What colour is the news?
Minority Journalists hold key to media's role in multi-cultural Britain

Issues of race go straight to the heart of the UK media. Britain's newsrooms -- in print, radio, television and on the Internet -- lag far behind in recruitment of black staff at every level. Yet, racial disadvantage in hiring and promotion is patently obvious in newsrooms and the journalism schools that feed the industry. This "blind-to-blacks" syndrome threatens to undermine claims of objectivity in the nation's press corps. Bold new action plans piloted in the USA can help media leaders meet the challenges of diversity and democracy.

Race facts and fiction
Ask any newspaper or TV editor about "race" and you'll get the standard reply: "Colour doesn't matter in journalism newsrooms; we hire on the basis of merit." But the weight of research and anecdotal information proves the contrary.

Black and Asian faces are rare among Britain's "news breed", the journalists who gather and process the nation's news. Twelve to 20 black journalists were employed during the mid-1990s in national newspapers, out of a workforce of 3000, says Dr. Beulah Ainley, author of Black Journalists, White Media, the only academic study of the topic. Probably only 1.8 per cent of the members of the National Association of Journalists union, are non-white, according to the NUJ Journalist magazine December 1998. Black, Asian, and Arab journalists comprised 2 per cent in the first industry-wide study by veteran journalist Anthony Delano and John Henningham for the London College of Printing in 1995. This figure was considered "disproportionately low" compared to the national minority population of 5.26 per cent. Alex Pascall, chairman of the National Union of Journalists Black Members Council, estimates there were fewer than 260 black men and women in the 27,000 member union during a similar period.

Caption: Dr. Beulah Ainley

Provincial newspapers are reported to have a particularly dismal track record, says Dr. Ainley. Only fifteen out of 8,000 journalists working in local or provincial papers are black, she says. In the West Midlands, where thousands of black immigrants have settled since the 1960s, most papers do not have a single black journalist.

"Race" in the media is linked to violence, danger and crime
Once inside the hallowed newsrooms, job mobility is limited. Racial prejudice impedes minority progress, say black journalists interviewed by Delano and Henningham. The bleak career prospects are confirmed by the Commission for Racial Equality, the race relations watchdog agency. The CRE observes that few mainstream British newspapers "have Black or Asian editors and very few have Black and Asian journalists". Wall of silence

News editors will find it hard to refute these findings. A 1998 study of sixty newspapers exposed a wall of silence, according to a diversity research project by The Chronicle Internet magazine and The Freedom Forum European Centre.. The majority chose not to respond or reveal figures on black and ethnic minority representation among their journalists. Of 10 replies from national and provincial newspapers, two expressed regrets for being too busy to reply. Two said they do not keep records of staff by ethnicity. One felt the issues raised by a request for information "are too complex for numbers", and another stated tersely "we choose on the basis of merit only".

It could be said that "colour-blindness" accounts for this reluctance to respond. Editors and managers may genuinely believe in hiring the person most suitable for the job, without regard to colour. However, this notion has been challenged since the 1970s by campaigning black groups such as the Black Media Workers Association led by Dianne Abbott, now Labour MP, the NUJ-backed Race Relations Working Party and the Black Journalists' Association. In the light of this vigorous rebuttal, notions of "suitability" are at best highly subjective measures often used by editors to deny blacks entry or promotion.

In the strongest language so far from a working journalist, Kamal Ahmed, media editor of The Guardian, has spoken out against "casual racism" in today's journalism. He has "condemned the lack of opportunities for black journalists on national and regional newspapers" in a speech reported in the Press Gazette 30 October 1998.

No practical steps
When challenged with this evidence of all-white newsrooms editors do nothing practical to change the situation, says Dr. Ainley. They avoid consultation with relevant agencies such as the NUJ-Black Members Council and the Commission for Racial Equality. Most have failed to respond on three occasions to our enquiries, says Chris Myant, head of the CRE press office.

In a classic textbook example of "blaming the victim", editors often reproach black people for being unqualified or not coming forward with applications. However, focus groups of black journalists organised by the Chronicle-Forum diversity project reject these allegations. One free lance journalist, who declined to be named for fear of affecting her slim job prospects, stated, with some bitterness: "I have a relevant academic background and have made dozens of applications for training and jobs, but was never accepted".

The fact of the matter is that editor's ignore the "hundreds of well-educated black people looking for such opportunities", says Ainley. A survey of black journalists carried out at the London School of Economics found that "Not only did black people apply for journalism training and jobs but they did so for months and sometimes years", says the NUJ Journalist, December 1998. Furthermore, as Ainley explains in her book Black Journalists, White Media, "while the education system is still failing many black people, those applying for journalism courses and jobs are well-qualified, with 85 per cent having at least one degree, compared with 70 per cent of others".

Clearly, blacks have a harder row to hoe than whites. A survey reported in the Journalist found that "80 per cent of black journalists had a degree, compared with 60 per cent of other journalists. Yet, less than 2 per cent were accepted on mainstream courses and jobs."

From these observations, the print industry has one glaring characteristic. It is virtually untouched by the sea change of Government policies to combat racism. So far media leaders seem exempt from urgent demands for black recruits levelled at the police, social services, teaching and the courts. In the words of the Journalist, The media have for months been reporting the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and the under-representation of black people in the police. They fail to report that they employ even fewer black people than the police."

Race and Television newsrooms
Television newsrooms have changed from the colour-bar era of the 1960s, in sharp contrast to newspapers. Now, the British Broadcasting Corporation and some independent television companies claim adherence to equality principles. Black personalities, such as the journalists and television presenters Trevor McDonald and Trevor Phillips, are in the top ranks, along with some Black and Asian editors, producers and technicians.

The BBC has the firmest commitment to hiring greater numbers of minorities. Targeting them has been practiced for a decade. Now, matching job recruitment to the proportion of minorities in the population is a major goal. By the year 2000 the BBC wants to recruit an estimated 8 per cent of its staff from black and minority ethnic people.

John Birt, BBC director general, says equality of opportunity has a key place in the corporation's role as a public service broadcaster. Under his leadership the BBC aims to be more representative of contemporary British society in its programmes and jobs. Highly placed executives have monitored minority recruitment.in employment, purchasing, marketing and community involvement. . "We need to be more successful in getting ethnic minority staff to move up the organisation into senior decision-making roles", says Mr. Birt. This is a tall order for the broadcasting industry's biggest employer and the largest news corps in the world - with more than 2000 journalists and bureaux in fifty countries

But this avowed commitment to greater diversity is betrayed by the facts. Close reading of the BBC latest annual reports, shows the BBC is actually employing fewer ethnic minorities in the majority of its directorates and regions covered. Clearly, there is evidence of diversity fatigue in the upper echelons of the BBC. Managers are failing to keep up the momentum of their commitments to race equality practices. These are alarming findings, says Jim Pines, author of the UK contribution to a major trans-European study of media employment titled More Colour in the Media.

Caption : Jim Pines

Minority employment is derisory in the newsrooms of the non-BBC commercial companies licenced by the Independent Television Commission, says Pines, and in some cases numbers are declining. The companies, with their £1.7 billion worth of advertisements and network of stations, have less than 1 per cent minority employees. Three-quarters of the ITV network had fewer than 10 ethnic minority workers in programme departments, including four with none at all. Stage Screen & Radio, the broadcasting trade union journal, called the findings "a national disgrace".

Prominent Black British media personalities have become far more outspoken in response to this litany of faults. Trevor McDonald, when asked to about the absence of blacks in the media by Kamal Ahmed of the Guardian, replied "Historically there has always been an imbalance. But in the past there was not the number of people knocking at the door as there is now. This is the period of the crucial test".

What broadcasting needs is a "reality check", says Trevor Phillips who started out working for John Birt on London Weekend television in the early 1980s. The ills of the television industry need to address by the BBC and independent companies, he said in his 1998 lecture to the Royal Television Society titled Are There Colour Bars in a Digital Universe?

Racial disadvantage in broadcasting newsrooms is now a worrying trend. Burhan Wazir, writing in The Guardian, warns that "Britain's leading broadcasters are increasingly failing to employ staff from ethnic minority backgrounds". This British malaise in broadcasting has brought comments from continental observers. Jamil Ouaj, co-ordinator of the More Colour in the Media project for the European Institute for the Media based in Dusseldorf, concludes that "If the subject of fair treatment of ethnic minorities in the media is to be taken seriously...it is also necessary to create serious structures which will ensure the monitoring and support of equal opportunities". Trans-Atlantic contrasts

Trans-Atlantic contrasts
British and European newsrooms must seem like dinosaurs to their colleagues across the Atlantic. In America, all-white newsrooms are no longer acceptable, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The breakthrough for minority journalists came at least 35 years ago.

Spiraling 1960s urban riots shocked the US news media out of its complacency. So did the 1968 Kerner commission report calling for more black participation in the media and wider coverage. This was at a time when 80 per cent of the US dailies employed no journalists of colour, and fewer than 1 per cent of the nation's journalists were African-American. The commission criticised the "shockingly backward" discriminatory hiring and promotion practices of the journalism industry. It also condemned the media for "failing to portray the Negro as a matter of routine and in the context of the total society".

The US newspapers finally faced up to change, says the Media Studies Journal at Columbia University, when the ASNE urged their members to set goals for minority employment that matched minority representation in the US population by the year 2000.

Now is the time to anticipate opportunities and change
Britain need not go through the same traumas as riot-prone America. But few UK media leaders and power holders can be sanguine. Reports increase of mounting pessimism among black youth at deteriorating race relations, heavy-handed police surveillance, and declining job opportunities. Clearly, British newsrooms can no longer be run as private and racially exclusive clubs. And there are several reasons why this is so.

Five decades after large-scale African Caribbean and Asian immigrant settlement, editors and advertisers must take into account a new set of demographic and marketing factors. The media public is growing more diverse in interests and demands. This is especially true where Blacks and Asians make up significant parts of the media readership and consumer population. Today, one in five Londoners are from an ethnic minority. In 25 years it will probably be one in three, according to demographers.

Political changes will soon have dramatic effects in cities where the large majority of racial minorities live. The forthcoming elections for new US-style mayor's in British cities is a turning point in recent urban history. More aggressive street-level politics and new political hierarchies will result. Future newsgathering will take place in keenly fought, ethnically mixed constituencies. Reporters will need new social and civic bearings to cover city life and trends.

Under these dynamic conditions, old certainties will crumble. The colour line that allows a mere 12 to 20 black journalists on national newspapers, out of a workforce of 3000, can no longer hold. In a nation of some six per cent minority population, editors will need to expand and deepen the pool of journalistic talent to cope with reporting change.

News gathering organisations will have to improve their race equality employment practices. Managers will need a new set of human resource development tools to diagnose and analyse areas for action. The main media trade associations --the Newspaper Publishers Association, Society of Newspaper Editors, and the Guild of Editors - should be encouraged to sanction delinquent newspapers. Media regulatory bodies could invoke similar actions to spur positive action in the industry.

Change must also come in the journalism schools that feed graduates into the industry's newsrooms. Data from national education agencies, the Universities and Colleges Admission Service (UCAS) and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), confirm that minority students are under-represented in first degree and postgraduate journalism courses. They are less likely than white candidates to gain admission to courses.

Requests to the schools by the Chronicle-Freedom Forum diversity researcher were met with stony silence. Not one of the top six schools and smaller training programmes replied to enquiries about minority enrolment. Further, none show any evidence of equal opportunity policies in their course literature and Internet web sites. Not one has published equality action plans and targets. Unless significantly more Black Britons are encouraged into the educational and career pipeline an even larger under-representation will be apparent in coming years.

In these circumstances, where both the news industry and journalism schools show a "race-deficit" something needs to be done to ensure that aspiring black and minority ethnic journalists get into the profession and make their contributions.

The Chips Quinn initiative
Over in America a decade-old internship program to bring diversity to newsrooms has shown remarkable results. The John Chips Quinn scholars program of The Freedom Forum has successfully recruited "students of colour" at journalism schools for professional journalism careers. They gain intensive training in the craft of news coverage at annual summer programmes named for the managing editor of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal who died in 1990.

Commitment to news staff diversity and countering diversity fatigue are the twin forces driving the Chips Quinn initiative. Participants are drawn from African American, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American backgrounds. Their diversity insights, along with newly acquired reporting, editing and computer skills, make them eminently employable. They are supported with bursaries, newspaper internships, and receive a $1000 scholarship for successful completion. Starting with six scholars in 1991, there are 250 alumni to date. In addition, a newly introduced programme attracts journalism students during the academic year. They take a semester off from their regular studies to undergo the kind of training, mentoring, and work placements that can open doors to newsrooms nation wide.

Beneath the philanthropic and social objectives is a firm goal that minority students understand only to well. "Chips had the benefit of professional and family contacts that led him through career opportunities", says his father John C. Quinn. "But he could not find a similar network of minority talent as he strove to diversify his staff. This program seeks to fulfil that goal."

Felix Gutierrez, who is responsible for the programme, added his voice to these founding principles at the Quinn scholars class meeting of 1997. "We recognise that the business-as-usual attitude will not suffice...We do need to make affirmative efforts for the media to be racially inclusive to represent all cultures."

Piloting diversity in UK journalism
Positive action for greater newsroom and classroom diversity, like the Chips Quinn idea, deserves a trial in Britain. It could provide a means to help British Blacks to gain professional journalism training, develop their self-esteem after decades of exclusion, and qualify them. "Moves to increase the number of black journalists through special training grants and other means need to be supported," says journalism lecturer at City University Richard Keeble in his book The Newspapers Handbook.

We know that old patterns of journalistic exclusion won't work - practically or ethically. Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist, puts it clearly in his book On Television and Journalism. There is little room in tomorrow's world for journalists afflicted by "mental closure" and "narcissistic complacency".

Moreover, the narrow range of talents and experiences from which journalists are presently drawn makes them vulnerable to errors in reporting practice and editorial judgement. All-white newsrooms and journalism schools restrict creative responses to news coverage in multi-cultural societies. Overall, the effect of under-representation of minorities in the media workforce and media content is dangerous to the development of society and democracy.

Showing that diversity can work is the answer to the jeremiahs. Diversity offers the media industry an opportunity to expand its audience and meet new consumer needs. Diversity need not be viewed as a "problem"; it is an opportunity to practice good journalism. Diversity improves the product - the news - and by so doing helps improve democracy.

Of course, vigorous leadership by media owners and controllers is necessary to achieve diversity goals. To paraphrase US General Colin Powell's message to Britain's armed forces, news organisations must commit themselves to minority hiring. Responsibility for doing this lies squarely on the shoulders of senior members of the media industry - in print, radio, television and online. The prototypes for success are at hand. In the vanguard are special training programmes and targeted minority recruitment, promotion and retention strategies. Leaders should require no less than zero tolerance of discrimination, and close monitoring of the performance and attitudes of senior managers.