Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Said Business School has the week released a report based on the Broadcasting Britishness conference, which looked at the role of television and radio in shaping national identity back in June.
As historian Linda Colley noted in her keynote speech at the time, "the reasons why Britishness has come to seem more problematic are in fact many and various." The report's recommendations mainly focus on the need to help ethnic minorities 'strengthen their emotional bond with Britain.' One reason for this is a concern with social cohesion in a post 7/7 environment that was reflected in the contrasting experiences of two Muslim broadcasters at the conference:
To utilise the talents of programme-makers from Muslim backgrounds, [Aaqil Ahmed] engaged young filmmakers from small companies in the independent sector to use their inside contacts in gaining unique access to restricted settings, such as a Muslim funeral parlour. Such programming spoke to the whole of Channel 4’s audience, who were upmarket and young and expected to be challenged. Hashi Mohamed, journalist with BBC Newsnight, articulated the inverse scenario, where he felt unable to speak out in the media on the subjects of 'identity’, Islam, black youth crime or any theme connected to his identity as a young black British Muslim of Somali origin, for fear of people seeing his views as ‘clouded’.
The report also addresses another strand of the Britishness debate, the representation of what it somewhat inelegantly calls the sub-nations of the UK:
Alison Hastings discussed research on the BBC purpose remits conducted by the BBC Trust in 2007 indicating that affection for the BBC drops the further people live from London. Furthermore, Ofcom research has shown that people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different views in how they feel PSB [Public Service Broadcasting] is being delivered in comparison to English audiences, with BBC Trust results revealing that people in the three smaller sub-nations were less satisfied with the BBC’s performance and felt underrepresented and underserved.
This dimension has only become more salient since the conference, in the wake of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission report, which called for a special Scottish digital channel.
A key question for broadcasters, as for others, is whether these different strands of the Britishness debate can be reconciled. Colley highlights an interesting tension:
I come back to that statistic that 45% of Asian and black Britons live in London, and to the fact that – only last week – a high-profile investigation accused the BBC of London-centric bias. How exactly, then, do you work out a strategy whereby the BBC, and the other TV companies, which aim to span the UK, better reflect ethnic and religious diversity, given that the ethnic and religious make-up of southern England and the Midlands differs considerably from that in much of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and indeed in much of rural England? People’s take on “Britishness” differs considerably according to where exactly they live.
This dilemma may be all the more acute in an age when the technology itself favours diversity rather than the metrocentic narratives of the Reithian-era BBC. As Ofcom's James Thicket highlighted in his presentation, ethnic minority viewers are significantly less likely to watch public service broadcasters at all, in part because of the availability of commercial 'diaspora' channels.
