About this Event

While 94% of journalists in the UK are white, only 81% of British people identify as white. With a media industry so grossly bereft of representation, there is something insidiously wrong with the industry. It comes as no surprise that the (white) media invariably spews out harmful narratives about black people that only serve to reinforce racist tropes. On this panel we will consider: what it’s like to be black in journalism, obstacles to entry and progression in the industry, the plight of black writers pigeon-holed as racial commentators, and “whitesplaining”: the endemic commissioning of white journalists (over black journalists) to write about and explain black struggles they barely understand.





This panel event also serves as an interest meeting for anyone interested in joining the BME network’s platform for black students - Bristol is the New Black (BITNB). BITNB welcomes writing, videography and photography from black students around the City and the UK. We want to tell black stories honestly and with fresh perspective. To this end, we welcome journalism of all types - longform, shortform, photography and video - on what you want to write! If there’s a story that you believe needs to be told, we want to help you tell it your way!

Sign up to be one of our contributors here: https://goo.gl/forms/uVi5nFtBjWJJwomp1





Meet the panel:

Tshepo Mokena

Twitter: @tnm___

Tshepo Mokoena is UK editor of Noisey, VICE's music channel. She's worked as an editor on VICE.com, a critic, video producer and journalist on the Guardian Music team and used to blog before social media basically dwarfed that world. She loves a good hook and a comeback.



Stephen Bush

Twitter: @stephenkb

Stephen Bush is the special correspondent at the New Statesman, where he writes their political column and their daily morning email. Before joining the New Statesman, he worked at the Telegraph as an editorial assistant on the Comment Desk. He has written for the i, the Evening Standard, the Guardian, the Mirror, the FT and has made documentaries for the BBC.



Miranda Larbi

Twitter: @MirandaLarbi

Miranda Larbi is a fitness and lifestyle journalist for Metro.co.uk. She has previously worked for The Times and BuzzFeed. Her area predominantly covers health, wellness and fitness also writes a lot about race, especially surrounding mixed race identity. During her BA, she spent every holiday interning for free at every paper going but it was only during her MA (Newspaper Journalism at City) that she finally got her break – at the Camden New Journal.





Ikran Dahir

Twitter: Ikran

kran Dahir is a reporter at BuzzFeed UK covering social news. Since joining BuzzFeed in 2016, Ikran has reported on everything from Google Translate’s mistranslations to the latest viral star, as well as in depth interviews with the women fighting female genital mutilation. Prior to this, Ikran worked at London360 and studied Journalism at Brunel University.