Defining diversity:
More than a numbers game
ITV
ITV press advert published on 19 September
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An RTS panel raises some big questions concerning the TV sector’s inability to foster a genuinely diverse workforce
f you thought that defining diversity was easy, think again. As the chair of a stimulating and thought-provoking RTS event, Aaqil Ahmed, formerly the head of religion and ethics at the BBC, concluded: “Diversity in itself is diverse. For me, that understanding of it isn’t there for a lot of people.… It’s not a numbers game… diversity is very complicated.” Throughout the “Defining diversity? That’s easy” session, attempts to provide a definition that all the panel could agree on proved elusive. Cat Lewis, CEO of Manchester-based
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Nine Lives Media, said one of the best definitions she had seen was in ITV’s anti-racist advertisement, published in response to the Black Lives Matter routine performed on Britain’s Got Talent by dance troupe Diversity. “It said: ‘We are changed by what we see just as we are changed when we are seen.’ That’s so true – to achieve it, you need to see it.” There was, however, a consensus among the speakers that urgent work was needed from the top, whether it was government, Ofcom or a new body set up to ensure that the television sector finally effected real and lasting change on this most pressing of issues.
Only then would the industry be likely to recruit and retain staff from a wide range of backgrounds that truly reflected British society. “It’s not something that should be in the hands of individual broadcasters,” said Ahmed, himself from a northern, working-class background, who was the first in his family to attend university. Marcus Ryder, former head of current affairs at BBC Scotland and visiting professor at the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, said: “Ofcom needs to define diversity and to set minimum standards for the broadcasters that it regulates.”
