Quote Originally Posted by Magpies1959 View Post
Newish Pie, I do not object to balance and diversity, as I said it is the 'supposed' balance and diversity I do not like. Where is the balance, when you always have at least one woman on pundit's panel, for a men's game of all the main sports, but barely a man in sight for the women's equivalents, and without wishing to upset the particularly sensitive to possible racist comments on here, in general those panels do seem to have a higher proportion of black people than white. This is not racist, just a fact. I like what they have to say in the main, as I do with the white panelists, but it just seems that, to be fair, all TV channels, not just the BBC, are going overboard in their attempts to be seen as balanced and diverse, and in doing so are anything but balanced certainly.

Also to make it quite clear I am not one of the, 'some people', that you describe in your response to my post. The addition of pundits to panels, from opposing countries/teams, of all races, colour and *** has given a new perspective to the way a game is seen.
Absolutely agree... non-UK pundits have been great, both in terms of football knowledge and different national perspectives. And I've tried to be careful - as I hope I always do - not to jump to uncharitable or unfair conclusions about people.

But I have to say that I find it a bit of an odd thing to get annoyed about. If - on the whole - they're pretty good panellists, though obviously we'll all have our favourites and anti-favourites. Representation is a tricky issue, especially when we're talking about small numbers of people on any one panel - usually the representation I'm most interested in is team perspective or lack thereof. I'm not clear why it would be an issue if most of a panel were black. It's certainly more noticeable, because we're much more used to panels being entirely or mostly white.

I think also there's context of historical under-representation. As the number of black players in the men's game increased, there wasn't a significant increase in the number of black journalists and pundits (or managers, but that's another story) There were no female pundits or commentators at all until very recently - though to be fair Sky did have women presenting the sports news. In that historical context, I think representation matters, and perhaps that's why we're now seeing what some might see as an over-correction.

But, again... I'm not sure why this matters, or why I'd feel strongly about it. Or why it would make me angry. Especially if we agree that there's been no loss in quality overall. Which I think tells us a lot.

To be fair... and I'm trying to be really fair and think about issues with over-representation - there is a habit in some TV dramas to have more diverse casting than the supposed setting. So... my brother lives in Brighton, and he's said that some of the TV series set in Brighton (mainly a couple of recent cop dramas) are significantly more racially diverse than Brighton is. Politically, he's to the left of me, so he's not racially motivated in that comment. He just finds it funny. Mainly he objects to the butchering of geography (chase sequences that make no sense etc). But again... I'm not seeing any change in quality of the production/acting... it's in the context of historial under-representation of diversity on TV and in access to particular roles, and I find it hard to get upset about.