BBC staff will be given diversity lessons to stop 'microaggessions' in bid to make corporation more welcoming to black programme makers

Pictured: Spineless Cuckold

• Piers Wenger has been in ‘discussion’ about how to remove 'unconscious bias’
• £250k-a-year Drama Commissioning Controller said it was now 'ground zero'
• Told Edinburgh TV Festival now is ‘the moment where we have to get it right’
• Executive staff are being advised to have unconscious bias training, reports say

The BBC’s drama boss has vowed to get rid of inadvertent instances of racism known as ‘microagressions’ among staff at the Corporation.

Piers Wenger told the Edinburgh TV Festival that he has been in ‘deep discussion’ about how to ‘eradicate unconscious bias’ to help improve the representation of ethnic minorities.

The £250k-a-year Drama Commissioning Controller said it was now ‘ground zero’ and ‘the moment where we have to get it right’.

His comments come amid reports that executive staff at the BBC are being advised to have unconscious bias training to make sure they don't inadvertently offend anyone, according to The Times.

The BBC’s drama boss Piers Wenger (centre in 2017) has vowed to get rid of inadvertent instances of racism known as ‘microagressions’ at the Corporation

Mr Wenger said: ‘It’s also the role of commissioners to really get it right because we know that we are at the very beginning of the process.

'If talent isn’t being protected and nurtured and empowered, if ethnic minority stories aren’t making their way on to screens then we have a big part to play in that.’

He added: ‘Over the last few months as a department we’ve been in deep discussion around how to eradicate unconscious bias and microaggressions.

‘We just can’t deny that those things exist.’

A microaggression is a remark or action which unintentionally reveals a prejudice towards a minority group, such as asking someone: ‘So where are you really from?’

Mr Wenger said that he wanted the BBC to be ‘radical’ and it was ‘the moment to act’. He added in recent months people had been trying to ‘drill down into the...

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