New Statesman survey asks 'Are the Media Racist?'
12 January 2012

The New Statesman magazine has published the findings of its research alongside essays and blogs asking whether British Media is racist. Ethnic minorities remain largely absent from opinion pages, senior executive roles and staff jobs within the British media, according to statistics compiled by the magazine, which undertook the research in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence verdict last month and Diane Abbott's tweet last week - actions that have pushed racism at the top of the political agenda in recent months.

In a special report in the magazine notes that:

• 2 of the 99 named witnesses at the Leveson inquiry into the press are from ethnic minorities
• 1 of the 100 most important media people in the Guardian’s 2011 guide was not white
• 0 national newspaper editors are non-white
• 0 national newspaper political editors are non-white

The New Statesman also surveyed the main comment pages of selected newspapers from 5-11 December 2011 to count the number of non-white writers. It found that three newspapers did not have a single non-white writer on their comment pages and that only five non-white writers have a regular weekly column among the broadsheets.

Non-white writers/total number of writers (including Sunday sister publications):

• The Times/Sunday Times: 2/39
• The Independent/Independent on Sunday: 1/34
• I: 1/14
• The Guardian/Observer: 4/48
• The Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday: 0/23
• The Daily Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph: 0/46
• The Daily Express/Sunday Express: 0/22
• The Financial Times: 3/35

In contrast, the New Statesman quotes figures published by the Office for National Statistics for 2009 which showed the non-white population of England and Wales stood at 16.7 per cent, or one in six people.

The magazine's chief political commentator Rafael Behr in his 'Minority Report' article noted that "Fleet Street's overwhelming monochrome majority goes unnoticed most of the time, not least because there isn't much incentive for newspapers to report their own failure to represent, in demographic composition, the society they aspire to inform. That failure might also make the media less than tenacious in demanding greater representation for minorities in politics. By contrast, newspapers are very keen to report the decline of racism in British society."

Click here to read Rafael Behr's article 'Minority Report' in full

Click here to read Alice Gribbin's article on 'Are the Media Racist?' in full

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