Rough water

When you try to apply quotas to small groups of people, you get issues.  Yesterday's re-structure of BBC News management will have further consequences. 

Let's go back a little. Inside the BBC, the News Division is notoriously slow on delivering cuts, believing that common sense will prevail and more money will be found. New DG Tim Davie has made it clear he wants action. Unnoticed, so far, BBC News yesterday revealed which reporters and correspondents it will keep as part of 450 (is it 520 now ?) post closures announced just over 12 months ago.  Inaction on at least some jobs at a senior level was not an option. 

The HR Handbook of News says the most defensible way of cutting managers is to redefine their jobs into a smaller number, and tell the current incumbents to apply for them. So, applying the playbook since September, Fran Unsworth has opted for one job running the production of news content, another the commissioning and delivery of news content, and a third, of less importance, running BBC languages, Monitoring, and BBC Media Action. Five executives were invited to apply for the three posts - I'm guessing none of them wanted to be considered for the third post, which will now be advertised.   

After interviews, Editorial Director Kamal Ahmed, Head of News Output Gavin Allen, and Head of Current Affairs Joanna Carr were deemed beaten by their colleagues Jonathan Munro and Jamie Angus. Fran's message to the loser trio: we would  "like to thank them for their outstanding contribution to BBC News to date and we are exploring future options for them”. Options for redundancy payments are now much smaller than they would have been if Fran had moved faster. 

Now the diversity problem: in May 2019, DG Lord Hall introduced a new target for the BBC Executive Committee and all divisional boards, to have two BAME members by the end of 2020.  In July 2018, Fran welcomed the first BAME member of News Board, Kamal Ahmed, as Editorial Director. Seen in someway as adding intellectual heft, Ahmed's arrival suggested possible grooming for even higher things. He was well connected - a guest at James Purnell's stag night in Paris in November 2015.

It's possible Fran's Digital Director, Naja Nielsen, brought up in Denmark, and appointed to the BBC in January 2019, declares as BAME through Syrian heritage. So Fran may need only to find one more - and she has two interim, non-BAME, post-holders at Board level. But it sends unfortunate signals to both the interims and the possible long-term candidates for these two roles that their ethnicity matters as an official target to the people making the selection,