There is still a lack of opportunity in the media for young ethnic minority talent. When will the industry enter the 21st century?
In a BBC radio interview broadcast yesterday, Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer denied there was any colour bar preventing black and Asian broadcasters becoming regular presenters on his station.
While his intentions are honest, the reality is that out of 104
regular presenters listed on Radio 4's website just two are Asian, and none are from African or Caribbean backgrounds.
In contrast to the station's reputation as the voice of comfortable Middle England, the latest Rajar figures show that in a typical week one in eight Radio 4 listeners were of a visible ethnic minority compared to a total population of over one in ten.
Damazer did not do himself any favours by rhetorically asking which of his current presenters he should take off air to bring in ethnic minorities, and that his primary concern is "excellence". This completely misses the point. As licence-fee payers, diverse communities are not being served by Radio 4, while the subtext of Damazer's comments tells black and Asian journalists that they are not good enough.
Why does this matter? Well for one, there is simply no reason why ethnic minorities should be directed towards music or more "popular" discussion shows as opposed to high-brow output.
Although Five Live has a good diversity of presenters, there are people in every community with an appetite for more intellectual speech-based programming, which is Radio 4's remit.
Damazer was responding to a story on
Operation Black Vote's blog, which criticised Radio 4's lack of diversity. Yet this is a problem right across broadcasting and print, as
Media Guardian explores today.
Mainstream newspapers in particular are lagging behind many other industries, such as the City, which realise that in a global economy, failure to reflect society is simply bad for business.
In 2003, equalities chief Trevor Phillips challenged business leaders to
thaw their "snowy peaks", referring to the concentration of ethnic minorities at lower grades. Much of the media have snowy lowlands as well. How many Westminster lobby correspondents are from visible minorities in the whole of Fleet Street? Last time I checked there were none, yet politics matters every bit as much to those communities.
The Guardian's
Media Monkey column recently reminded us how Michael Grade's career began, when his father told him "get a pencil and paper … go to see Hugh Cudlipp, he's the boss of the Daily Mirror. He'll interview you and give you a job as a sports writer."
Sadly not much has changed since then. Entry into the profession relies heavily on "old boys networks". There are ethnic minorities, for sure, but all too often they are casuals and freelancers, not fully-fledged staff correspondents.
Things are changing, but far too slowly, even though the use of picture bylines for writers of colour gives the impression that newsrooms are more diverse than they actually are.
And while some people,
like Ludovic Kennedy, already think there are far too many black and brown faces on TV, he and others may be getting a more colourful picture than is the case,
as Lenny Henry has acknowledged.
There is certainly no shortage of ethnic minorities achieving media degrees, yet too many fail to get into local newspapers, the first rung of the ladder. And regional dailies, so often the springboard to "Fleet Street", also remain stubbornly un-diverse.
Yet there are still many black and Asian journalists approaching newspapers, belying the claim of editors that they would love to hire more ethnic minorities if only they could find them.
Editors are generally less aware of the talent banging on the door because black and Asian budding reporters are more likely to use normal approaches – sending CVs and calling section heads – whereas the more privileged come in via the "who you know" route, including dinner party connections.
And even when journalists do get through the door, their career trajectory is often unclear; promotion all too often based on preferment, not purely on ability.
The recent
social mobility report, led by Alan Milburn, found that the biggest decline in social mobility occurred in journalism and accountancy.
Journalists were more likely than politicians to have gone to independent schools. The report added that "the typical journalist or accountant of the future will today be growing up in a family that is better off than three in four of all families in the UK."
It is hardly surprising, then, the hiring practices of editors turns into an exercise in self-replication. Yet Britain's demographics are changing, and the media needs to keep pace with the 21st century.
Which brings me back to Radio 4's controller Damazer. He is right not to compromise on excellence. However, if there is an assumption that such excellence cannot be found among black and Asian journalists, that is utterly wrong. There are many quality broadcasters like Kwame Kwei Armah, Dr Robert Beckford and Henry Bonsu, whose intellectual approach dovetails perfectly with Radio 4.
Since OBV published our story, the BBC circulated an impressive-looking list of 32 black and Asian contributors, including the three I mention above.
Yet the fact remains that they are occasional contributors, presenting one-off programmes or, if they're lucky, a four-part series, often on subjects that could be described as "ethnic interest", from dog-baiting in the Asian community to anniversaries of urban disturbances.
There is a tokenism at play that relegates them to the second tier, while the regular presenters have all the benefits that come with a regular contract – higher income, more security – this club remains largely all-white and upper middle class; a non-entry zone to poor whites or ethnic minorities of any class.
And the proportion of non-white senior managers at the BBC has actually fallen to just 4.3% since the former BBC director-general Greg Dyke famously
described the organisation as "hideously white" in 2001.
I am a firm believer in press freedom, but the self-regulatory nature of the media has led to foot-dragging on diversity and equality. There is a need for more programmes that give opportunities to young ethnic minority talent, and many others from all social backgrounds.
And while
BECTU's Move On Up, which puts wannabe broadcasters face-to-face with senior industry figures, is a useful scheme that should be extended to the world of print and online journalism, there is a desperate need for an ongoing two-way conversation between decision-makers and black and Asian people in the media.
Because ultimately it is only this dialogue that will start to unpick the regressive assumptions and attitudes about what African, Caribbean and Asian audiences want, and allow us to finally move sections of the media out of the age of Empire, and into the age of hope and genuine equal opportunity.
