The media diversity and inclusion paradox: Experiences of black and brown journalists in mainstream British news institutions

Over 100 British journalists of colour are signatories to an open letter demanding the US Ambassador to the UK condemns the arrest of African-American journalist, Omar Jimenez, on May 29th 2020, whilst he was reporting for CNN on the Minneapolis protests following the police killing of George Floyd. The letter is a vital act of black transatlantic solidarity during a moment when journalism is under threat, economically and politically, and there’s a pandemic of racism in the west. These factors make journalism challenging for reporters from racial minorities, who are already underrepresented in western newsrooms and, as this paper shows, encounter discrimination in the field, as well as within the institutions they work for. The letter speaks to how black British journalists are all too aware that the British journalistic field, like the American one, has a race problem, and institutional commitments to diversity often don’t correspond with the experiences of those included, impacting negatively on the retention of black journalists. Drawing on original interviews with 26 journalists of colour who work for Britain’s largest news organisations, this paper theoretically grounds empirical findings to illustrate why and how discriminatory patterns, as well as contradictions, occur and recur in British news production

The media diversity and inclusion paradox: there is a disconnect between expressed commitments to diversity and the experiences of journalists of colour

Drawing on original interviews with 26 journalists of colour who work for Britain’s largest news organisations, Omega Douglas explains why and how discriminatory patterns, as well as contradictions, occur and recur in British news production

Backstories / Black Stories: Black Journalists, INGOs and the Racial Politics of Representing Sub-Saharan Africa in Mainstream UK News Media

Academic concern with representations of sub-Saharan Africa in Western news media is intensifying. In particular, there is burgeoning interest in how INGOs and black journalists, within and outside the African diaspora, influence the narration of Africa in international news. The positionalities of both actors in the field of reporting on sub-Saharan Africa has far-reaching implications for whether historically rooted, racist Western understandings of the region may be subverted. Yet questions of race exist on the margins of scholarship in this area. Unlike most current research on coverage of Africa, this study inserts issues of race and racism into debate. It is distinctive by linking critical race and postcolonial theories to Bourdieu’s (2005) ‘journalistic field’. Through in-depth interviews with journalists of colour and INGO press officers who work for some of Britain’s largest news and aid organisations, the concept of postcolonial journalistic field theory (PCJFT) is developed. This new interdisciplinary framework, alongside the development of notions such as quadruple consciousness, schizophrenic inclusion and life-in-death, importantly adds to theories of representation, black (British) identity, journalism, race and cultural production studies, by showing how methods and critiques that are part of critical race and postcolonial theories, enable theoretically grounded accounts of how and why mediated racial discourses occur. PCJFT shows that a contextual study is essential to understanding the racial politics that this research found informs the production and representation of news on sub-Saharan Africa in UK media, by accounting for the complex relations between journalists’ experiences and ‘standpoints’ (Hill Collins, 1998, 2000), institutional culture and the power of news media and INGO sources. As such, this study reveals a historicised, racialised, capitalist, moralising discourse exists in relation to mainstream UK news on black African Others, and proposes a phenomenological approach to race within journalism as a vital means of dismantling such discourse

The Chilling: A Global Study of Online Violence Against Women Journalists

With the support of UNESCO, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) has published a groundbreaking, book-length global study on online violence against women journalists, documenting alarming trends and offering solutions to this pernicious problem. The Chilling: A global study of online violence against women journalists is the most geographically, linguistically and ethnically diverse research ever published on the theme. Publication of the 300-page book, concludes a three-year research project originally commissioned by UNESCO in 2019

The media diversity and inclusion paradox: there is a disconnect between expressed commitments to diversity and the experiences of journalists of colour

Drawing on original interviews with 26 journalists of colour who work for Britain’s largest news organisations, Omega Douglas explains why and how discriminatory patterns, as well as contradictions, occur and recur in British news production

Postcolonial Perspectives on Development Achievements, Future Relevance and Possible Directions

Paper delivered at the 3rd Joint Nordic Conference on Development Research: ‘A Changing Global Development Agenda’

How Racialised Hierarchies are Playing out in the Russia-Ukraine War

The Guardia

The online harassment of African women journalists

A co-authored paper presented at the African Women in Media Conference in Kigali, Rwanda

Colonial continuities and discontinuities in British journalism

A keynote delivered at the ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association) Journalism Studies conference at Sheffield University

Radical Journalism: Then and Now

A panel contribution to a workshop on the enduring impact of Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and, the Internet in Britain, by James Curran and Jean Seaton (Routledge). The fifth in a series of workshops centred on the legacy of James Curran and Jean Seaton’s Power without Responsibility looks at the history of alternative forms of journalism and addresses the need for a diverse range of news that mainstream media and commercial platforms cannot sponsor or deliver. Workshop five – Radical journalism: then and now CHAIR: Huw Richards • Omega Douglas (Dr, Goldsmiths) • Des Freedman (Professor, Goldsmiths) • Kevin Gilmartin (Professor, Caltech) • Anthony Mcnicholas (Dr, Westminster