Marcus Ryder MBE
These are personal views, and do not reflect the view of Birmingham City University or the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity.
This will be my last blog post as Director of External Consultancies for the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity as I move on to pastures new as the CEO of the Film and TV Charity. I would like to take this opportunity to look at what the centre has achieved, how the UK media industry has changed, and what I have learnt in my three years in the role.
The centre launched on 25th March 2020 at 10.00am. Officially it was 37.5 hours after then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown to curb a widening outbreak of COVID-19 and three months before the murder of a Black man in Minneapolis, America, would reframe the entire debate around race and racism globally.
It was possibly the best and worst of times to launch.
The Centre’s stated aims were to critically analyse policies in the media industry with a view to increasing diversity and inclusion, improving policy decisions and spreading best practice.
We wanted to inhabit that difficult space between academia and practice.
We wanted to utilise academic principles to effect real change in how the industry works.
What we discovered, almost immediately, was a real appetite and demand from media organisations - from broadcasters to news organisations - for what we had to offer.
Possibly the biggest lesson for me is exactly what the media organisations wanted from us, and that broadly falls into four categories:
1. Academia with practical implementation
Too often academic research and studies into media diversity have lacked the practical application and simple recommendations that media organisations have needed to improve their policies for better diversity and inclusion.
Media organisations wanted the rigour that comes with academic research but they desperately wanted help on how they could utilise it in their work. For example while “critical mass theory” as first developed by Quarantelili and Weller in 1974 is an interesting idea of how to bring about cultural change in an organisation many broadcasters wanted very practical help on what their diversity targets should be to achieve this and what part of their organisation they should focus on.
2. Sharing expert knowledge
One of the first events the centre organised was around interpretations of the 2010 Equality Act with regards to targeting certain protected groups, and GDPR with regards to collecting data around protected characteristics. We invited major media stakeholders to a closed door session to be able to discuss some of the problems they were facing around their diversity policies and ensuring they were interpreting the law correctly, both in terms of being mindful of not breaking the law but also ensuring they were not being too conservative.
The centre provided leading legal experts in their fields to facilitate the session and help the major media organisations work out what they could and could not do - while at the same time learning from each other.
An independent, respected, third party who was able to convene media organisations and act as an honest broker between them and help them share expert knowledge was essential.
3. Speaking inconvenient truths
When talking to media executives in general, and diversity departments in particular, we quickly found out that we were a useful tool to bring up “inconvenient truths” about diversity and inclusion. The internal politics within organisations often makes it difficult for people to tell their bosses hard truths about working practices around racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice (intentional or otherwise).
We were often a useful foil to raise difficult issues in a constructive manner and facilitate sensitive conversations which otherwise would not have been raised.
4. Marking their homework
It is difficult for any organisation to relinquish control of the narratives that surround their performance. The criticism for many media organisations when it comes to the issue of diversity and inclusion is that they effectively mark their own homework and unsurprisingly usually “pass” with flying colours.
The irony is that the very same media organisations often recognise that this approach does not serve them in the long run. An independent body with academic rigour and practical knowledge was needed and the centre was able to fulfil this role perfectly as we were often called in to assess how effective policies had been or identify holes in certain approaches.
In the last three years the centre has proved its worth time and time again. And provided a service that media organisations were willing to pay for.
It was argued by some that the centre shouldn’t exist and if other organisations were doing their roles there would be no need for us. They would point to the fact that Ofcom should be a body that “marks” broadcasters “diversity homework”, or the Creative Diversity Network should be the group that facilitates knowledge sharing and expert advice. But the truth of the matter is that there are flaws in any industry, and for innumerable reasons the centre was able to address those flaws.
I am proud of the research I was involved in, the policies we helped shape and the market need we were able to address.
We proved time and time again that the UK media industry needs an independent body to be a critical friend in order to progress diversity and inclusion. If the centre did not exist tomorrow somebody would need to create it again.
However there was one major flaw that going forward I hope that the centre will be able to address.
In many ways our relationship with the different media organisations proved to be too transactional.
A media organisation had a specific problem and they would be willing to pay the centre to address it. But invariably the centre’s best work was doing practical research into areas that no one wanted to pay for.
This ranged from being the first media organisation to really identify issues around post production diversity - a problem now widely recognised throughout the industry - to modelling flaws with how Ofcom currently operates.
The broadcasters and major media organisations need there to be a thriving independent body that is able to study diversity and inclusion for all the reasons I have outlined above.
It is what I have thought for over a decade and I am pleased that the last three years have proved me right.
But for the Sir Lenny Henry Centre to thrive the very same media organisations that rely on it must fund it properly and not on a piecemeal transactional basis.
They should fund it properly, without strings, to enable it to do its job properly and independently.
I leave the centre in the knowledge that it is in very good hands overseen by Professor Diane Kemp as Director, Mukti Jain Campion as Chair and a wealth of excellent co-workers and trustees.
My frustration is that I know with increased funding and industry support it could do even more.
I sincerely hope that it fulfils its potential.