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#BlackLivesMatter in Britain too: why does media care less?
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Protesters march in the street as lightning flashes in the distance in Ferguson. Charlie Riedel /Press Association Images/File. All rights reserved.
The UK media seems more comfortable talking about race issues in America than those closer to home. It is the BBC’s responsibility to challenge these double standards.
Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Sandra Bland. The roll call of African American lives lost to police brutality or in police custody is heartbreaking and begins long before the Black Lives Matter movement came to international prominence. Along with the rest of the world, the UK media has followed the news, protests and the narrative that has emerged from America on issues of race, policing and justice.
We have our own shameful roll call, but names like Joy Gardner, Sheku Bayoh or Sarah Reed spring to mind less readily. And although the issue of deaths in police custody is so serious as to merit a review by the Home Secretary, we are not having a national conversation on the issue.
Where race is a factor or an issue affects minorities, the media is unable or unwilling to grasp the nettle. Some might say that deaths in custody do not have a high profile in public discourse, but when it comes to immigration, an issue we never stop talking about, the voices of migrants, including ethnic minorities, are missing from media coverage. Race is not the only factor at play here, but it is a factor. Why is our media more at ease reporting on and analysing the situation in America?
There are many reasons but one is that in the US the frames of reference provided by the language and activism of Black Lives Matter and other social movements, and the academic and political discourse, shape the coverage of these issues. They are able to speak for themselves, not just on social media, but on politics shows on national news networks, where the political agenda is set. This is important because these shows influence how we interpret the news and what issues are considered a problem for policymakers to address.
The effect of this is currently being felt in the current Presidential Primary races, where issues of race are firmly on the agenda, not just for Republicans, but for both Democratic candidates as well. Recent exchanges with activists have illustrated that Hillary Clinton, and no Democratic candidate, can take the Black vote for granted and that no candidate can afford to overlook the issues highlighted by Black Lives Matter. Whether it’s police brutality or immigration, minority voices are finally getting heard. There is still more to be done, but the victims of police brutality and groups such as undocumented migrants have names and faces that have permeated the public consciousness through media coverage of individual cases and movements such as The Dreamers.
Many of these issues also resonate in the UK and just as in the US, all the elements needed to tell these stories and put them in context exist. But these diverse voices are not heard often enough; political analysis is often left to White men. The findings of a recent survey revealing that British journalism is 94% white, 86% university educated and 55% male were disappointing but not surprising. Ethnic minorities are under-represented relative to their percentage of the population, while women make up the majority of new entrants to the profession - but remain underpaid and under-promoted. British newsrooms need to get their own house in order and go further to include Britain’s diverse voices in both news coverage and political analysis. The BBC in particular, as the national broadcaster, has a duty to reflect Britain back to itself and the world.
The research is there for it to draw upon. Figures compiled by Inquest, for example, a charity that advises on deaths in police custody and offers support to bereaved families, reveal that a disproportionate number of those who die in or following police custody are from black and ethnic minority communities (BAME). The charity cites institutional racism as a contributing factor. While there was widespread coverage of institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police following the Macpherson report into Stephen Lawrence’s murder, there has been no sustained media attention given to the role it played in Sarah Reed’s death and her previous experiences with the police (she was the victim of police brutality in 2012) and public institutions. As a Guardian report put it, her death raised “important (if depressingly familiar) questions about the treatment of people with serious mental illness by the criminal justice system, and how that intersects with the institutional racism faced by black Britons.”
The activism is there too. Reed’s case is one of among 1,500 deaths in police custody since 1990, including more than 500 victims from ethnic minority backgrounds, despite only making up 14% of the UK population, that inspired the poet, writer and activist Siana Bangura to produce 1,500 and Counting, an independent documentary directed by Troy James Aidoo. Part of the reason she is involved in the project is because of the lack of public awareness on this problem. In an article for The Fader, Bangura writes:[B] “In the UK,/B] a black person is less likely to be shot dead on the streets than their counterpart in America. But we are more likely to be detained with brute force and left to die at the hands of neglectful officers. The racism in Britain’s justice system is insidious, but deadly nonetheless. British people are complacent because they do not think things like this happen here, but they do and they have done for years.” The BBC is ideally placed to amplify the work of activists like Bangura but should also ensure that in the reporting of the Home Secretary’s review, and beyond, these stories continue to be told so that the figures are contextualised.
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