Post by PamelaPost by JoeMost BBC staff, including nearly all the editorial staff, live and
work in the big cities of Britain, such as London, Birmingham and
Manchester.
I think they do genuinely believe that the proportion of
non-whites they see around them is representative of the country
as a whole, or at the very least they have unconsciously absorbed
that impression without thinking about it.
Their leisure activities do not include visiting British gardens,
country towns, or God forbid, the seaside, so they never see that
those places tend to be 'hideously white', as Greg Dyke so
memorably put it.
Half the black population of the UK lives in London, which means 1
in 6 Londoners is black. However most of the UK outside the big
cities is no more than 1 or 2 percent black.
As you say, metropolitan BBC journalists must see a skewed picture
every day although surely their own research would say otherwise.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2020/creative-
diversity-commitment
You would think before spending £100m on "diversity" programmes, the
BBC would check to see how much this reflects the population at
large. The BBC's "Diversity and Inclusion Strategy" proclaims it
has more BAME employees than the national demographic.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/diversity/pdf/diversity-and-inclusion-
strategy-2016.pdf
I don't watch much BBC tv but whenever I open iPlayer, half the
people shown are non-white.
The BBC's insidious influence in this regard goes beyond their own output.
I sat down to watch the Christmas edition of All Creatures Great and Small and was rather surprised to see James Herriot make a call to a farmhouse where the elderly farmer had a black wife.
Having read the books back in the seventies and having watched the first incarnation of ACGaS, I was fairly sure that there were no black people in either the books or the TV series.
A little digging revealed what had gone down;
The show's producer, a Colin Callender, had made a remark that caused the Mail to run a story titled “Did BBC pass up All Creatures revamp because it was too WHITE? Channel 5 rakes in record 3.3m viewers for new series after corporation felt it wouldn’t appeal to prized millennial audience”.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8793537/Did-BBC-pass-Creatures-revamp-WHITE.html#:~:text=BBC%20bosses%20are%20refusing%20to,series%20is%20'too%20white'.&text=But%20the%20show's%20producer%20has,34%2Dyear%2Dold%20viewers.
A Radio Times interview (https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-12-08/all-creatures-great-and-small-producer-woke/) reveals Callender clearly shitting himself at the possibility of having drawn the displeasure of the BBC cash cow, by his remarks being used against them by their hated enemies at the Daily Mail;
"But at a press event ahead of the Christmas episode, Callender insisted this was no reason to attack the BBC.
Addressing the “journalists in the room”, he said: “I was very distressed to see how the show suddenly became a sort of political football and was being used as a way of showing what was wrong with the BBC. This is not a show about – this is not a story about the BBC thinking that All Creatures wasn’t woke enough to be made.”
Explaining that the rejection was an “editorial decision”, he said: “The BBC is under attack from all quarters, and the last thing I want is the success of this show to be used in some way as a weapon to attack the BBC.
“Shows like this, and the work that Channel 5 does, and all the public services will not survive without a healthy BBC. I think it’s very important for the audience and the public at large that that is the case.” "
In another interview (https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-12-22/all-creatures-christmas-special-anne-chapman-cleo-sylvestre/) Callender feebly attempts to portray the black character's inclusion as legitimate;
"Executive producer Colin Callender says: “Andy Hay went out and began casting the role of Anne and he fell in love with Cleo Sylvestre, who was Black, and through conversations with her about her own story and her own mother’s story, that story found its way into the script. And Ben [Vanstone, the writer], took Cleo’s real story and wove it seamlessly into the episode. So there’s a very nice sort of example there of fiction really reflecting the real world.”
The last paragraph confirms that this particular producer has well and truly been brought into line;
"Callender, who recently hit out at claims that All Creatures was rejected by the BBC for not being ‘woke enough’, added: “Being able to cast truthfully but embracing diversity, whether it’s diversity in terms of the role of women, disabled people, and as we go forward in season two, Black stories and Black actors, that will all be part of our agenda as we go forward. But this episode was a particular joy.” "