Class Bias in the Media



Why should we care about the disproportionate over representation of one class in our press and broadcasting media?  Why does it matter that this class, personified by the 7% who went to private school, is vastly - vastly - over-represented in the management of the BBC, the Guardian, and all sections of civil society.

Well, this has an impact on which stories those people think of as depicting life in Britain. This happens not through deliberate editorial conspiracy, but simply through unconscious bias, based on what their life experiences are, and what the life experiences of their commissioning editors are. Unconscious filters that sift what we get to see, and results in a world-view being presented which does not reflect the real lives of the majority.

How does it work? You gather together a load of people from a particular background, and have them work with people from the same background. They are going to talk about what they know. There are few people to tell them otherwise, because in the world they inhabit, their background is vastly (and it's hard to overemphasise the proportions here) vastly over-represented.

 Only 7% of people in the UK went to private school. And yet the last information I had was that all of the section heads at the Guardian newspaper...(That's 100%. Not 10%, or 15%, or even 50%. But all of them)... All of them went to private school. So naturally, they are interested in things people from their background are interested in. "How do we pay the kids' tuition fees?" "Which part of Tuscany should I visit this year?" "What is the best Phillippe Starke lemon squeezer?" They hire people who write about those things. A feedback loop is set up, because now they're reading the things that they think people are interested in reading, because it’s what they're interested in reading. What is "newsworthy" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 Does that make them, individually, bad people? Of course not; just people. The problem isn't that x, y, or z went to public school, but that x,y,and z and all of the other letters all did.

The fact is that the reality for the 93% who did not attend private school is not the same as the guy compiling the "ten best" whatever in the i newspaper. £5 for a single shop-bought scone? £140 for a fancy lemon squeezer? Really? It's the reason so many people feel that their reality is completely divorced from that of the media. You want a reason for alienation and disenfranchisement; the feeling that nobody talks our language? There it is.