by Arvind Hickman
Racism can be found in every industry and the media is no different. How journalists report news matters because distorted coverage reinforces stereotypes, compounding the problem and creating new prejudices among the general public.
You’ll learn:
• News coverage can easily be distorted
• Why BAME representation in leadership positions is crucial
• How racial diversity improves the reader experience
Early in my career, a murder case illustrated how a lack of racial diversity can influence the way news is presented and reinforce stigmas about different cultures. This problem still persists today in the media, and society is the loser.
I cut my teeth as a young crime reporter in Sydney’s South West for a community paper called the Liverpool Leader.
This part of Australia’s largest city was rich in culture due to waves of immigration, often after wars, including a large and vibrant Vietnamese community. It was a microcosm of multicultural Australia, but often only a place the mainstream media covered for all the wrong reasons.
One day I rocked up to work and our photographer had heard on the scanner that a young man was fatally stabbed at a nearby mall. We arrived at the crime scene before the police and started digging around for clues to piece together what had happened. I managed to find out where the victim’s family lived and – as was expected of journalists in those days – made my way to their house for the dreaded death knock.
I gathered very little information of use from shocked and grieving relatives, but gleaned enough to learn the attack appeared unprovoked and unexpected. I went back and filed what I had, keeping to the facts and staying respectful to a grieving family.
The next day, the tabloids raged with hyperbole and headlines about Asian gang violence being “out of control”, even though there was no clear evidence of this.
I later learnt the young man was a victim of circumstance; wrong place at the wrong time. The mainstream media at the time ran with the Asian gang narrative, fuelling stigmas about Vietnamese communities – even though the victim was of Korean descent.
Fast forward to 2020 in the UK, where I have spent most of my career, and there are still examples where a lack of diversity not only reinforces stereotypes, but also leads to blind spots in coverage.
Quotas vs influence
In the UK, experts warn that there is a lack of diversity in influential parts of the news and programming food chain.
The BBC – one of the better performing media companies on ethnic diversity – has a target that 15% of its workforce should be black or ethnic minority (BAME), which is marginally higher than the population. The latest data I could find shows it is at about 13% (see chart).
On the surface, one could argue the BBC is representative of the UK population, but scratch beneath the raw data and a different picture emerges.
The majority of the BBC operates from offices in London and Manchester, cities whose workforces are 40.6% and 35% BAME, respectively.
According to the latest Ofcom data, BAME representation at senior levels within the five major TV organisations is just 9% and the proportion of minority ethnic talent working in creative and content production – a crucial area when it comes to shaping on-screen output – has fallen from 9% to 8%.
In fact, BAME characters are overrepresented on-screen, including 36.7% in children’s programming and 25.9% in drama but underrepresented off-screen, making up about 8% of those working in important genres such as drama and factual.
Marcus Ryder, the acting chair of the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity and a former journalist at the BBC, said the problem is that not enough BAME talent is being placed in roles of influence to change a prevailing white British culture.
“I was working in news and current affairs and the programme which clearly shapes the culture is Panorama,” he said. “It’s one thing if you had 15% across the board in all kinds of programmes – which they don’t, by the way – but what you need if you really want to change that culture, is to look at key programmes like Panorama or Newsnight and make sure you have critical mass that might be more than 15%.”
Ryder said that having one or two BAME employees in a team of influence won’t change anything because they become isolated as a minority voice.
Poor diversity = poorer coverage
The outcome of this lack of diversity is a poorer understanding of stories and societal issues. Ryder said there are several examples that come to mind.
British TV networks often station their most experienced reporters abroad and in the US correspondents are predominantly white.
Ryder said this has led to a blind spot in their US coverage, particularly during the Obama years and about issues pertaining to race, which has come to the fore again because of police brutality and the death of George Floyd.
“American politics has been a racial story for the last 400 years, but we don’t think of it as a racial story,” Ryder said. “We still think of American politics as a ‘mainstream story’, which means a non-black story.”
Closer to home, Ryder believes the media missed another major story: how poor fire safety standards in social housing had led to a ticking time bomb. The media had not reported on flammable cladding until “the Grenfell Towers were burning down”.
“We will miss the next Windrush story if we don’t have Black and Asian people in positions of editor responsibility,” he said. “Also, let’s not forget the ageing population and how we will support the Asian and Black population who are now going into retirement homes. It’s a massive story because they have different cultural needs and different amounts of wealth which they can rely upon in retirement.
“But that’s not being covered because when we do cover our ageing population, the people that we take as the norm are invariably white.”
The trade press
This past couple of months has not only shone a light on racial inequality in society, it has led to soul searching across many parts of the media and the industries they cover.
I’ve personally reflected on my own publication, PRWeek, and whether our coverage is doing a good enough job to represent racially diverse talent and views.
The short answer is ‘no’, but it’s not from a position of ignorance or apathy. The truth is, when covering an industry that is 91% Caucasian – with a far smaller proportion in leadership roles – it can be difficult to find racially diverse views at short notice when the majority of your contacts are white.
But just because it is difficult does not mean it is not worthwhile. In truth, it has not always been at the top of our minds to look for racially diverse views as much as it has been for gender. In journalism you are trained to seek out the most relevant views, and in the trade press there is usually an emphasis on industry leaders.
This had to change, and we have taken important steps to address this, including creating a directory of BAME PR contacts across different categories and roles.
We now always consider BAME voices in our articles where multiple sources are sought, and at our events. This behavioural change is a starting point, but has already benefited our coverage by providing a diverse range of voices and perspectives.
From earlier in my career to today, I have not only seen how a lack of racial diversity can distort and weaken coverage – I’ve also seen how improving it provides a more valuable reader experience.
Arvind Hickman is the news editor of PRWeek and has worked as a journalist and editor for 20 years. He has covered news, sport and business in his native Australia and the UK. Over the past six years, Arvind has worked in senior editorial roles at industry-leading titles in advertising, media and communications.
Twitter: @ArvindHickman
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/arvind-hickman-b5a6a517/