But the exercise went further: demographic representation was to be a guiding principle for BBC output. It confirmed that targets for ethnic and disability representation in the workforce had been raised by a third. Was it about hiring, the focus of previous efforts, or something else? How would the targets be enforced? The answers came with the publication of a new “Diversity & Inclusion Plan” in early 2021. His vision of a “50:20:12 organization,” though, was short on detail.

Davie was pointing towards the next stage in a long evolution. Diversity had long been a BBC priority-two of the last four bosses chaired Britain’s Creative Diversity Network, an industry body. There is only so much a few years of sporadic unconscious-bias training can achieve. Indeed, as one of many foreigners working at the heart of a national institution, I considered myself a beneficiary of remarkable inclusivity.īut as a white male, maybe I was missing something. And it had not struck me as a discriminatory place: a glance around me suggested recognition that talent had no gender or skin color. In my three decades as a BBC journalist, I had heard complaints of slant and self-absorption leveled at the corporation from many quarters, but never from its very top. I was startled by Davie’s introductory speech. It was prompted by Davie’s concern that on current trends the BBC “will not feel indispensable enough to all our audience.” In an effort to avert a fatal slide into irrelevance, he promised to create “an organization that is much more representative of the UK as a whole”: one that is 50% women, 20% ethnic minority and 12% disabled. When Tim Davie took over as director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in September 2020, he called for “a radical shift in our focus from the internal to the external, to focus on those we serve: the public.”Īnnouncing an end to navel-gazing was a remarkable act of contrition for the UK’s public broadcaster.

Bbc persuasion