For Years David and People Like Him, Were Sidelined by the Media Industry

For years I was sidelined, devalued and desperately unhappy, in an industry still blind to the realities of racism

When the email inviting me to deliver this year’s MacTaggart lecture arrived, part of me wanted to politely and discreetly decline. The MacTaggart is a big deal, the UK television industry’s most prestigious and most public platform. Declining it is almost as weighty a decision as accepting.

The moment I came to the conclusion that I had to accept, I also decided I had to be frank and candid. The year of Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd is not the year to speak half-truths to power. Delivering a lecture that skirted around the big issue – the television industry’s historic failure to reflect the diversity of the UK, in both its workforce and output, would have been an abrogation of duty and a waste of everyone’s time.

There is not much in TV that intimidates me these days. I no longer find it difficult speaking directly into the glass eye of a camera, or having to “perform” in a room full of people I hardly know. After years working both behind and in front of camera, my heart now races only a little in the seconds before a studio show goes live. But writing and delivering the MacTaggart lecture has been one of the most difficult and demanding tasks of my career.

What made it so daunting is that it seemed clear to me that if I were to use the platform to speak frankly about the industry, I also needed to speak frankly about myself and my career. A prospect that would be profoundly exposing.
To describe how 30 years of failed diversity and missed opportunities have impacted on the careers and wellbeing of people of colour in television required me to reveal my own difficult journey through the industry. Frankness demanded I talk publicly of how, for much of my career, I was sidelined, dismissed and desperately unhappy. Candour meant admitting that I began my other career, writing history books, not to satisfy some burning literary ambition but in a desperate attempt to convince the gatekeepers of TV that I was worthy of their attention. Naively, as it turned out, I imagined that becoming an author would enable me to break into the charmed circle of producers who got the big jobs on the big history series that I longed to work on.

To write an honest lecture involved presenting myself not as one of TV’s diversity success stories – that guy who does the histories of houses – but as yet another black person who has been failed and damaged by an industry with a deep and ongoing diversity problem. It also meant admitting in an ominously public arena something I had not told most of my friends and family: that during my worst moments in TV, I felt so isolated and so devalued that I twice slipped into clinical depression and ended up dependent on antidepressants.
Why make such personal admissions? Because so many other black people who have worked in the industry have been similarly damaged by similar experiences. To stand at the podium and speak about these issues in the abstract would not just have been dishonest, it would have been a betrayal.
The impact of Black Lives Matter has been acutely felt within TV, an industry that in many ways is a perfect case study of the structural nature of racism. In my 20 years in TV I don’t recall meeting anyone who was openly racist, anyone who would dream of using a racial slur with intent to wound. But I have met and worked with countless people who move through the world and through the industry blind to the realities of race and racism – sometimes wilfully so.
To be colour-blind is to be blind to reality, to the fact that in our society skin colour can dictate life chances and limit opportunities. It is also to refuse to acknowledge that people of colour have different experiences to their white colleagues, and that those experiences equip us with different perspectives and mean we have different stories to tell – stories that are valuable, if listened to.

TV is full of subconscious biases, not just towards groups and individuals but towards stories and subjects. For much of my career it has felt as if the industry wanted to have black people in the room but remained unwilling to listen to black perspectives or to tell black stories.

For decades the industry has attempted to solve its diversity problem through countless training schemes and initiatives. Most have achieved little. I know because I am a veteran of two of them. I spent days doing psychological assessments and timed online exercises, and taking part in group assessments, watched over by expert observers with clipboards. All of it was pointless, because when the training was over, no one with any power in the industry was in the least bit interested in the results. Like other black people in TV, I learned that being a graduate of a diversity scheme was not a route to career advancement – and was viewed by some as a mark of failure, something best kept off my CV.

At its worst, the TV industry acts like a bystander to its own diversity and inclusion crisis. In the small world of history documentaries I’ve often heard producers outsource responsibility. The reason there are so few black producers and presenters, they explain, is because black people choose not to study history at university; or alternatively it is all the fault of the publishing industry, for failing to publish books by black historians. There have been failings in both of those sectors, but not enough to excuse TV’s lack of introspection and action.

When black people who work in television speak publicly about the industry’s diversity shortfall, the classic response on social media is to dismiss them by posting lists of black actors, presenters and journalists. But the diversity we can see on screen is simply not reflected behind the camera. According to 2016 figures, only 2.2% of programmes were produced by black, Asian or minority-ethnic producers or directors. In London, where much of the industry is still based, the workforce is 36% BAME.

Black Lives Matter has demanded we acknowledge the structural nature of racism and combat it through structural change. Industries and institutions are being asked not simply to reform but to transform. Television has reacted to this challenge by promising greater and faster change than ever before. New commitments to increase diversity in senior management and commissioning have been made. New money for new programmes that tell black and minority stories has been pledged.

Whether this amounts to reformation or transformation is yet to be seen. But we have only got to this point by having difficult conversations that have been put off for far too long. Giving the MacTaggart lecture, and speaking frankly about my own experiences, is my small contribution to those urgent conversations.

• David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster. This article is based on his MacTaggart lecture.