Journalists like me have stopped going on TV to save our sanity. We don’t need more of the same bigoted ‘debate’

BBC presenter Leah Boleto this week described how the broadcaster is ‘starting to feel like a place that isn’t for me’. Who can blame her?

Something worrying is happening in the British media. In fact, a tide has been turning for some time. As waves of shouting over Brexit and bigotry roll over us, we are left swimming in an industry-wide sea of contrarian commentary.

The problem is not entirely novel: British broadcasting institutions such as Radio 4’s Today programme, BBC1’s Question Time and the London-based radio station LBC have been leading and stirring these conversations for longer than I’ve been alive. But the intensity is rising.

The latest embrace of divisive debate – the “discussions” deliberately designed to make you froth at the mouth – comes from The Times. In a bid to compete with Today, Times Radio will offer some new, if predictable, reasons to scream at your phone or digital radio each morning. Launching in the spring, the new station is pitched as a chance for Rupert Murdoch’s media group to nab the thousands of listeners Today has lost in the last year, and to reach out to a younger audience too. If it thinks a new station following the same old tired, aggressive, back-and-forth format will prick the ears of new or disgruntled listeners, they’re absolutely wrong.

I’m beginning to lose track of the number of conversations I’ve had or been privy to about the state of broadcast media and its treatment of its contributors, particularly those from marginalised social groups. Journalists like me are repeatedly wheeled out to take part in sensationalist, oversimplified discussions, our value reduced to mere fodder for the very beast that keeps us down and shuts us out. On these shows, we are less than sparring partners; we are villainous.

Instead of having our chance to contribute to public discussion on the complex issues of our day, we leave the studio with nothing more than a slow-burning rage of frustration and that nagging feeling that perhaps these “national conversations” were never designed to include us in the first place.

I haven’t yet had the misfortune of having to justify my own existence live on air to the kind of self-styled provocateur who profits from prejudice, but that’s only because I’ve made a choice to step back from those invitations for my own wellbeing. But with so many women of colour, disabled and otherwise marginalised voices taking the same position, an even bigger problem is emerging: the deliberate exodus from our broadcast media of exactly the voices we need to hear more of.

The shows that do welcome us and our opinions, wholly and without expectation, are dwindling. The sudden termination of the Victoria Derbyshire show on BBC, in the midst of a never-ending discussion about the toxicity and redundancy of Question Time, is a perfect example of this shrinkage. BBC presenter Leah Boleto, who often covered sports news on Victoria Derbyshire, couldn’t have said it better when she opined on Twitter: “I grew up dreaming of a career at the BBC [and] I am blessed to call this institution my workplace. But increasingly it’s starting to feel like a place that isn’t for me. I liked the [Victoria Derbyshire] show, it gave a voice to those, like me, who weren’t served by other media outlets.”

Given the coverage of Laurence Fox’s public dismissal of British racism, can you blame her for that conclusion? True, this “lovely country” has long rewarded combative, baseless, reactionary views with money and fame, but we’re now reached a point where the only positions marginalised voices can take is to let the bigotry slide or willingly embrace the othering of their perspective. We either defend our rights and get screamed at, or we “go high” and embrace, sometimes physically, the people who attack us. No wonder some of us just don’t want to get involved.

LBC’s James O’Brien tweeted recently that we “need to find a better way” when it comes to on-air debates about politics and racism. He’s right, but he could actually do something about it; the solution doesn’t lie in some complex, abstract, undiscovered formula. It only requires the insistence from broadcasters that these issues are discussed in a calm, rational and respectful manner.

The timing of the launch of these platforms, famed for igniting on exactly the kinds of conversations I seek to avoid, has always made me curious about the true intention behind them. Talkradio and The Pledge both launched or relaunched mere months before the EU referendum; LBC, which had been veering further to the right for years, recruited Nigel Farage as a host in 2017 – to both great success and outrage.

Seasoned broadcast insiders, most of whom do not have to worry about choosing between tokenism and erasure as they go about their work, view these examples as evidence of an evolving industry, of ingenuity even. Writing for the New Statesman on the rise of British “shock jocks”, Roger Mosey, the former head of BBC Television news, claimed that “it would be churlish not to applaud LBC’s entrepreneurship, and its casting of a boulder into the calm water of radio”. I’d argue that it’s churlish to pretend that these “debates”, successful though they may be in terms of listener numbers, contribute anything meaningful to society.

Recruiting and amplifying bigoted pundits is an editorial choice, not a licence-fee requirement. When producers insult and shut out potential contributors for politely disagreeing with their show’s ethos – as I have experienced myself – it reflects a professional behaviour that has developed under a system which internalises prejudice and exclusion. When broadcasters message writers, journalists or activists of colour, or of the LGBT+ community, or any marginalised professional, and ask for free labour barely minutes before they go on air, they are showing very little of the commitment to refreshing and opening public debate that they often espouse.

Times Radio may well be a breath of broadcasting fresh air, but I won’t be holding mine.