David Olusoga: ‘If you can run Bristol, you can run a TV channel’

David Olusoga has used the example of Marvin Rees in a major speech in which he said that racism in British TV has led to a “lost generation” of black talent.

A lack of BAME people in executive and behind-camera roles is down to them being ignored or worn down by industry, the Bristol-based historian said in the keynote MacTaggart lecture at the virtual edition of the Edinburgh television festival.

Speaking from City Hall, the House Through Time presenter recalled the events of June in his home city following the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue during a Black Lives Matter march, as he said that “every major news outlet rushed to secure an interview” with Rees.

He said: “Everyone wanted a piece of Marvin, not just because he is mayor but because of his own amazing backstory.

“A descendent of enslaved black people from Jamaica and of working-class, white Bristolians he was brought up on council estates and yet rose to become mayor of a city that for 125 years had lionised and validated a slave trader.

“It was a great story, with a leading-man straight out of central-casting, an articulate figure who saw events from a unique perspective.

“And to the delight of both print journalists and TV news crew from across the world Marvin also turned out to be a brilliant interviewee, he knew how to deliver perfect sentences and neat soundbites, how to tell a story with an economy of words and yet still land the big ideas. He was every producer’s dream interviewee.”

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees (left) and Bristol-based historian David Olusoga (right) were both named among the top 100 most influential black Britons in 2019’s annual Powerlist

Rees had a career at the BBC in Bristol before entering politics, and Olusoga said that this is why he is “so good in front of camera”.

He added: “But the talents of the black guy who now runs a city were seemingly invisible to the people who then ran the newsroom.

“There were some who recognised his skills, talents and integrity, but not enough for him to have anything like the sort of investment in his career planning that I have seen lavished upon other people in my time in this industry.

“The recipients of that sort of investment are those whom managers and indie bosses can envisage one day doing their jobs. And in my experience those selected for such elevation tend to be carbon copies of the managers who champion their careers.”

“Thwarted and marginalised, Marvin had the nerve to do what I was too timorous to do, he left TV to look for other avenues for his talents, and he was lost to the industry,” said Olusoga.

“He could be running a production company, or be commissioning the very programmes we need to respond to the challenge thrown down by Black Lives Matter.

“Perhaps if Marvin’s many talents had been recognised back there might be no need to have a session asking when UK TV will have its first black controller.

“As a historian I can tell you that if you can run Bristol – a city that is so proudly political, edgy and radical that we had a mini-riot over the unwanted opening of a small branch of Tesco – if you can run Bristol, you can run a TV channel.”

Olusoga said that the consequences of the “haemorrhaging of such talent” were recently exemplified at the BBC in Bristol in July when it was deemed acceptable for a white reporter to use the N word in a news report about a racist attack on 21-year-old musician K-Dogg, who was hit by a car while walking to the bus stop from his job at Southmead Hospital.

The news report led to almost 20,000 complaints and an official apology by the director general.

“If, however, in another alternative existence, Marvin might have been there, or on the end of the phone, as a senior colleague, to give advice, that incident, that has genuinely damaged faith in the BBC among many black people, might have been avoided,” said Olusoga.

“Or perhaps – in this alternative reality – Marvin might have gone into documentaries, perhaps, into the history department that decided that it was okay for a white production team, making a programme dealing with slavery, to write a script for a white presenter that also used the N word.

“These damaging missteps are, I believe, consequences of TV having lost a generation of black and brown people like Marvin Rees, people who should now be among the leaders of in our industry.”

Main photo: BBC

Read more: Rees: ‘Inequalities are still with us in Bristol’