A COLLECTIVE of over 100 black professionals have renewed a call for a 24-hour boycott of the BBC over its use of the N-word.

The InfluencHers, a group of professional British women of African and Caribbean origin, is calling for the public here and abroad to join them this Wednesday (August 19) for what it calls BBC Black Out Wednesday, starting at 9am for 24 hours.

Details of the event were posted on Twitter this morning.

Language

BBC Black Out Wednesday follows the decision to broadcast the language in a report on a racially motivated hit-and-run attack in Bristol.

The report originally aired on the regional service Points West before being repeated on the main BBC News channel.

Reporter Fiona Lamdin, repeated the language allegedly shouted during the attack. 

The BBC said it wanted to report the word allegedly used in the attack, and this decision was supported by the family of the victim.

However the decision prompted  18,000 complaints to Ofcom and there have been calls for an apology.

It also led to the resignation of BBC 1Xtra presenter Sideman who said  in a post on Instagram that the BBC’s decision to defend the broadcast  “feels like a slap in the face of our community”.

BBC Black Out Wednesday is calling for the resignations of BBC Directors of News and editorial policy who were involved in sanctioning the use of the N-word in an on air broadcast, compensation for DJ Sideman and the employment of external race advisers by the BBC. 

Trauma

The flyer for the event posted on Twitter this morning said: “BBC’s actions caused trauma and could be considered a hate crime! If they can’t hear, they must feel!”

In an open letter published last week InfluencHers said: “We are asking all allies to join the boycott. We are asking everyone in the UK and around the world to not access any BBC content i.e. TV, radio, online and social media platforms.

The group also wants to see the removal of David Jordan, director of editorial policy and standards, and Fran Unsworth, director of news, “for repeatedly bringing the BBC into disrepute and causing trauma, alarm, distress and humiliation to the public, and violating the dignity of Black staff by creating an offensive, degrading and humiliating working environment”. 

Mistake

Last week in a statement, the BBC’s director-general Lord Tony Hall said: “Every organisation should be able to acknowledge when it has made a mistake. We made one here.”

In a email to all BBC staff, Hall wrote: “It should be clear that the BBC’s intention was to highlight an alleged racist attack. This is important journalism which the BBC should be reporting on and we will continue to do so.

“Yet despite these good intentions, I recognise that we have ended up creating distress amongst many people.

“The BBC now accepts that we should have taken a different approach at the time of broadcast and we are very sorry for that. We will now be strengthening our guidance on offensive language across our output.”