The BBC has said that one quarter of its staff will be drawn from working-class backgrounds after the Culture Secretary accused the corporation of snobbishness.
According to The Times:
The broadcaster said it would become one of the first media organisations in the UK to set the 25 per cent target, which it hopes to achieve by 2027, when its present royal charter ends.
The ambition was set out in the BBC’s annual plan and, although the corporation did not explain how it would achieve the goal, growing its apprenticeship scheme is considered to be important.
Some 20.2 per cent of the BBC’s workforce hails from a lower socio-economic background.
It measures this by asking employees what their parents’ occupation was when they were 14 years old.
The BBC announced the target months after Dorries, the culture secretary, said its licence fee settlement would be contingent on plans to create a more socially diverse workforce.
Insiders pointed out that the BBC did moot its desire to set a socio-economic goal before Dorries became a minister.
Commenting on the BBC’s hiring policy, Dorries said:
“If you’ve got a regional accent in the BBC it doesn’t go down particularly well. They talk about lots to do with diversity but they don’t talk about kids from working-class backgrounds.”
It gets sillier and sillier.
A few years ago, the BBC said it needed more lesbian staff. No, really.
Speaking in 2018, then BBC diversity Tsar Tunde Ogungbesan, said that representation of sexual minorities in its workforce was very high but that the corporation still needed to hire more lesbians and trans people.
Here’s a suggestion for BBC bosses.
Why don’t you hire producers and on-air talent who will actually speak truth to power and ask real questions, irrespective of their sexuality or what socio-economic background they come from?
How hard can it be?
I’m half a mile down the road if you need to increase your quota of working-class staff.
