Given the BBC’s national reach, and the fact that most of us pay the licence fee, the corporation has a duty to reflect its audience. A variety of training schemes and targets have been implemented over the years to improve representation in terms of gender, ethnicity and ability among BBC employees and within programming – most recently the corporation’s ‘ambitious new diversity and inclusion strategy’30 for 2020. As part of this, the BBC’s Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Succession underlined the challenge of representation, stating:
The BBC belongs to everyone in the UK, whatever their background, so everyone at the BBC has a responsibility to ensure that we represent, and are representative of, the public we serve.
Attempts to improve diversity in a workforce like the BBC’s, however, rarely focus on how socio-economic background can influence success. If the BBC is truly committed to representing the British public, it should recognise class as a fundamental dimension of disadvantage that intersects with several others.
The BBC’s strategy for 2020 promises to “focus on social inclusion by gathering socioeconomic information from all new employees.” The educational background of BBC staff began to be systematically recorded in 2007. However, when confronted with FOI requests 31 for this information, the corporation responded that to compile the data in a usable format would require too much time and money. The BBC is geared to employ staff from a range of backgrounds, which should in theory have lessened the formerly nepotistic reliance of ‘Auntie Beeb’ on a recruitment pool of the privately educated. But until information on class is publicly available, it remains difficult to tell what impact such initiatives have had on the BBC’s socio-economic makeup. A small but useful part of the picture was provided in a 2014 report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission,32 which found that a third of BBC executives had attended Oxford or Cambridge, compared to one per cent of the public as a whole. Similarly damning is the fact that 88 per cent of the public went to a comprehensive, but just 37 per cent of BBC executives did, while 26 percent attended independent schools and a quarter went to grammar schools.
Of course, it’s not just the BBC. Research by the NUJ in 2011 found that across journalism as a whole, 33 fewer than ten percent of those entering the profession come from a working-class background, and just three per cent from homes headed by semi-skilled or unskilled workers. Although working for the BBC in one of its regions can offer a more secure route to a national position, the internships and informal research contracts often offered as a first job are largely London-based as well as low-paid and insecure. So aspiring journalists without existing family or industry connections, and those who are financially unable to survive the early unpaid or freelance stages of a media career, find themselves at a disadvantage.
These material difficulties help to explain why leading figures in journalism are so heavily drawn from private schools and Oxbridge, but there are also cultural factors at play. As Simon Albury has noted 34 in respect of the BBC’s Cultural Diversity Network Action Plan, positive initiatives over the past fifteen years, though commendable, have not been enough to implement lasting and visible change. The BBC’s Head of Religion and Ethics, Aaqil Ahmed, having worked his way to senior level with no industry or family connections, found it harder to progress once there:
There is a lack of diversity of socio-economic classes the higher up the food chain you get but I think the correct educational background from certain educational establishments can open up opportunities for advancement. [Although today the BBC] would be easier to enter as there are so many entry level and diversity schemes, [my] concern is what happens when you are in. I think without the right educational credentials to fit in your career would stall at a certain level.
Ahmed’s experience echoes recent criticism of the BBC’s race representation strategy for focusing on filling quotas rather than more deeply altering a still relatively ‘monocultural’ corporation. A narrow range of backgrounds at the top not only produces a narrow range of experiences but also tends to perpetuate itself, as those already in positions of influence recruit in their own image, thereby entrenching the over-representation of an elite in executive roles. In 2014, a training event for senior BBC staff acknowledged this ‘unconscious bias’ in terms of gender and ethnicity but made no mention of how it might extend to matters of class. Former BBC executive Pat Younge, in an article exploring the BBC’s problems with audience retention, makes the point 35 that BAME audiences in London tend to be “disproportionately young and disproportionately poor” and that “coming up with a real plan addressing the BAME issue may also help the BBC address the class and age issues.” The same intertwined issues are present in terms of recruitment, where improving class representation should also help improve the representation of other disadvantaged groups.
A recent study of British journalism 36, which refreshingly attempted to measure socioeconomic diversity (via education level) alongside gender, race and religion, made clear the sometimes contradictory ways in which these categories interact. The “academisation” of journalism – almost all journalists with three years of experience have a university degree, while over a third have a Masters – seems to be having positive effects on gender representation, as women continue to outnumber men on university degree courses. But it can have less desirable consequences for socio-economic diversity, as those from disadvantaged backgrounds are three and a half times less likely to enter university. The increasing financial cost of university education in the UK is likely to exacerbate this divide for future generations of British journalists.
This situation both reflects and reinforces a wider crisis of class representation across contemporary politics, media, culture and the arts. While the BBC has reported on the manifestation of ‘elitist Britain’ within other institutions, it could also consider how its own structural disparities are reflected in its creative output. The BBC is the country’s most significant commissioner of new content, and a restricted array of class backgrounds among its commissioning and producing layers means that its programming often fails to recognise, understand or represent the wide variety of class experience in Britain. Aside from retro confections like the recently revived Upstairs Downstairs, the BBC’s portrayal of the working class is largely confined to sensationalised splashes like Britain on the Fiddle, despite criticism of this kind of reality TV as unrealistic and unrepresentative ‘poverty porn’. Within reporting, Sarah O’Connell describes in this book how few BBC news journalists “see enough of life at the ‘bottom’ of society to report on it properly or accurately” and explores the negative impact this has on stories relating to working-class lives and experiences.
Addressing the current state of affairs will involve cultural and material change both within and beyond the BBC. When questioned, a BBC spokesperson reiterated that: “We believe it’s important that we represent a range of backgrounds and perspectives both on screen and off air”. The BBC’s welcome effort to improve its representation in terms of gender, race, sexuality and ability has gained it a place in the top ten public sector organisations for inclusion and diversity. Giving similar attention to class representation would involve accounting for the influence of socio-economic factors on an individual’s chances of employment and career progression, and actively recruiting and supporting applicants from working-class backgrounds. Practical work is required to address the obstacles of low pay, precarity and insecurity at the early stages of a media or arts career, and the dominance of unpaid internships and the informal ‘old boys’ network’ as a way into BBC employment.
Will the BBC’s diversity targets for 2020 help to overcome its class-related blind spot? Its plan to partner with jobcentres to ensure that “25 per cent of all our work experience applicants will be sourced from the job-seeking pool” may be helpful in lessening the nepotism, and hence socio-economic restriction, which has previously characterised the BBC’s employment practices. But one hopes that the corporation will concentrate on providing long-term paid jobs, not just the kind of unpaid and insecure work experience that usually requires applicants to have family wealth or a base in London. Targeted internships and diversity schemes will also do little if they only provide entry to a culture that remains inhospitable or impenetrable at the executive or commissioning level. On this issue, the BBC’s commitment to recruitment and selection practices that focus on merit rather than background, including the extension of anonymised applications for core roles, is welcome if long overdue.
Recent research suggests that Britain’s creative sector is increasingly becoming ‘the preserve of the rich.’ 37 Today, the BBC exacerbates the problem. It could instead become part of the solution.
Rhian E. Jones works in London and writes on history, politics, and popular culture. She is the author of Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender and Petticoat Heroes:
Gender, Culture and Popular Protest. Her blog is Velvet Coalmine (https://rhianejones.com/).
This article is taken from:
Public Media in the 21st Century
Edited by Niki Seth-Smith, Jamie Mackay and Dan Hind
