Changing lives and attitudes


Former George Viner scholarship winner Ann-Marie Abbasah celebrates the George Viner bursaries as they turn 30


S


hajan Miah’s life was changed by an NUJ George Viner Memorial Fund (GVMF) scholarship. Now he is trying to ensure that the lives of other black and ethnic minority journalists are changed for the better too.


At the ceremony for the 30th anniversary of the awards,


bestowed on talented aspiring black and ethnic minority journalists, Miah spoke about his work to tackle the inequality in our industry and how he helps young people learn journalism skills. Employed as a BBC Sport digital journalist, Miah helps promote inclusion and diversity through the BBC Sport BAME Advisory Group which he co-chairs. “A lot of the time I speak to new joiners, they feel how I did


when I first joined. It’s awkward – there are not many people like them,” he said in his speech. “So I created a space where they can come and talk. I


managed to get some money out of my department so they [the new staff] can do some filming and bring back some of those stories that were not being covered by BBC Sport. We’ve managed to cover lots of great stories – the first black referee, for example.” During a career break, Miah went to Bangladesh and set up


an organisation that has so far helped young people from 190 schools to learn journalism skills. He added: “My sister died aged 12 and is buried in Bangladesh. It’s always been something in my mind to help the young people of Bangladesh.” During the past two years, Miah’s focus has been geared


towards helping young people in England and he has been busy working with schools and colleges, writing scripts and developing bite-size lesson plans. He thanked the GVMF for enabling him to help others. “The George Viner scholarship changed my life,” he explained. “It got my foot in the door.” Since 1986, the fund, which became a registered charity in


1989, has been helping others do that. It has enabled more than 170 students get their foot in the door of the media industry by providing financial assistance for them to study for a recognised journalism qualification. Former scholars work as staff and freelances in all parts of


10 | theJournalist


the media, including newspapers, public relations, broadcasting, book publishing, magazines and online. Jim Boumelha, who chairs the GVMF board of trustees and is a member of the NUJ’s national executive council, explained how the initiative began. “It has its deep roots in discrimination, lack of equal opportunity and plain racism over the years,” Boumelha said. “The first pioneers of black journalists fought within the union for the kind of barriers that make it difficult for black students to come into journalism to be eliminated.” This sense of injustice that triggered the formation of the


GVMF was further supported by Dr Beulah Ainley’s research carried out in the mid to late 1990s. Dr Ainley observed that there were between 10 and 20 black journalists employed at any one time by national papers out of a then total workforce of 3,000.


In her study Black Journalists, White Media, Dr Ainley wrote: “The problem is even greater in provincial papers, a bastion of English racism. There are only 15 black journalists out of 7,000. This is less than one per cent, and black people in


Help up a mountain


LITTLE DID I expect to be in the audience at this year’s George Viner Memorial Awards fighting back tears. It was the fault of The


Observer’s chief leader writer, Sonia Sodha, who tapped into my experience. A 2014-15 George Viner


scholar, I completed my NCTJ training, gained experience at the BBC and The Guardian, and got a job as a reporter on a regional paper. But people didn’t look or


sound like me or come from a working-class background as I did. “When you look at


headline statistics for the proportion of BAME journalists, what they don’t’ tell


you about is class background,” said Sodha. I am a cockney and I was


ill prepared for being judged. Cockneys are stereotyped as being uneducated, poor and unintelligent. Add being a black woman, in her late 30s and new to the industry and you get the gist of the mountain I had to climb. Perhaps if I had sounded more middle class and, as


Sodha said, had similar “cultural points of reference” as middle-class journalists, I might have got further. Maybe I needed more talent, skill and experience. I am now press officer for the United Reformed Church and love it. Gaining the scholarship


felt like winning the lottery. I achieved a long-held dream to write stories people read because the George Viner trustees believed in me. Five years on, NUJ people


are still giving me chances. Back in 2015, The Journalist’s editor, Christine Buckley, asked me to write a Starting Out column. Who did she ask four years on to write this feature? Moi. Thanks to the George Viner Memorial Fund, I’ll never stop being a journalist.


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