Life inside the BBC: ‘You felt you had to apologise for being white and middle class’
"As calls for reform mount, two former BBC employees have spoken to The Telegraph on condition of anonymity, offering a rare glimpse into the culture at the corporation.
Former employee #1
“There was something of a Left-wing cabal – and if you were more centrist in your politics, your opinion wasn’t appreciated. Eventually, you just stopped speaking up. They would absolutely talk about diversity of voices, then shut down anybody who didn’t agree with them.
“I don’t think it was a conspiracy, more the weight of opinion in the room and a self-fulfilling prophecy through recruitment. If you weren’t part of the more woke, Left-leaning brigade, your opportunities for progression were limited. I saw it in interviews – anyone who didn’t fit that agenda could be easily dismissed from the shortlist.
“There was also this clamouring for diversity that made a bit of a mockery of it. They had a diversity scheme, but when they couldn’t find enough external candidates they just put internal people on it who wouldn’t have got through in a fair competition. Suddenly, people who weren’t particularly good at their jobs were in really sought-after positions simply to fulfil quotas and make things look a certain way.
“It was a climate which brought out some strange behaviours in the bosses as well. For instance, young Asian women were given opportunities over black males, who were perceived as being more of a threat to the jobs of their superiors. White managers were comfortable celebrating a version of diversity that didn’t ‘challenge’ them. That was certainly my observation.
“I also saw a certain worldview carried forward in programming. There were documentaries that were supposed to be about discovery, but they started from a fixed view and followed it through to the end – so then you’d have whole films built on confirmation bias. They weren’t coming from news or current affairs – they were more about culture or society, and there was no process to challenge them.
“I don’t think people [in the corporation] are deliberately deceitful. I have a lot of respect for the corporation, but the BBC has fallen into its own echo chamber.
“It’s also become scared and apologetic – embarrassed about existing, embarrassed about being white and middle class, almost. It lost touch with the broader audience in the regions and became very metropolitan. It doesn’t shout about what it does well, doesn’t own up properly when it gets things wrong and spends most of the time hoping nobody notices the stuff in the middle.”
Former employee #2
... "There was a period when younger generations were over-empowered, and it skewed certain outcomes. People with very little experience were given far more say in decision-making than they should have had, mainly because older, white and middle-class staff were paranoid about the ‘optics’ of saying no.
“The fetishisation of youth meant that, regardless of whether they were any good, the assumption was that young people must know the answer. They don’t – or not yet, anyway. In some cases, there were people in very senior jobs who were far too inexperienced, making big mistakes with compliance and duty of care, and they were protected by the managers who’d put them there. Being young became a qualification in itself.
“Culturally, it also became a place where you felt you had to apologise for being white and middle class – you felt your privilege very keenly. I generally think that’s a good thing, we should all be more aware of how good we’ve had it, but there is a point where experience and authority should hold sway, regardless of whether it’s coming from someone white and middle class. I mean, everyone was given unconscious bias training, which I found quite interesting – although, it’s all a bit ‘Meghan’, you know, ‘Confront your privilege! Own your privilege!’
“Anyway, in hindsight, I’ve never worked anywhere else where people went around apologising so much for who they were – and because almost everyone was white and middle class, you also had this strange situation where people were trying to drum up ‘protected characteristics’ for themselves. It was like, ‘Is it enough to be middle-aged? Could that count as a protected characteristic?’ It all became a bit ridiculous."
