How do Blacks, Asians & Ethnics find jobs in UK Broadcast industry

Despite a digital broadcast revolution Blacks, Asians and Ethnic minorities (BMEs) still struggle to find a job in UK broadcast journalism.

David Dunkley Gyimah reports from ITN’s hosting of the Cultural Diversity Network – designed to solve the problem.

A shorter version of this article is published at Journalism.co.uk

It is the British broadcasting industry's hypertrophic scar, visible only if you truly want to see it: How Do You Solve A Problem with BMEs finding jobs?

When a phrase morphs into a three letter acronym you know it has political status, yet decades on since this "Solve A Problem" first needed attention, ten if you count the CDN's (Cultural Diversity Network) existence, Black Minority Ethnics still have reason to feel hard done by.

One by one in the basement of ITN they strafed the floor with questions to four panellists from the BBC, ITN, SKY and Channel 4. If the mark of a good journalist is to be dogged, readily posing open difficult questions, the panellists had their fill of journalists to choose from.

Each delegate could have held court for longer burnishing personal testimonies and follow-ups questions such as "Can you tell me what you do on a daily basis?” had the chair Sir Trevor McDonald not chivvied proceedings along.

The reflexive accounts from senior black and Asians in the industry: Chuck Nwosu, assistant editor, BBC News; Vivek Sharma, programmes editor, Sky News and Samira Ahmed, presenter, Channel 4 News, via a short film set the evening’s agenda.

Black and Asian figures
This was followed by ITN's managing Editor, Robin Elias providing snap shot figures of industry employment in England:

* In England the population percentage of BMEs is 12.8%

* In London this is 29%

* In London BME editorial staff accounted for 10% of the workforce

* On Screen staff made up 14%

* Off screen staff and editorial managers (decision makers) came in at 8%

Elias acknowledged there was work to be done.

In the 80s broadcasting countenanced a triple whammy, but judging from the shards of glass on the floor and editorial meetings looking less like an OBN Club, women groups have reaped a much better hard fought campaign than minorities and disability groups.

In the 90s before the era of the CDN and feeling the need to do something colleagues and I formed a collective, which with the assistance of the Freedom Forum staged events well attended by broadcasters.

We posed the same questions. Today, a new more savvy generation within the milieu of digital broadcasting wants answers.

Two hours is hardly adequate to resolve deep issues, and while “Gis-a job”, seems more than straightforward, a more inclusive transparent strategy between both groups should be under scored.

But a forum of this kind is necessary. It gives the panellist a realistic sense of the depth of feeling.

Channel 4’s head of news and current affairs Dorothy Byrne and Sky’s Executive Producer Kate McAndrew intimated fresh strategies.

For delegates it puts flesh on this abstractism, "the media", and the pushy ones will no doubt have done their career prospects no harm getting in the face of the likes of Tim Singleton, head of foreign news from ITN and Craig Oliver deputy head of BBC Multimedia from the BBC - an opportunity to be cherry-picked.

This last point is a favoured long-standing modus operandi. Channel 4 presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy mentioned how he’d been guided by a senior exec. I have Tim Gardam then Editor of Newsnight and Janet Street Porter for kick starting my TV journalism career in 1990.

CDN Today

Today’s CDN lives in a digital space that could generate a reciprocity of creative methodologies e.g. crowd sourcing and in the bricks and mortar world accessible ideas exhaustively enacted by the indefatigable Janice Turner at BECTU’s “Move on Up” events.

Delegates are guaranteed a sortie of face-to-face contact with potential employers over the course of the day.

It’s time for bolder creative solutions said BBC journalist Barney Choudhury. And more robust research is needed because blink and you would have missed the logic of causality that evening which makes for uncomfortable telling and listening.

Broadcasting’s revolving employment door, the result of job-hopping, internal promotions and redundancies has slowed down. The debilitating economy has further damaged the hinges. Every one's staying put.

And that puts more pressure on entrants. Jim Latham, the secretary of the BJTC, the journalism accrediting body represented by broadcasters and academics gave this stat breakdown.

In 2009 with 58 accredited courses almost exclusively in universities around 3500 students were interested in journalism, 1000 of these will emerge from post grad and grad programmes of which 350 are black and Asians.

Says Jim:

“There are big problems in broadcasting which have to be dealt with by essential programmes of in-house education and training. The casual offence caused by complete ignorance of interests, beliefs, what makes ethnic communities tick isn’t god enough”.

As a senior lecturer in Journalism and council member of the BJTC I too see this at the sharp end. Couple of years ago I asked the question in a short on digital diversity at the ICA, recognising the many tiers opening up in the digital world where minorities were becoming marginalised in the main.

I have a duty of care to all students. I do also where possible try and mentor black and Asian would-be journalists, and there have been happy outcomes.

Creative Ideas

At the Southbank Centre I’m looking forward to working with artists in residents SE1 United (predominately black youngsters) alongside acclaimed British filmmaker Penny Woolcock behind Mischief Night, and recently 1 Day - an uncompromising film of the Birmingham’s Grime scene on making dv films.

My friend and fellow artist Lemn Sissay tells me when Tennessee production Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was on its way to London, they were desperate to work with black technicians – another story in itself.

But clearly in these digital revolutionary times and richer variants of journalism and storytelling, it’s disheartening not to be seeing wider more apt gains started by so many, so long ago.

The will appears to be there. Certainly, the tools exist in twitter (twitter clouds); blogs and videojournalism to further lift the campaign. And the job market will pick up again. So Just how do you solve a problem of BMEs finding jobs?

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David was a former broadcast journalist who started his career in 1987 and worked for Channel 4 News, Newsnight and ABC News and is now a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster in journalism and artist in resident at the Southbank Centre. He is currently researching videojournalism and news innovation as part of a PhD and was a juror for the RTS broadcast innovation awards.

5 tips for job hunting. Did you know? New jobs for grads to exploit

International class of 06 contains a couple of newspaper editors, senior writers and web savvys running their own companies e.g.

Its the worst of times and the best of times.
Digital Awards winner David Dunkley Gyimah reports on creating your own job, which ultimately will have employers tapping you, as well as working with new companies, not in the traditional sense of paper-handling intern, but in influencing their digital media strategy.


This screw back corollary proves one thing, we've been here before, and cyclically, we'll come back again.

If you're a university grad it's cold comfort; if you're different in other ways, including ethnicity (Yep still!!) it can be an up hill struggle finding work.

You and Yours BBC Radio 4's consumer programme about youth and university unemployment made for grim listening yesterday but it wasn't too long ago that I remember upping sticks to South Africa to find work to avoid a UK recession.

In South Africa, I found work - back from the BBC in London, from the very departments that previously said "No thank you".

Lesson 1. It's not personal

How to find work
One of my bug bears, for those that know me is the paucity of industry-wide creative thinking in exploiting and creating new economies.

As a fellow Artist in Residence put it to me which led to him launching New Deal of the Mind, we'll get ourselves out of this recession by mining our rich creative talents.

The Did You Know, series takes poetic license when it says the following, but broadly speaking, SEO, Twitter, Videojournalism, were either absent or non-existent in 2004.

"The Top 10 in-demand jobs for 2010, did not exist in 2004"

There are broadly two streams of jobs on offer Traditional industries ( that mop up huge numbers and keep the economy going) Vs Emergent (experiment with new ideas, and drive the new economy before they themselves become traditional)

At my keynote talk to the UK chief executives in sport last week , I spoke about the hidden employee; the one you never knew you needed, because there is, as yet, no job description.

The New Journalist
Here IS their description:

• Web savvy -well versed within the ecosystem of Net and various apps and websites
• Read widely and want to understand processes e.g. Why does that work?
  
• Has an understanding of audiences and behaviours on the web e.g. why text walls don't work in blogs etc.
  
• Has an affinity for technology - e.g. open up word press; they don't understand, take out a book and then spend hours ( well spent) trying to understand.
  
• Know how to write for the web - they blog. What makes a good article?
  
• Ask lots of questions and feeds back lots of ideas. They share and consume.
  
• They are both creative journalist and entrepreneurs. They'll do before asking.
  

Are you a new journalist?
If that's you or inching towards you, then I have been singing your praises and I'm thrilled to say there was a great meeting of minds, a singing from the same hymn sheet with various CEOs from my talk.

A couple have already sought new relationships with universities; you'll find on this video towards the end a delegate tells me he's taken it on board.

And others have been asking about the new journalist, the one who does all the above or wants to and can add new value to traditional and emergent companies.

Yes, it's not easy; that much I know and appreciate, and this is not something you turn overnight, but I have been fortunate enough to 'mentor' some people who have proved. "You can set your own agenda".

The question is who do want to work for and how badly do you want it? Because if you're a new journalist and have not started some of the above of your own volition, you're leaving yourself to greater competition in the market place.

What was it, please correct me, Radio 1: The number of young people wanting to work in the media - some 20,000. The number of jobs available in trad media on rotation ( people leaving for others to take their place) 2000.

Five tips for new journalists

1. Study the present and what might constitute the future of the web, journalism and comms.
2. Study those that have power and the ability to employ, and strike a relationship.
3. Prove you're a cut above the rest by exploiting the web. Like you, many of us e.g. Rob Chiu started from zero knowledge. He inspires me. I might have developed viewmagazine.tv but I know I am no where near the talents of others I have come across.
4. Shift your job seeking focus from the end of your course, when everyone else is looking to a nearer time line
5. Seek out the emergent and traditional. If a job doesn't exist, it's waiting to be made, but be sure in your mind, it's not about finding a job, but what value you bring to your new employee

p.s And finally connect, talk, connect, realise each other's skills and share. Believe that the more you train, the better you become. The more you desire, the more hungry you get.

This is a numbers game and you create your own luck, not now, but then.

jobs, digital and futures

Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth said as much that when the banks emerge from the credit crunch they'll be stronger, but journalism has yet to undergo its own reforms.

There's no business model yet that shores up the loss of revenue in both sales and advertising.

Years ago when I was a struggling journalist, it was very different.

I'm putting an animated CV in Flash today and noted that in the space of my 15 out of 22 broadcast years, I'd worked or freelanced fora dozen or more outfits - some like channel 4 News for a considerable period.

I'm not sure whether to say, in spite of the hardships, and there were many as I told an audience at the NUJ last Saturday, if you preserved enough, you'd find something.

The BBC then was the main repository for new talent and there was enough diversity to ensure, if you sent enough letters out you'd find someone looking for a researcher.

But times have most definitely changed. The jobs are still there, but you need to be more equipped, and there are a lot more grads vying for the 2000 or so turn over jobs that apparently become available each year.

So why did the student, and an extremely talented one whom I met last Saturday, seem so unsure of her chances?

She spoke Five languages: Spanish, French, Italian, English and Flemmish. She had an assured demeanor, and an engaging personality.

But she confessed to knowing little about the new unsure world of journalism, where key word search engine scripting gets you more eyeballs than mellifluous measured words.

One audience member lamented at the bizarre nature of the digi-ecology. You can't make money from blogs, twits and the rest - well broadly- but you're expected to know and practise all this.

In Miami, talking to the very talented students at the knight Foudation the same theme arose. But here they accepted what was the norm, even if it was a forced one.

The lowest denominator in media making is now so univerally acknowleged that there is no mystique over what was a revered art.

Then too we had heroes e.g. Charles Wheeler, Kate Addie, Magenta Devine, Eddie Mair, Tom Brokaw.

Today's market is so fractured that the stars still command their place amongst the legion of traditional admirers, but journalism has plunged into a world of celebrity or get-there-quick.

Deference is a word in the dictionary behind deadbeat.

What does this mean? Not much if you want to get existentialist about it. The market will sort itself out, new jobs will emerge from embers, a new crop of writers, visualist, story tellers will chart a path, unfamiliar to traditionalists.

Prime jobs for presenting to a broad audience will become even more scarce. A front cover of the BBC's mag says the future is small. Like Nick Davies said Journalism needs its own reforms