On the face of it, the BBC’s plan to recruit a more ‘diverse’ workforce to combat the liberal bias of its output doesn’t sound promising. After all, when an organisation professes its commitment to ‘diversity’, it usually mean hiring more people that look different but who all have the same Left-wing views. But what the BBC means, apparently, is recruiting a more intellectually diverse workforce. The Telegraph has more.
The BBC is examining ways it can ensure new recruits have ‘diverse’ opinions following repeated claims of a ‘liberal bias’ among presenters and off-screen staff.
Senior figures such as Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, held talks on changes that could be made to the corporation’s recruitment process to ensure it hires staff with a wide range of views and perspectives.
The move is highly unusual because it goes significantly beyond a past focus simply on the views of on-screen presenters who have faced accusations of bias.
This was revealed in recently-published minutes of a meeting of the Board’s Remuneration Committee, which oversees matters relating to staff pay.
The minutes of the meeting, which was attended by Mr. Davie, Leigh Tavaziva, the BBC’s chief operating officer, and Rachel Currie, its HR director, stated: “The Committee discussed analysis on ways in which the BBC was ensuring diversity of thought across the workforce.
“The analysis was noted and it was agreed that the issue was critical for the BBC, though specific monitoring and measurement in this area was not possible.
“The Committee discussed ways in which recruitment processes could be structured to ensure this was an issue being considered. Ongoing work to revise the interview process was noted. Further analysis of approaches taken in other organisations would be considered, including potential ways to assess the issue through surveying.”
The meeting was held on Feb 22nd and chaired by Sir Robbie Gibb, a BBC board member who was once Number 10’s Director of Communications under Theresa May. The record of the discussion is the most recent set of minutes to have been uploaded to the BBC website.
A mid-term review of the BBC’s Royal Charter is currently examining whether the corporation is sufficiently impartial and the extent to which it is “representing audiences from working class backgrounds”.
Worth reading in full.
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The BBC can hire whomever it wants: just don’t force the public to pay for it!
I think it’s close to impossible for a news organisation to be impartial. I would prefer the state to just get out of the business of news.
Will we see queues of white, male, married, small c conservative Christians outside the Beeb?
Very much doubt it.
Any one of these virtues is enough to disqualify.
My brother was told, off the record, that admitting to have voted for the Blessed Margaret Hilda in 1979 had been a career limiting move.- he left in 1981
It will only be diverse within the BBC’s agenda.
I can just hear the Unions calling their members out on strike now.
Suddenly realised they are losing licence payers in droves? Trying to stem the flow? Good luck with that, a little too late to claim popularity now!
I’m 3 x £159 better off now and lovin it. The faux Brexit Newsnight finished me.
Whoever they hire they’ll still have to A: Pledge allegiance to the climate. B: Pretend the UK is a boiling hotbed of violent white bigotry. C: Deny basic biology. D: Promote useless and dangerous drugs.
How does one “pledge allegiance to the climate?”
Because we live on this planet and we have no choice, Now that’s allegiance! Muck in or die!
You OK mate?
Oh dear.. you seem to have upset a few lurkers Huxy boy.. well done..
George L in disguise.. hee hee..
And by the way, I love a boiling hot bed!
Steady on Dinger.. this is a public forum.. snigger-snigger..
So it has decided to go downmarket for staff as well as programming. BBC 3 is likely to end up the pinnacle from now on.
Oh…I’ll look forward to seeing one of an independent journalist called Tommy Robinson’s rare interviews with usually unheard voices.
How enterprising of the Beeb – can’t wait!
You can only recruit from those who apply. Which, even vaguely, right leaning person would be mad enough to apply for a job at the Biased Broadcasting Corporation?
They need someone to do a hit piece on the Trump placed sandbag that their poster boy, Resident Biden fell over.
Don’t give a 4X.
Nothing will ever make me watch the BBC Propaganda Service ever again.
Why make a project out of it? Simply get on and do what your supposed do and be “Free Fair and Impartial”, because currently you are NONE of those things.
Deeds not words.