Another day, another breast-beating confession from a BBC news-wallah about how the Corporation has sinned against diversity. This time it was ‘head of newsgathering’ Jonathan Munro lamenting the fact that most of the editors who labour under him are highly-educated, middle-class white men: ‘I don’t think anyone can think that is right or justifiable,’ he declaimed piously in a Media Masters podcast. He added:
‘We don’t want all our editorial meetings to be dominated by what white people think. We don’t want any single group in society to dominate our editorial thinking, because we are not being diverse in our thought process.’
This raises an interesting point; does Munro think that the current priorities of BBC news bulletins reflect what ‘white people think?’ If so, I have news for him.
BBC News, as presently constituted, faithfully reflects the views not of ‘white people’ in the round but of a tiny subsection of the white population; his editors are, generally speaking, highly educated.
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