).

What I am suggesting is that broadcasters need to acknowledge their mistakes of the past. There is a need for honesty.

The television industry has been rolling out different diversity schemes for over twenty years, and yet for most under-represented groups they have had very limited success, and in some cases numbers have even declined.

Despite their obvious failure I have never heard a single executive, who announced the rolling out of any of these schemes, admit in the following years that they had failed, and more importantly WHY they failed. There has been a lack of honesty

There has been no “truth and reconciliation” on how the media industry has failed its diverse staff.

I believe that until broadcasters and media organisations own up to their mistakes of the past and are transparent on how they will learn from their mistakes people will remain sceptical about the effectiveness of any announcements about wanting to increase diversity. And apathy will be the order of the day.

Which brings me back to working in China.

The biggest lesson I learnt at CGTN in how to retain staff is to be as honest as possible.

There are cultural and social issues that can be challenging for someone working for a Chinese organisation and living in Beijing. The strategy before I started working at CGTN was for the management to simply brush these problems under the carpet and extol the positives. However I found that as an executive if you simply ignore the problems they don’t go away. Instead your staff will talk about them without you and usually not in a constructive way. By addressing the issues honestly, and where management has gone wrong previously, you build trust and together you can come to solutions.

No longer are staff apathetic on the verge of leaving - they feel empowered.

If we want to retain our diverse staff let’s be honest, admit our mistakes and listen to our diverse talent. In other words let's have a truth a reconciliation moment.

Being a black TV exec can feel like being an endangered species!

Do you have a pension?

Do you want to increase media diversity?

What if we could find a way to harness the money in your pension fund, and your other financial investments, to increase the number of women, BAME and disabled people working behind the camera?

Then you may want to buy “Media Diversity Bonds”

The idea for “media diversity bonds” came about by an off-the-cuff remark from a black television exec recently. We were talking about going to pitch meetings and she told me she is often the only black person in the room and feels like an “endangered species”. 

It was the “endangered species” comment that got me thinking.

WE ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

Are there lessons we could learn from the conservationist community, who are trying to increase wildlife species, that we could use to increase media diversity? 

Let me tell you about “Rhino Impact Bonds”.

Black rhinos are close to extinction from a population of roughly 65,000 in the 1970’s the number has dropped to 5,500. They are the definition of “endangered species” (although 5,500 is still a larger number than BAME people working in the UK television industry - yes I know a cheap shot).

Various attempts to increase the number of black rhinos have failed, and so the Zoological Society of London and Conservation Capital got together to harness the power of the market and launch “Rhino Impact Bonds” 

Financial institutions and wealthy individuals are able to invest in these bonds. 

The money they invest is then used to finance programmes to increase the number of black rhinos. 

At the end of five years if the rhino population has gone up the investors get their money back with interest. If the numbers do not go up the investors lose their investment. The technical term is an  an “outcome payments” model.

The interest (or “yield”) will be paid by charities and governments, who right now are already shelling out even more money with no results.

The principal behind it, is that financial institutions and wealthy individuals want to see a return on their investment, so they will make sure they money is only directed towards programmes that really work.

FROM RHINOS TO MEDIA DIVERSITY

The basic model could easily be transferred to media diversity.

Just like rhino conservation there is a lot of talk and schemes with very little to show for them. 

Better and more targeted money could be the answer. 

Talking to BAME-led indies one of the biggest problems is accessing funds for development and to retain staff between projects. Funds from a “Media Diversity Bond” could be used to tackle this issue.

“Media Diversity Bonds” could be used to cofund diverse productions in exactly the same way the government’s own contestable fund currently cofunds Children’s programmes to increase the number of British Children’s productions.     

As investors want real returns on their money they would ensure that only training schemes that yield results are invested in. 

IT IS ALREADY WORKING

The fact of the matter is the idea behind the “Rhino Impact Bond” is not new and it has already been used to help disadvantaged groups in various countries.

India has one of the most successful bonds in place with the aim of funding schemes to educate young women and girls in rural areas. The bond launched in 2016 increased student enrollment by 116% in less than two years. And investors saw a 15% return.

Colombia launched the “Workforce Social Impact Bond” targeting vulnerable, unemployed people living in Bogotá, Cali and Pereira to increase their employment and financial stability. Launched in 2017 the results of the investment are still to be seen.

EMBRACE YOUR INNER RHINO

So next time you are on a film set and you are the only disabled person there.

Or you are the only female director you know.

Or you are the only black person at a pitch meeting.

Do not be ashamed of feeling like an endangered species maybe we need to embrace our inner rhinos.

Stacey Dooley, BBC Panorama and how not to apologise for a diversity mistake

I regularly write about how diversity and inclusion must be at the heart of everything broadcasters do and not just an “add-on” to their core programmes and policies.

This week the BBC has come under considerable fire for a Panorama investigation into "western" women involved in the Islamist group ISIS, titled “Stacey Meets the IS Brides”.    

In a short preview film shown the night before on the News at Ten reporter Stacey Dooley described watching “women raising their index finger in an IS salute". It was quickly pointed out by viewers that this interpretation of the hand gesture is misleading at best and is actually a symbol of Tawhid described by the Oxford Dictionary of Islam as a sign for “the unity and uniqueness of God as creator and sustainer of the Universe”.

The BBC quickly apologised and recut the Panorama so it did not include this mistake.

Now, many people have pointed out, myself included, that the mistake would seem to illustrate a lack of diversity in the editorial team at Panorama and the News and Ten. Specifically the lack of Muslim staff with decision making power to identify and rectify this mistake before it was broadcast.

The lack of diversity in high level decision making positions throughout the UK broadcasters’ news and current affairs is a massive problem. 

There is not a single major TV BBC news programme (Breakfast, One O’Clock News, Six O’Clock News, News at Ten, Newsnight, Panorama etc) which is headed by a person of colour or someone from a Muslim background. And to the best of my knowledge the same applies for all the UK terrestrial broadcasters - ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

However in this blog post I wanted to focus on another aspect of the recent Stacey Dooley Panorama furore. 

The incident serves as a case study of how not to apologise for a mistake and why the lack of diversity in the apology was a key failing.

First let’s look at the BBC's apology:

"We wrongly described a gesture made by women filmed in a Kurdish controlled detention camp in northern Syria as an 'IS salute'," a BBC spokesman said.

"While IS have attempted to adopt this for their own propaganda purposes, for accuracy we should have been clear that many people of Muslim faith use this gesture to signify the oneness of Allah.

"We apologise for this error and have removed this description from the footage."

When this did not stop the criticism of Panorama and Stacey Dooley the BBC News press office then published two linked tweets:

Let’s dissect what the BBC Press Office has got wrong and how it could have avoided these mistakes if it truly recognised how diversity should have been at the core of its response.

First of all, as a former BBC exec I have been involved in my fair share of drafting and approving apologies and public relations statements and so I have a little experience in this field.

The BBC says “It’s disappointing that criticism has focused on Stacey; every programme is a team effort, so the mistake wasn’t her responsibility.” 

This statement is just wrong. 

The BBC linked its tweet to an article by the Express reporting Janet Street Porter’s criticism of the Panorama programme on Loose Women. Janet Street Porter goes out of her way not to place the blame on Stacey Dooley saying “I blame the producer”. 

No one then takes responsibility for the mistake. Instead the BBC News press team diffuses responsibility blaming the whole “team effort”. Diffusion of responsibility does not make a problem go away. It demonstrates a lack of leadership and the inability of anyone to take responsibility. Personal responsibility sends out a strong statement.

If the editor of News at Ten or the executive producer of Panorama would have gone up to collect an award if the programme had won any gongs, then one of them should have personally taken responsibility for this mistake. 

It is that simple.

Then comes the diversity problem…

At the core of all the social media criticism of the Panorama investigation is the lack of diversity in the production team’s staff that could have allowed the mistake to happen.

If an organisation does not address the core issue, the apology and subsequent PR around the subject will not make the problem go away.

Therefore however painful it might be to the BBC they should have tackled the fundamental problem. 

If I were advising them I would have suggested the following:

"We understand there have been concerns about the lack of diversity in the production team that could have allowed this mistake to occur…” (Address the elephant in the room)

"...BBC News and Current Affairs has a good track record on BAME diversity with 15.6% of our staff coming from a BAME background..." (Use this as an opportunity to tell a good story about the BBC)

"...But there are clearly issues that need to be addressed, such as only 2.4% of News staff are Muslim compared to the UK population of as a whole of 5%, and we still need to look at BAME representation in key editorial positions...” (Acknowledge the problems people are talking about - validate people’s reality)

“...We have of course re-edited the Panorama programme and all related material not to include this mistake…” (Rectifying a mistake is standard practice and so the BBC should not act as if it has done anything special)

“...And more importantly we are seeing this as a valuable learning experience of how we cover these sensitive issues in the future so similar mistakes are not repeated.” (Demonstrate how you will rectify the broader issue)

Finally if the BBC really wanted to get extra brownie points it could add; “We have invited key experts to discuss with the production team how to cover religiously sensitive issues in the future”.

When I talk about diversity being at the very core of everything a broadcaster does this means; from the the point of hiring staff to commissioning programmes, from the point of making a programme to issuing public apologies. 

The inability of the BBC to properly address the diversity issue in its public statement around this issue seems to demonstrate that once again broadcasters have not yet grasped this fundamental lesson.

And most importantly it means some strong journalism has been completely overshadowed by the BBC's #DiversityFail.   

The "Bystander Effect" And Why It's Hurting Diversity

Are media executives suffering from the “bystander effect” when it comes to diversity?

In 1964 a 28 year-old woman was raped and stabbed to death outside her apartment in New York. Thirty eight people supposedly watched for more than half an hour as she was attacked but did nothing, not even call the police.

The case made headlines across the world with everyone asking the same question; why didn’t any of those 38 people do anything to save the poor woman?

And so a new psychological theory was born: “The bystander effect”.

The idea behind the bystander effect is the idea of “diffusion of responsibility” - people are less likely to take action if there are other witnesses who seem likely to do so.

The insidious effect can work in two ways:

First, each witness thinks someone else will step in and save the day.

Second, each person feels morally justified in their inaction as they see other people acting (or not acting) in exactly the same way.

The irony of the “bystander effect” is the more people who are present and able to help the less likely the person in need of assistance will receive any help.

None of these bystanders are bad people. They would want to help a person in distress but once the “bystander effect” kicks in their good intentions do not become actions.

So what has this got to do with media executives and diversity?

During my time as a media executive there have frequently been BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) and disabled talent who everyone recognises as great. The one thing the BAME and disbaled talent all have in common is they needed a break. Whether that break is moving from assistant producer to director, producer to series producer, or series producer to executive producer they need someone in a leadership position to reach out to them.

In my experience media execs are generally nice people - as the cliche goes; “some of my best friends are media execs”. And when I have dinner party conversations with them they all want to increase diversity. At the same time I do not see them giving the breaks to BAME and disabled talent which we can all see.

For a long time I have tried to reconcile this contradiction.

And while I do not think there is any single reason, I firmly believe the “bystander effect” has a role to play.

Not to sound over-dramatic but TV executives are often like the thirty eight people who saw the 28 year-old woman in New York being raped and murdered in 1964 when it comes to helping diverse talent.

TV execs want to help diverse talent, they can see the diverse talent needs help BUT the irony is the more other execs say they also support diversity the less likely each individual exec will feel the need to act. They think someone else will sort out the problem.

So how do we solve the problem?

Luckily for us the first aid community have had to tackle this problem when helping victims of accidents in public and they have come up with a very simple solution: Identify specific individuals and ask for specific help.

So if someone collapses in the street and a first aider is present the first aider does not just call out to the crowd in general for help. The first aid community has found that the best course of action is for the first aider to identify a specific person (often randomly) and say “woman in the red t-shirt call 999” or “man with the shopping bag you will have to help me with chest compressions” etc etc.

This jolts people out of bystander mode and become active participants.

If higher management at UK broadcasters want their executives to increase diversity they cannot just send out general messages to their entire executive team to “increase diversity”. They should identify specific execs and give them very specific tasks:

“Luke, find a disabled series producer by the end of the year and if you haven’t got one explain what you did to try and find one”

“Tim, get me an Asian director for your next series and tell me about all the unsuccessful candidates you saw as well”

Etc etc.

When it comes to diversity there is really no such thing as an “innocent bystander” just people who acted and people who didn’t act. And surprisingly according to the “bystander effect” that has almost nothing to do with how morally good or bad they are as people.

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.