I got it wrong. At the end of August, openDemocracy published my piece about a House of Lords Lords inquiry into public service broadcasting. The facts were solid but the headline ‘Diversity: the BBC may fool itself but it won’t fool the Lords’ has proved to be incorrect. This became clear when the Lords finally published their report at the odd time of 10pm on 5 November.
Although it was in many respects a damp squib, the Lords report achieved an explosive response from diversity experts. Despite hearing, receiving and publishing impressive, detailed evidence from a significant range of people on the under-representation of black and minority ethnic (BAME) people in television and at the BBC, the Lords concluded: “We believe that there is not enough data for us to opine on the substance of this issue.”
The actor, writer, comedian and independent producer Lenny Henry and journalist Marcus Ryder had made proposals for ring-fenced funding, funding for which production companies could compete and diversity tax breaks to increase BAME representation. Other witnesses strongly supported these ideas, but they didn’t even get a mention in the Lords report.
