BBC staff will be given diversity lessons to stop ‘microaggessions’

The BBC’s drama boss has vowed to get rid of inadvertent instances of racism known as ‘microagressions’ at the Corporation.

Piers Wenger told the Edinburgh TV Festival that he has been in ‘deep discussion’ about how to ‘eradicate unconscious bias’ to help improve the representation of ethnic minorities. 

The £250k-a-year Drama Commissioning Controller said it was now ‘ground zero’ and ‘the moment where we have to get it right’.

His comments come amid rumours that executive staff at the BBC are being advised to have unconscious bias training to make sure they don’t inadvertently offend anyone, The Times reports.  

Mr Wenger said: ‘It’s also the role of commissioners to really get it right because we know that we are at the very beginning of the process.

‘If talent isn’t being protected and nurtured and empowered, if ethnic minority stories aren’t making their way on to screens then we have a big part to play in that.’

He added: ‘Over the last few months as a department we’ve been in deep discussion around how to eradicate unconscious bias and microaggressions.

‘We just can’t deny that those things exist.’

A microaggression is a remark or action which unintentionally reveals a prejudice towards a minority group, such as asking someone: ‘So where are you really from?’

Mr Wenger said that he wanted the BBC to be ‘radical’ and it was ‘the moment to act’. He added in recent months people had been trying to ‘drill down into the detail’ of why, despite people spending years talking about diversity, that ‘so little has really changed’.

In an earlier session at the festival Mr Wenger, who was appointed to the role in 2016, said: ‘The industry is not diverse, it’s you know, as [black British film director] Steve McQueen said it is racist.’ 

Sir Steve McQueen previously said the UK has a ‘shameful’ lack of diversity in its film and TV industries and the country lags ‘far behind’ the US in representing ethnic minorities in production. 

Mr Wenger added: ‘Something has gone wrong, and we are really really engaged with putting that right. We have to eliminate unconscious bias, I think that’s been one of the major problems.

‘We spent a lot of time in lockdown talking about exactly how you identify it, and how you get rid of it and that is about having greater diversity at a decision making level and within commissioning teams.

‘We need to make sure that everyone’s history and everyone’s point of view is represented in order to make the offering truly rich.’ 

The BBC’s head of content Charlotte Moore said ‘diversity on screen and off screen has never been more important to the BBC’ and said she hopes hit shows including Noughts And Crosses and I May Destroy You has showed ‘real commitment’.  

I May Destroy You – starring actress Michaela Coel – follows London-based writer Arabella as she comes to terms with a sexual assault after her drink was spiked at a nightclub. 

Noughts and Crosses depicts a world where black people are the oppressors and whites are a downtrodden underclass. 

Ms Moore said: ‘Diversity on screen and off screen has never been more important to the BBC. If we don’t reflect the country we are making programmes for we have failed.

‘I hope some of the films we have shown this year from Noughts And Crosses to I May Destroy You and A Suitable Boy and Small Axe, I hope that shows real commitment and direction of travel, we are absolutely committed.

‘This should be right at the heart of BBC one’s schedule and right at the heart of iPlayer. 

‘It’s been too long and its up to all of us to make sure this is the moment of absolute change and I couldn’t be more committed to that. I think this is the moment we will look back and say we really did see change.

‘The whole business will benefit. If we don’t do this I don’t think the television industry will survive.’