(Image source: www.sfgate.com)
Reposted from The Guardian
Media folk tend to be, if not leftish then certainly liberal – with a small "L". Thinking of themselves and their industry as modern, forward-looking and in the best sense progressive, and naturally absolutely committed to equal opportunities. But in the midst of so many things going so swimmingly well – the position of women in broadcasting, for example, is arguably improving and even disability post-Paralympics has a higher profile than ever before – something else has gone very wrong indeed. Whereas in 2003 Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people amounted to 7.6% of the creative industry workforce they now account for just 5.4% – a drop of a third over a decade during which their proportion of the population at large has grown significantly. In short, the position of BAME Britons in broadcasting and the creative industries is now significantly worse than it was ten years ago. So much so that a visitor from Mars – or even Brixton – might well be wondering if what was going on amounted to direct and deliberate racial discrimination.
This must count as one of broadcasting's biggest moves backwards, with plenty of potentially contributory factors.
ITV's London licensees – LWT and Thames (the latter replaced by Carlton in 1993) – used to see a clear commercial purpose in representing the capital's diversity – on air and off. It is probably no surprise that all three companies – and especially LWT – provided starting points for non-white production and executive talent who then moved off around the rest of the industry.
But that was then. Now ITV plc is a single corporate entity that has subsumed the old regional companies across England and Wales, with an overall national perspective. It still has London licences but, local news aside, not the same London community focus. Given that London is where a high proportion of BAME Britons live this must have impacted on the industry employment picture.
Increased commitments at the BBC and Channel 4 to out of London production must also have had an effect. As the programme-making business shifts from areas of higher BAME population density to places where it is lower, Britain is being better represented in one sense but not in another.
Then there is the major shift in the centre of creative gravity from in-house BBC and ITV output to independent producers who now probably account for a majority of UK TV production. Big broadcasters can implement schemes to promote opportunities for excluded groups (which they all do), but they no longer do most of the work or employ most of the people.
The independent production sector consists of a few "super indies" and many smaller companies on shoestring budgets – in both cases run by people who are mainly white. Internships and informal work experience positions probably go to the kind of people they already know – mostly not BAME. Meanwhile the ranks of broadcasting commissioners and executives also remain overwhelmingly white, which shapes decisions about programmes (just ask the non-white talent which appears to find greater opportunities and a warmer welcome in the US than here).
All these factors probably help explain how for much of the last decade corporate eyes were taken off the ball as regards ethnic diversity. This is in contrast to the attention paid to issues around women in broadcasting. The problem of inadequate gender diversity is just as real and there is still a way to go but also signs of improvement, with formal and informal mentoring, support groups, powerful and influential women executives leading the way and plenty of talented and successful individuals coming up the ranks.
In fairness the BBC can boast a range of initiatives aimed at alleviating this ethnic diversity deficit, and its figures already show that people from minorities constitute 12% of its workforce. However, given that the BBC is the biggest single player by far, if it is at 12% but the creative industries overall are down at 5.4%, levels of employment elsewhere must in some cases be much lower.
Nevertheless the years of relative neglect mean fixing the ethnic diversity problem, even at the BBC, will take time. Meanwhile talent is finding expression elsewhere and broadcasting runs the risk of becoming ever more estranged from sections of Britain's population.
Urgent action is needed to reconnect the increasingly fragmented bits of our creative industries – and broadcasting in particular. Output and employment need to be coherently and consistently monitored and reported on and there need to be consequences for failure to hit agreed targets. Only then might there be a chance of counteracting the consequences of what looks increasingly like a decade-long, industry-wide sin of omission.
