BBC’s ‘woke dictionary’ to stop staff causing offence: Staff will be given language guide to help ‘rewire’ the corporation and avoid upsetting viewers and listeners
- BBC today announced aims at increasing the diversity of its workforce and stars
- Staff will be given language guide to help them avoid offending viewers
- Corporation set targets of 20% BAME employees and a 50:50 gender balance
- Director-general Tim Davie said it is ‘the right thing to do’ in live-streamed event
BBC staff will be given a language guide to help them avoid offending viewers and listeners.
The move is part of plans to increase staff diversity and improve the portrayal of under-represented groups on screen.
Director-general Tim Davie said the initiative was ‘mission-critical’ and decisions about the use of language needed to be made by ‘a diverse group of people’.
Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general has described plans to improve diversity at the broadcaster as ‘mission critical’
A BBC reporter sparked a row – and 18,500 complaints – earlier this year by using the N-word in a crime story. The corporation also apologised for broadcasting the same offensive term on a BBC2 programme called American History’s Biggest Fibs.
June Sarpong, BBC director of creative diversity, said the language guide would be published in January ‘offering our creative teams support’.
She added: ‘It’s not in any way saying they have to use this terminology, but it’s offering them support in terms of the kind of language that doesn’t cause offence.’
Mr Davie said the BBC needed a ‘rewiring of the core’ so that it would be ‘overt and direct that we are an anti-racist organisation’.
The plans will be supported by the BBC’s creative diversity unit, which was established last year with the appointment of June Sarpong (pictured) as the BBC’s first director of creative diversity
‘Racism is not a matter of impartiality – at all,’ he added.
A new panel, including external members, will help the BBC ensure it gives an authentic portrayal of disability.
There will also be investment in programmes aimed at progressing the careers of diverse talent, on and off screen.
Hard of hearing DJ on Radio 1
Radio 1 is giving a chance to its first hard-of-hearing DJ. Will Kirk, 22, pictured, is among 33 hopefuls who will replace established presenters over Christmas.
Kirk, from Sheffield, has been deaf since birth and wears hearing aids in both ears. The student, who is a host on club music station Bermuda Radio, will guest present Radio 1’s Drum & Bass Show. He said: ‘I am beyond thrilled! It is amazing to be able to share my drum and bass mix on such a powerhouse of music.’
Londoner Nels Hylton, 24, will be the first black woman to present the Rock Show, while Kerrie Cosh, 29, from Northampton and Robyn Richford, 28, from Glasgow will take turns to host the breakfast slot.
Mr Davie has previously said the broadcaster must achieve diversity targets for BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) employees of 20 per cent and a 12 per cent representation for disability in the workforce.
A gender balance target of 50:50 was already in place.
He said: ‘It’s a bold number, but it is not that bold because that’s where Britain’s going to be very quickly.
‘If you are not moving at that kind of speed, we have got a problem.’
He added: ‘We do need targets and, by the way, the BBC can sometimes be a bit tough on itself.
‘We have seen real progress in certain areas. On screen there’s been outstanding work.’
The BBC has committed to spending £100million of its commissioning budget from April 2021 on diverse programming.
It was forced into an embarrassing U-turn over the summer after it initially defended the use of the N-word by a presenter is a news report about a racially aggravated attack in Bristol.
The use of the racist slur by social affairs correspondent Fiona Lamdin sparked more than 18,500 complaints and the then director-general Tony Hall later apologised.
Days later, the BBC had 417 complaints over the use of the word by historian Lucy Worsley on a programme about Abraham Lincoln.