...ALONG WITH THE GENDER GAP, THERE’S A DIVERSITY GAP TOO
THE BBC was facing a race row last night after it emerged Chris Evans earned approximately the same as all the Corporation’s best-paid non-white stars put together.
The Radio 2 host gets up to £2.25million from the licence fee, while the black and ethnic minority presenters who made the ‘rich list’ jointly took home up to £2.24million.
There were just ten black and minority ethnic stars on the list of the broadcaster’s 96 top earners, and they tended to be on its bottom rungs.
The ‘rich list’ revealed that there is still as shortage of top-paid minority stars 16 years after former director general Greg Dyke described the BBC as ‘hideously white’.
Race relations campaign group the Runnymede Trust last night accused the BBC of operating a ‘pay gap’ which is ‘unfair to both women and ethnic minorities’.
Dr Omar Khan, a trust director, said the BBC risked losing ‘an even greater audience share from Britain’s ethnic minorities’.
Earlier this year media regulator Ofcom’s chief executive Sharon White urged the BBC to do more to ‘broaden its talent pool. The highest-paid non-white star among the BBC’s top earners was George Alagiah on up to £300,000. Moira Stuart, who reads the news on Radio 2, was on up to £200,000.
Chris Evans turned to his mother Minnie, 91, for advice on how to respond to the backlash over his salary.
He said yesterday she advised him to ‘earn what you can, when you can’.