Diversity in the Sports Media: Hugh Woozencroft
“The sports media industry is a great talker, but the actions are really, really far behind.”
Hugh Woozencroft is a man whose disenchantment with the state of diversity in the sports media industry is clear to see. Despite a stellar and highly successful career, which includes working for the BBC and Sky Sports and current presenting roles with talkSPORT and ITV, he is still deeply frustrated.
The situation in 2018
You see, back in 2018 when he was working for the BBC, Hugh produced an article for them detailing his frustrations with diversity entitled Why BBC Sport can’t escape sports journalism’s problem, which was inspired by the unfair treatment of Raheem Sterling by the UK media as a whole, not just the sports sections.
He remarked in the article that he “had discussions with fellow black journalists who feel that a difference in portrayal between black players and white players is clear, and that it [Sterling’s abuse] wouldn’t have happened had there been more of us in newsrooms.”
Hugh also joined The Black Collective of Media and Sport (BCOMS) in 2018 to enact the change he so badly wanted to see in the media. Sadly, it didn’t pan out the way he would’ve hoped.
He left BCOMS in 2023 having become disillusioned with the work they were doing and the lack of what he called “the appetite to do things, I wouldn’t even say radically, even to really put your foot on the gas in terms of making strong changes.”
Accompanying Hugh’s arguments, as detailed in Sports Journalism: The State of Play by Daragh Minogue and Tom Bradshaw, is the incident when at the “DWord3 conference on diversity in the sports media in 2018, Simon Green, the head of BT Sport, described the industry as “institutionally racist” (October 8, 2018).”
That was seven years ago, and it was a scathing admission at the time, but does it still ring true and do those arguments still hold merit?
What’s it like today?
Well, returning to Hugh at first, he is someone who is still passionate about diversity in the sports media yet also equally exasperated at the continued lack of true impetus to achieve that diversity, 15 years on from when he entered the industry.
In that period, it would be wrong to say there hasn’t been any improvement since Hugh started out, far from it. As he described, “there’s been a big diversity push over the last five or 10 years and that’s translated to more people on screen and on air,” which can only be a good thing for the industry.
However, it’s off screen where more of the problems with diversity still lie. “Behind the scenes it’s way behind in terms of editors, senior producers, in terms of people sharing the frustrations in career progression, in wage equality. In all of those things we haven’t moved far.”
A cynical person might say that the discrepancy between diversity in public facing roles compared with behind-the-scenes roles suggests that they want to be publicly seen making that change, without committing fully to that change.
“When you’re in a public facing industry, which media is, you make change and maybe you make change that’s noticeable that people feel because they see, or they hear it. Other industries don’t have that same level of contact or exposure with the public and so maybe they’re able to get away with not changing things drastically.”
Across the board, those behind-the-scenes jobs and worse still, the jobs further up the sports media career ladder still sorely lack in terms of diversity, with job stagnation and low levels of career progression two of the biggest consequences of this.
Hugh summed it up perfectly, saying, “the key stakeholders, the key employees with large responsibility. The commissioners, the ones who decide what programs will be made or even decide on who will be on air. Those key powerbrokers across our industry have not changed, not when it comes to racial diversity anyway.”
Do the statistics show anything?
The statistics back up what Hugh was saying, especially in terms of the balance between BAME broadcasters and BAME writers. In 2022, according to research unveiled at the DWord4 conference, there were only 21.3% of broadcasters coming from a Black/Asian background.
Of those, just under 70% were former professional athletes, meaning that in real terms, just 6.5% of all broadcasters are Black/Asian non former professional athletes. This is despite 42% of both England’s Euro 2020 and Team GB’s Tokyo 2020 athletics squad being black or mixed race.
In terms of writers as well, for Euro 2020 as well, only 10.3% were Black/Asian, which is less than half of the already small number of Black/Asian broadcasters. Women are largely underrepresented as well, with a measly 5.1%, and only one Black/Asian woman out of all the organisations surveyed.
Despite all that may be wrong with the industry’s diversity, in Hugh’s eyes, there are still reasons to be optimistic and hopeful, especially for the younger generation of journalists coming through.
His first and most universal piece of advice was to “do your own thing and make your own content. If you’re a producer, produce your own content, if you’re a writer, write your own articles. Constantly be working at your craft.”
He then specifically spoke to those journalists from minority backgrounds.
“For people who are from particular marginalised groups, reach out to other people who are from that group, who understand the journey that you’re on who work inside the industry… if there are any charities, schemes, organisations like BCOMS who can help you with your journey then certainly try and join that community.”
He added finally that “you’re not in it alone, just try your absolute best to speak to people, make those contacts, network and try and be helped along your journey.”
Hugh’s story is one that shows people from marginalised or underrepresented communities can make it in the sports media with the right help, there’s just a long way to go towards making that help as accessible as it needs to be.
Read more at: https://sportsgazette.co.uk/it-comes-down-to-opportunity-a-chat-about-diversity-in-sports-media-with-rodney-hinds/
