The BBC has published the second progress report on meeting its Diversity Commissioning Code of Practice, which highlights the investments and support that the BBC has implemented over the last year to help continue to build an increasingly diverse and inclusive organisation and output. This comes after countless reports in the last few weeks highlighted the racist culture and a shocking lack of "diversity" at the BBC's newsrooms.
June Sarpong, BBC’s Director of Creative Diversity, said, “We know what we want to achieve; creativity that thrives because of diversity of thought, delivers innovation, enhances performance and content that reaches the widest audience possible. The BBC’s Diversity Commissioning Code of Practice is a cornerstone of that process of progress and change.”
The Code of Practice was published in 2018 and puts diversity at the heart of the BBC’s commissioning processes and reporting framework across TV, radio, online and digital content. It standardises the approach across all output by continuing to ingrain diversity into everyday discussions around all of its commissions at the beginning of the creative process; agrees the detail of what each production will do to increase diversity, on-air and off-air, before the commission gets the go ahead; ensures there is an ongoing dialogue and support for producers to achieve agreed diversity commitments; and it’s used to assess productions on delivery to check whether diversity agreements were met.
