What the Privatisation of Channel 4 Would Mean for Media Diversity

In 2001 President George Bush famously addressed Congress, just ten days after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, and said 'You are either with us, or with the terrorists'. It was an oversimplification of geopolitics that with hindsight proved to be incredibly harmful - the consequences of which we are still untangling.

Complexity and difficult political decisions are rarely well served by reducing them to simple binaries.

Similarly when it comes to the UK’s complex media landscape I am tired of simple binaries.

In recent weeks all too often debates around the future of institutions such as the BBC, Channel 4, and even Ofcom, seem to boil down to either “support the status quo” or “support a radical transformation” (with right-wing, free market, political overtones).

Let’s be honest, for almost a decade I have been campaigning to change the status quo, from advocating for ring-fenced funds for diverse productions, to changing the structure of the media regulator Ofcom, to even overhauling the tax system surrounding film and television productions. 

And this is because the piecemeal policies that are all too often rolled out by the media industry have not been good enough. In terms of ethnic diversity there has been no significant progress once you factor in wider demographic changes in the general population.

Disability representation, both in front and behind the camera, still bumps along the bottom.  

Women are still massively underrepresented in key roles such as directing.

And, I haven’t even started to discuss intersectionality. 

There are good reasons why I am no fan of the status quo.

At the same time I recognise that invariably improvements to diversity and inclusion in the media industry have been due to deliberate and better regulation, not less.  The biggest advances in regional diversity for example have  been due to better definitions of “Out of London” imposed on them by the media regulator. And it is no coincidence that arguably the most impactful policy responses to the summer of Black Lives Matter protests came from the two most regulated and publicly accountable broadcasters; BBC and Channel 4.

I see real dangers to media diversity and inclusion if less public money is put into public service broadcasting - here I’m obviously thinking about the BBC. 

And I also see real dangers to media diversity and inclusion if broadcasters are more accountable to shareholders and driven by the profit motive than to creating a public good for the whole nation - here I am obviously thinking about the current privatisation debate swirling around Channel 4.

As a Black man I am all too sensitive of a history in which my community’s support is used to see off the worst excesses of policies that might harm us, but the remaining status quo is not changed as a result to help us either.

In the latest media storm I personally oppose calls for the privatisation of Channel 4 as I worry this will, over time, reduce regulatory oversight, and the channel’s management will be more concerned about increasing returns to shareholders than increasing programming for underserved audiences. But neither do I find common cause with the people opposing privatisation unless they can show me how they will change the status quo and find common cause with people from underrepresented groups to increase representation, diversity, inclusion and equity. 

(This blog post reflects my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect any organisation I work with)

Lack of Media Diversity is a Market Failure - An Economist's Perspective

          

What is the point of Ofcom?

This is not a rhetorical question but one we should keep at the forefront of our minds when we are discussing diversity in the UK media industry.

First of all, Ofcom is the  “government-approved regulatory and  competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom”. Its’ job is not to try and make people “nicer” or to make sure people are “kinder” to each other. 

It is a market regulator in the same way Ofwat (Water Services Regulation Authority) regulates the water industry or Ofgem (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) regulates the UK’s gas and electricity networks. Sometimes because television is a creative industry, full of creative artistic people we seem to forget this cold reality. The regulators are there to address market failures which left to their own devices would disadvantage the UK population.

Market not personal failure

This is how we must see the television industry’s lack of diversity. We must see it as a market failure. Too often when we discuss media diversity we frame it in terms of the personal failings of a few executives or commissioners. For example, I frequently hear people saying if we could only increase the diversity of the gatekeepers we could solve diversity. For me this is akin to saying; if we could only get nice liberal people to run our energy companies we would not have to worry about regulating them properly.      

If the lack of diversity is a market failure and Ofcom’s job is to address market failures, then the first thing we need to acknowledge, however hard, is that Ofcom has failed the television industry so far when it comes to diversity. Statistics suggest that diversity in the industry has barely kept pace with the demographic changes of the UK, and in some areas has even gone backwards

Why? And is it really Ofcom’s fault? To understand how Ofcom currently does versus how it should regulate television diversity one means is to examine other  (accepted) market failures in the television industry and how Ofcom addresses these.

Tv is full of market failures-how to solve them.

The television industry is actually full of market failures. For instance, television broadcasters left to their own devices will not produce enough quality news and current affairs programmes, favouring entertainment programmes instead with larger audiences and more revenue.. 

Unregulated, broadcasters will not produce enough high-quality children’s programmes as certain types of advertising targeting them is prohibited and it is a small audience nationally, so it doesn’t make “market” sense to target them. Another example is the production of programmes outside of London     , it often makes “market” sense to have all producers in the same place. 

To solve these types of market failures the regulator has to step in and actually shape the market setting quotas and issuing license requirements. Specifically for all the above examples, Ofcom insists that broadcasters produce a set quota of news and current affairs programmes, Childrens’ programmes and programmes outside of London.

Importantly what Ofcom does not do is insist that producers of Children’s programmes receive more training in the hope that they will be able to compete with cheaper light entertainment programmes. 

Ofcom also does not produce reports on the lack of Out of London     or Childrens’ programmes arguing that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and more information will help broadcasters realise the error of their ways and commission more programmes.

     

Last but not least, Ofcom does not ask broadcasters to implement “unconscious bias training” for senior managers to commission more Welsh or Scottish programmes - as if somehow the lack of out of London programmes is due to some inbuilt prejudice. 

Will these ‘solutions’ work for OFCOM?

Now I mention all these “solutions” in a slightly tongue-in-cheek manner, but I have a serious point. These are all solutions that I have heard Ofcom as a body, or individual members of Ofcom, support explicitly or implicitly when trying to address television’s lack of diversity.

But they are not the right – nor usual – set of solutions for a regulator to focus on. When it comes to addressing genre and regional diversity the regulator has realised that it needs to focus on the market failures inherent in how the industry operates, not on the individuals working in the market. No number of Ofcom diversity reports or diversity schemes will solve the problem of low numbers of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME), disabled people and women in the industry.

So why hasn’t this happened so far, specifically for diversity, while it has happened for the other market failures in the industry?

The problem with the lack of diversity market failure is that there is an even bigger market failure that lies behind it, which Ofcom has yet to acknowledge, at least in public as being the core reason for the lack of diversity-that the UK television industry effectively being a “monopsony”.

What is a “monopsony” you ask?

Well, most people have heard of a monopoly – and no I don’t mean the board game! A monopoly – as a concept – is when you have a large number of buyers of a certain product or service but only one seller of the product or service.

The real examples of monopoly that most people come across are railway companies or electricity companies. A few companies can dictate how much people pay for the product, provide a bad service and have other negative effects for the consumer, but still increase their profits. The negatives of monopolies are well-known and governments often have to intervene to try and either break them up or legislate against their worst actions. Indeed, the kinds of regulators I mentioned right at the beginning of this piece – the Ofwats and the Ofgems – are often created to regulate these “monopolistic” industries.

A monopsony has similarly negative consequences but it is like a monopoly in reverse. A monopsony is when you have lots of sellers of a product but only one buyer.

In these circumstances it is the buyers who can dictate the price and how the market works.  It is a classic case of market failure.

And increasingly that is precisely what many economists think we have in the television industry. Strictly speaking it is an oligopsony – as they are just a few buyers in this market, but let’s keep it simple for now.

The fact is, most freelancers and independent companies might not have heard of monopsony theory but whenever I talk to friends in the industry they quickly recognize the situation of competing with hundreds of other companies (sellers) but only having a handful of broadcasters (buyers) they can pitch their ideas to whom to sell their programmes.

Increasingly monopsony theory is being used by economists to explain why diversity problems exists in various industries. It is no coincidence that both the tech and television industries seem to suffer from a lack of diversity and both have the problem of a few large companies dominating their industries.

Economics at bed time?

Now I love economics - I studied economics at university, I am currently a financial journalist, and I am married to one of the leading economists in China Africa relations. Just the other day I was talking to her about Neo-paleo-Keynesian Phillips Curves. And bedroom pillow talk can sometimes stray into subjects such as Friedrich List’s theories on infant industry protection.

But I realise other people might not similarly love the dismal science so here’s the warning; as L’Oreal used to say - concentrate because here comes the science bit:

Monopsony theory goes a long way to explaining the entrenched diversity problems in the UK TV and film industry, such as only 3 percent of people working behind the camera in the film industry being from a BAME background or that number falling to 0.3 percent when it comes to disabled people.

Two sides of the same coin?

While there will always be competition for the very best talent, say the top one percent, the vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle. What monopsony theory tells us is that while the companies might fight over a very few people (actually inflating their wages) there is less competition by companies to battle it out for the other workers. Monopsony theory can explain why broadcasters will fight over the talents of Steve McQueen and Micheala Cole while the rest of the industry can remain remarkably un-diverse.

These two things are not contradictory; they are in fact two sides of the same coin.  The market failures associated with monopsonies mean that companies will more likely hire their friends, promote people that look like them and retain people that they like rather than people who might be the best person for the job. In a free market if you did this you would quickly be punished.

In a monopsony (or oligopsony) you will hardly feel the consequences of your actions - at least in the short to medium-term.

So what does this mean for those of us who want to increase diversity in the film and television industry? Should we all just give up because we are working in a monopsony?

No! We definitely should not give up.

But monopsony theory does teach us that we need to look at different types of solutions as opposed to the usual ones people in the industry often mention. It also teaches us that it is unrealistic to think market participants (the broadcasters) can solve market failures irrespective of their best intentions. It would literally go against all conventional economic theory – and their fundamental interests as ologopsonists (!) - to do so. 

It must be up to the regulator.

Dealing with monopoly – and in this case monopsony is precisely what regulators like Ofcom exist to do. 

Ofcom should not be, and is normally not about trying to get individual people to act better. Yet this is how it has been with regards to diversity so far. 

Ofcom is an industry regulator established to address market failures. 

The lack of diversity is a market failure. As a result, there is only one way the lack of diversity will be solved. Regulation. In this respect, all roads lead to Ofcom, doing what it does for other market failures. I look forward to it taking up this crucial role.

(This piece was originally published in "What's the Point of Ofcom" an anthology of essays on the purpose of the media regulator and its future)    

Israel-Palestine Conflict Highlights Why Diversity at Twitter and Facebook is Critical

Irrespective of your view on the Israel-Palestine conflict currently raging, there are important issues and lessons for diversity on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter beyond the conflict itself.

Social media platforms often seem like neutral spaces. They simply host uploaded content. However, they and the people employed by them, are making editorial decisions constantly. These decisions include, for instance, which hashtags to promote and/or block, which content to promote and/or block, which users should be promoted and/or blocked, and in a broader context what entire issues should be promoted and/or blocked.

The blocking of hashtags recently made international headlines as posts containing the hashtag #AlAqsa or its Arabic counterparts #الاقصى or #الأقصى on Instagram were either taken down or hidden from search results. Facebook, which owns Instagram, said this was a mistake and was due to the Al-Aqsa name being associated with terrorist organizations.

A few days earlier Twitter blamed technical errors for deleting posts and suspending accounts mentioning the possible eviction of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

And, in what may at first seem to be a completely unrelated issue, last week Facebook announced that it would be removing groups and pages that discourage people from getting vaccinated against Covid-19, regardless of whether the information is true or not.

I highlight these three examples because irrespective of your political views they illustrate that social media platforms are making subjective editorial decisions, not just simply objective decisions ones based on the factual accuracy of the posts. These decisions are either made directly by human moderators or indirectly by algorithms implementing programming by human programmers. The examples of subjective moderation often only draw public attention when "mistakes" are made or they are particularly contentious, but the reality is they are being made every day.

Now once this is recognised, when it comes to diversity and media representation it is important to know the demographics (racial, gender, disability, socio-economic etc) of the people making these decisions.

To put it at its most basic, if editorial decisions are being made about which content or terms are being blocked with regards to the Israel-Palestine conflict it would be useful to know the diversity of the humans either making the decisions directly or programming the algorithms to make those decisions.

And while this is true for media about Israel-Palestine, the arguments are transferable for almost any news story from Black Lives Matter to Brexit.

Unfortunately the social media platforms only give limited diversity information about their workforces. But even the limited information we do know is not encouraging.

For Facebook for example 89% of its US leadership is either White or Asian, and 91% of its US technical staff are either White or Asian. 

Conversely Black people, who make up 13.4% of the US population, and where Facebook's headquarters are based, make up only 3.4% of leadership roles and 1.7% of technical roles.

If one thinks about the Israel-Palestine conflict specifically “Additional [Ethnic] Groups” - which Arab-Americans would come under - make up 0.3% of leadership roles, and 0.2% of technical roles. (There are no separate statistics for Jewish-Americans)

Women are similarly underrepresented globally in leadership and technical roles at Facebook, at 34.2 and 24.1 respectively.

Twitter is marginally better than Facebook when it comes to both gender and Black representation, but both groups are still massively underrepresented in technical and leadership roles. And it does not produce statistics for either its Arab or Jewish workforce in the US.

Both social media platforms recognise they have to do better when it comes to diversity and have set out broad diversity targets.

Importantly, as far as my research goes, I can find no breakdown of the ethnicity or gender for either company - or any social media platform for that matter - for the people making the companies’ editorial decisions. But assuming the editorial diversity is at least partially in line with the companies’ leadership and technical roles diversity, we are left with the impression that important editorial decisions about content, users and globally sensitive stories are being made by an extremely unrepresentative group of people.

I have written copious amounts of articles on how this type of situation adversely affects the editorial decision making of newsrooms and conventional media organisations and all the arguments hold true for newer social media platforms.

It is now more important than ever that the diversity of the teams that are making editorial decisions on social media platforms is revealed. And just as Facebook and Twitter have set broad diversity targets in categories such as “leadership” and “technical”, they now need to set targets for editorial decision making teams.

As one Facebook employee wrote in a memo seen by the New York Times about wrongly blocking posts about the Al Aqsa Mosque; “These mistakes are painful, erode the trust of our community and there is no easy fix for that”. One of the best places to start to rebuilding that trust would be for their diversity to reflect the communities they are trying to serve.

On-Screen Community Representation - The New Diversity Frontier

In a speech I gave earlier this year to NFTS first year students I argued that how we represent diverse communities – as opposed to just individuals from diverse backgrounds – is the new frontier for on-screen diversity.

It goes to the heart of how we should think of "colour-blind casting" and judge dramas like Killing Eve and Luther.

What follows is an extract of that speech….


Much of drama narrative teaching concentrates on the protagonists. I want to look at an important element of on-screen diversity that is often overlooked and that is the power of the community.

And to do that I want to take you back to the year before I was born.

The year was 1970. That year Sesame Street launched, with an opening scene of a black male teacher in a suit, walking a young black girl, Sally, down the street and introducing her to a multicultural neighbourhood. They walk to his home and he introduces her to his black wife who gives Sally cookies and milk.

From the very first frame, Sesame Street put an aspirational, professional black couple at the heart of its programme.

Now what is interesting is in the 1970’s British Children’s television was in many ways racially diverse.

The same year that Sesame street was launched British television launched Here Come the Double Deckers! a children’s drama with key black characters.

On its flagship early years programme - Play School - the BBC had several black presenters including Floella Benjamin who is now a duchess in the house of Lords. There were programmes like Pipkins on ITV with a black presenter. And on Saturday morning Tiswas you had a teenage Lenny Henry.

In children’s drama Double Deckers was not the only drama with black characters. You had black characters in key roles in Grange Hill, and if I really want to delve deep into my childhood my personal favourite children’s drama was a science fiction drama (which was recently remade) called Tomorrow People - again with black actors in key roles.

Yet despite being born and raised in London I looked across the Atlantic and saw myself reflected back at me and in a reality I wanted to be part of. I looked at programmes filmed just down the road from where I lived and failed to find an emotional connection. This is despite the fact that these UK programmes had quote unquote on-screen diversity and representation.

I had no conscious understanding of race but something in Sesame Street resonated with me. It got something right in 1970 which British television still fails to grasp.

Over the last 50 years there has been real progress, with most British drama writers now recognising that there should be positive black characters. Casting directors are now more willing to cast black actors in non-stereotypical positive roles. Things are far from perfect, but there is no denying that progression. There may have been a degree of representation in the 1970s children’s programmes but now we see positive black characters on our screen relatively often – from actors in Dr Who to The Hustle and of course Luther. However, there’s something special about these positive characters. And all the characters and presenters I mentioned earlier in 1970s children’s programmes.

They are often the only black character, inhabiting functioning white communities, or at the very least majority white communities. Black communities on TV on the other hand are portrayed almost exclusively as dysfunctional. While many of the people portrayed in a drama set in a non-white community may be likeable, the community they were set in is normally anything but.

The message that comes across loud and clear on our screens is that while there might be good black individuals, black communities are a problem. It suggests that if you are a good or positive black person you should want to leave the dysfunctional black communities as quickly as possible.

While some might downplay these unspoken messages, the reality is one comes across these implicit negative views about black communities all the time. There are often similar messages about South Asians on TV, while there might be positive individuals from the Indian sub-continent, the communities are invariably problematic, populated with forced marriages and potential terrorists.

Yet the reality is that while dysfunctional black communities certainly do exist, there are also incredibly good positive functional communities. Analysis by Dr Nicola Rollock into the black middle class offers strong examples of functional positive black communities that rarely see our TV screens. I for one am very proud to be part of a black community that includes lawyers, film makers, policemen, civil servants, charity workers – but also unemployed people. It’s mixed, but positively so.

And so what resonates with people is the portrayal of communities and it is this that has been missing from so much of our diversity debate.

In Killing Eve we do not see any reference to Sandra Oh’s Korean heritage until she has left her white husband, lost her job - working with predominantly white people and hit rock bottom.

At that point she takes a job in the most stereotypical of East Asian occupations. You’ve guessed it - a Korean restaurant.

I am sure the BBC and the producers patted themselves on the back after casting Sandra Oh in the role - a role originally written for a white person in the original books. And yet when it came to representing her community they stumbled at the first hurdle.

No one would ever want to be in that community if they could ever avoid it, and she only returned to that community when she had no where else to go.

Just think about the message that send out to East Asians. You want to kick some butt? Yes you can - as long as you jettison your community and only expose your culture in small palatable (preferably edible) doses.

And yet when we get it right it is brilliant.

Christmas just gone Sainsbury’s broadcast an advert of a black family enjoying Christmas dinner.

It resonated with black people - why?

Because it showed a happy functioning black community.

It also had a very important message - black people can be happy without white people. If it was killing Eve it is the equivalent of saying - Sandra Oh you can kick butt, be a superhero and celebrate your culture.

Now recently the question of onscreen portrayal has taken on more urgency and people have started to bandy around the term “authentic”.

As the UK media industry seeks to improve its diversity the question of “authentic” representation looms large. What does “authentic” portrayal of under-represented look like and how can we judge it?

Recently BEATS (British East Asians in Theatre and on Screen), a media advocacy group for increased diversity, attempted to answer that very question with regards to the portrayal of British Southeast Asians in drama (BESEA). They proposed a simple checklist:

(1) Are there two or more BESEA characters? (2) Do at least two BESEA characters speak fluent English with a British accent? (3) Does at least one BESEA character pursue their own goal separate to the white characters?

If the programme can answer “yes” to all three questions then it has passed the test.

What the BEATS test indicates is that it is not just about quantity - quality is equally important.

Interestingly, there has been push back by some members of the British East Asian community to the exact specifics of the checklist, most notably whether the requirement regarding British accents champions second and third generation immigrants over more recent arrivals. I personally think there will be room for improvement and ways to address this concern. However we shouldn’t lose sight of the core principles and what the checklist identifies are three important criteria vital for authentic representation:

People of colour are not isolated individuals.

Do not “exoticize” people of colour; and finally

People of colour must have agency over our lives.

Now if you take the Killing Eve example or Idris Elba in Luther they frequently pass the second and third criteria. They are really not exoticised in my opinion. And they definitely have agency over their own lives. Sandra Oh seems to kill who she likes and to some degree beds who she likes - I hope that isn’t a spoiler for people who haven’t watched it yet.

But they fall down on the first criteria - speaking to another person who looks like them.

Netflix’s recent hit Lupin also falls down on this criteria - if you disregard flashbacks of Omar Sy talking to his dead father.

Now what is interesting with the first criteria - two Asian people should speak to one another - I believe what they are trying to do is capture the idea and importance of community in portrayal

Community is the new frontier when it comes to diversity.

The fact that BEATS have published this checklist now is also particularly important.

Last June the BBC committed £100m of its content spend over three years on “diverse productions and talent” stipulating that “diverse stories and portrayal on-screen” would be one criteria that productions would be judged by without detailing how.

The fear among many people of colour working in TV that I have spoken to is that the BBC will repeat the same mistakes they did when trying to figure out what “authentic” Scottish portrayal is. Asking whether a black character eating “jerk chicken” is more authentic than having them dine in a French restaurant. Or leaving it up to the discretion of a single executive as to what “authenticity” looks like.

What BEATS’ criteria demonstrates is authenticity is not about specific cultural signifiers but about how you approach your characters. The BBC would do well to heed this when it finally publishes its guidelines as to what “diverse stories and portrayal on-screen” really means.

Now Of course there is one final, fourth, criteria Lenny (Henry) and I identify in our book (Access All Areas) as being essential to achieving real authentic portrayal. And that is to make sure there is diversity in key positions behind the camera.

And so to sum up if we want to have diversity we must recognise that characters are not isolated people. At its most basic they have back stories and for black people those back stories have to include their communities.

Finally I will leave you with one more Sesame Street-related fact.

When the first episode of Sesame Street was aired in 1970 the US was 87.65 per cent white. According to the last census conducted in 2010 it is now 72.40 per cent white.

The year I was born, 1971, was the first time the UK census specifically gathered ethnicity data. That year they found the white population made up roughly 97.7 per cent of the population. Today the BAME population in the UK is 13 per cent, a larger percentage than the non-white population at the time Sally first met all the Sesame Street characters in the first episode.

In 1970 a children’s television show had already worked out the importance of appealing to the country’s non-white population through positive community representation not just portrayal of individuals, an appeal that made a small child born in London a year later fall in love with it.

British broadcasters do not have the luxury of waiting another 50 years to finally work out what Sesame Street got right. Because unlike 50 years ago Sesame Street is literally just one channel hop away, as is all the other great diverse content that prioritises community representation over simple diverse representation of individuals.

NFTS students, you must make that change or British film and television will die without it.

You are our hope, and our future.

We Stand Less on the Shoulders of Giants And More in the Battlefield of the Fallen

On Sunday Noel Clarke won the Outstanding Contribution Award at the BAFTA’s and gave a moving acceptance speech. In the speech he dedicated the award to the “under-represented" in the film industry and effectively reshaped notions of black pride when he said he would not apologise for the ”arrogance” he showed when he won the Rising Star Award 13 years ago. He was not going to say sorry for “popping his collar” because it was an act of defiance, as people like him are not meant to win these awards.

I found the speech moving, and enjoyed its mixture of both pride and humility as Clarke described his journey in the industry and his attempts to “elicit change in the industry”.

But there was one part of the speech that troubled me. He said “I stand on the shoulders of giants, I am not here without the people before me”.

The idea of “standing on the shoulders of giants” is a common one and is frequently cited by black, and other people from under-represented groups, to acknowledge the people who have paved the way for their own successes.

I have used the phrase myself and even wrote a blog piece titled “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”. I also created an open-source document for people to add the names and profiles of pioneering “giants” of colour in the media industry.

However, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the phrase and in many ways I do not think it does the justice to the people who paved the way for us. Most importantly it does not adequately recognise the sacrifices they made. Let me explain why…

First of all, it is important to understand where the phrase comes from. It is thought it can be traced back to the 12th Century and was first used by the French philosopher Bernard of Chartres describing how philosophers see further by building on the philosophical works of those that proceed them. The phrase gained popularity in England when the noted scientist Isaac Newton wrote in 1675: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

When Isaac Newton used the phrase, he was referring to scientists and thinkers who had gone before him and he was merely adding to their achievements. Importantly the scientists that went before Newton had, for the most part, been celebrated and recognised for their contribution to science while they were alive, while they were working.

In contrast, when it comes to black people, and others from underrepresented groups, much of the time we are following on from people who are more like fallen warriors in a battlefield. They are the walking wounded who have sacrificed their careers to enable us to be where we are today. For instance, they might have lost their jobs as a result of trying to break barriers, they might have been seen as “troublemakers” and foregone promotions, and we should not forget the mental health damage that many people suffer from working in what is far too often a toxic industry.

That means the people who came before us might be “giants” but we are not standing on their shoulders. They are no longer standing up! We are benefitting from the foes they have slain and the fights they have waged on our behalf.

That’s more like the right metaphor.

On a similar note, a few years ago a woman corrected me when I congratulated her for breaking the glass ceiling. She said, quite calmingly, “mine was just the final push - the ceiling was weakened by all the women who cracked their skulls on the previous attempts”.

This woman was not standing on other women’s shoulders. For her she was standing amongst women who had suffered and sacrificed much more than her and most importantly had not reaped the benefits.

So, why does this phrasing matter? Am I just being a pedant obsessing over whether Noel Clarke used the right metaphor, and myself for that matter - just a few years ago?

For me the issue went beyond mere semantics a few months ago when I found out about the story of Barbara Blake Hannah, the first black person to appear on British TV in a non-entertainment role in 1968. She landed the job of on-camera reporter for daily evening show Today With Eamonn Andrews on Thames TV. But after nine months she was dismissed, allegedly because her employer came under pressure from viewers who called in daily to say: "Get that n***** off our screens."

She was the pioneer who paved the way for every black newsreader in the UK who came after her. But in paving the way, her career was totally sacrificed.

And this is where the metaphor becomes important and how we view Blake Hannah. If we see her as simply a giant whose shoulders black TV journalists stand on, we owe her nothing but gratitude and respect.

If, on the other hand, we view her as a fallen soldier who made sacrifices which we, as black journalists, are benefitting from - then we owe her something far more tangible.

That’s why I believe there should be, in the media industry specifically but also in other sectors, a new charitable fund to financially help these pioneers who have had to sacrifice to pave the way for progress.

All the broadcasters and large independent production companies could contribute to this independent fund. The fund would then be distributed, in much the same way the Film and TV Charity works, in giving grants and ongoing support to people who have left the industry or have made material sacrifices in working in the industry. Or to put it another way – people like Barbara Blake Hannah needs real support not just a plaque.

Let us support the pioneers because they might be giants but they still need a helping hand.

How to Persuade Black People to Take Covid-19 Vaccines - Three Lessons

Last week Sir Lenny Henry wrote an open letter to Black British communities asking them to take the Covid-19 vaccination. The letter was co-signed  by a raft of famous and influential Black Britons and made into a short film by the fantastic Amma Asante. 

I was involved in writing the letter, and even though it was relatively short, I think there are three important lessons for media diversity and trying to connect with a Black audience.

THREE LESSONS

1. It is a love letter.

We deliberately framed the letter as a love letter to the black community. Irrespective of the credibility of the people who signed the final letter within the Black community (and across the UK and beyond) we realised that it is necessary to always make our position clear, especially when we are issuing that message on mainstream media. Our love for our Black families and communities can never be taken for granted and needs to be explicit. 

2. Do not blame the victim

Proceeding the letter there was a lot of media coverage and discussion around misinformation that was stopping Black people being vaccinated. If this narrative is taken to its logical conclusion it means media, policymakers or other opinion leaders are either blaming the Black community for producing more misinformation, or blaming the Black community for being more susceptible to misinformation. When writing the letter we  discussed whether we needed to talk about this issue as well. We came to the decision that we shouldn’t. We took the view that Black people are reluctant to trust official information for very good reasons. The fact is, Black people are no more or no less rational than any other group of people. If Black people do not trust British authorities it is with good reason. As an example, the same week the open letter was published a branch of the British establishment whom Black people are meant to trust when it comes to vaccines brought out a report insisting that institutional racism does not exist. As authors, we realised that we could not gain Black people’s trust by simply writing off their rational concerns and blaming it on misinformation videos. People’s rational concerns need to be acknowledged and addressed, and at least not written off. 

3. Avoiding the White saviour complex

We did not want to produce a letter which in any way could play into the idea that the majority white establishment was here to save Black people. We realised that if we as authors were trying to convince Black people to do anything we needed to ensure they have agency and power over their own lives and we do not fall into tropes of a “white saviour complex” even if it is black people urging them to do something. For this reason we stressed how the vaccine is not simply British but has been developed with the help of Black doctors in the Caribbean and Africa. 

Over the years we have seen far too many public information campaigns aimed at Black people that do not come from a place of love but instead implicitly chastise them for not taking the right course of action.

Over the years we have seen Black people blamed for their own victimhood - either characterised as being too stupid to to know what is good for them or even having cultural beliefs that stop them from doing the right thing. We believe black people act rationally (or at least as rationally as any other group of people).

And from images of starving Africans to encourage us to donate to charities, to Europeans having the answers to “our problems”, themes of the white savior complex pervade our public information campaigns. This is not helpful and must be avoided.

I usually do not go into detail about the thinking behind the letters and speeches I help to write, but the lessons coming out of this one were too important not to highlight them.

I hope other people can learn from our example and I, most importantly, sincerely hope that through the approach we used, the letter will encourage more people to decide to get vaccines against Covid-19.

The New Government Report on Racism is a Threat to How We Report on Race

The new government report on racism in the UK is a threat to how we report on race, racism and diversity, and the idea of journalistic impartiality.

After 24 years of working at the BBC the principle of journalistic “due impartiality” is baked into my very core. It is how I try to approach all my journalism, even after I left the corporation, and it is how I believe you build trust between media organisations and the general public. 

The recent government backed report on racism in the UK by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities presents an existential threat to how journalists approach issues of race, diversity and racism and maintain principles of due impartiality. This is particularly important for British Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) such as the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV who are regulated by Ofcom and are meant to abide by the principles of due impartiality in their output.

To understand why, it is first important to understand what “due impartiality” means.

According to the BBC’s editorial guidelines; “due impartiality usually involves more than a simple matter of ‘balance’ between opposing viewpoints… It does not require absolute neutrality on every issue or detachment from fundamental democratic principles, such as the right to vote, freedom of expression and the rule of law.”

However due impartiality is only achievable and practical if there are certain shared values, beliefs and commonly accepted facts. 

For example the BBC accepts that climate change is an accepted fact and therefore you do not need to feature climate change deniers in your reports or programmes to achieve due impartiality. 

To give another example, it is the clear belief that women and men are equal that enables journalists to report on sexism and still achieve due impartiality. If this was not an accepted norm then reporting on sexism and achieving due impartiality would require journalists to present the viewpoint that women are possibly inferior.

It is this idea which means achieving due impartiality on an issue such as slavery 400 years ago in England where slavery was accepted as a norm by the majority of society would have been very different from achieving due impartiality on reporting on the issue now. In the 1800’s William Wilberforce would have been seen as a “campaigner” possibly in need of “balance”, whereas today his stance against slavery would be seen as normal and could be reported without an advocate for slavery needed to achieve due impartiality. 

So what does this mean for the new report and for journalists reporting on racism in the UK?

At the start of the week it was pretty much accepted that structural racism existed in the UK. Journalists could report on this without needing a counter view to achieve due impartiality. Where there were racial disparities the presumption was that they were due to structural racism unless another reason could be found.

Post the publication of the report this issue of how to achieve due impartiality when reporting racism and racial inequality has been thrown into doubt. We now have an influential government body effectively saying that denying structural racism in the UK is a valid position. If we accept this view then due impartiality would require any mention of structural racism to be balanced by racism deniers.

This obviously has serious and widespread consequences.

So what can journalists do?

I believe the BBC’s reporting on climate change can provide a model for all British journalists. Despite the fact that there are climate change deniers and sceptics the BBC has stood firm and recognised that the vast majority of serious work in this area recognises that climate change is a scientific fact. Therefore, while recognising that climate change sceptics exist, some of whom are incredibly influential, the corporation has taken the stance that they can achieve due impartiality without mentioning the sceptics position all the time.

British journalists now need to take the same principled stance when it comes to structural racism. While it is impossible to ignore the most recent report, journalists should recognise that since the Macpherson report over twenty years ago the idea of structural and institutional racism is an acknowledged fact by the vast majority of social scientists who study this subject. And therefore journalists should continue to report on structural racism and take a position on it.

Journalism and due impartiality is not about being “neutral” or "balanced". It is about reporting factually and objectively on the world around us.

We need to stand up and be counted.