Do Black British Audiences Really Want Better Media Or Do They Just Want to Feel Like They Do?
I am not a respectability politician, if you follow me on twitter you will know that I love my reality TV, I love the Real Housewives and I like a bit of gist. I am entirely human in that way and I have absolutely no shame about it. Entertainment is entertainment and as long as it is not harmful it is absolutely fine to engage with those types of shows. With that being said I want to have an honest conversation about Black British media consumption. People share posts about the importance of independent Black British media and mourn platforms and publications when they fold. People retweet threads about supporting Black journalists and holding space for serious, long-form, culturally specific content and and then people go and spend forty-five minutes on Shade Borough. That is not a criticism it is an observation. Shade Borough has the numbers and the engagement is real, it is a tabloid platform which serves a purpose for those who consume it. Meanwhile some of the more balanced Black British media platforms that undertake real cultural commentary and community-rooted storytelling are no longer with us like Blvck Canvas. Partly because of capacity, partly because the audience that said it wanted them was not actually showing up consistently enough to sustain them. Thankfully others like The Black Circle Podcast still exists but perhaps not as popular engagement wise as The Your Aunties Could Never Podcast for example.
The Daily Mail, a mainstream tabloid remains one of the highest ranked online publications for clickthroughs in this country and the Black community visits it too. They know we do which is why they cover stories from Black British, Black Caribbean and Black African communities. They follow the traffic. So let us be objective, since we are here: what are the numbers actually telling us about what Black British audiences want?
The Respectability Politics of Media Preferences
Here is where it gets interesting. There is a version of this conversation that is really about respectability politics dressed up as media criticism. Some people are not uncomfortable with gossip content because it is harmful, they are uncomfortable with it because of what they think it says about us in front of a white audience. That is a completely different concern and it deserves to be named as such. Mainstream media has tabloids, it has gossip, it has reality television and celebrity feuds and clickbait headlines and all of it is consumed in enormous quantities by people who publicly claim they only read longform journalism. The existence of light, entertaining, personality-driven content in Black British media is not evidence of a community failing itself. It is evidence of a community behaving exactly like every other community on the planet.
The question worth asking is not whether gossip content should exist because it should and it will regardless. The question is whether we are also creating the conditions for serious, independent, community-rooted Black British journalism to survive alongside it. Right now in my opinion the honest answer is that we are not doing enough.
What Is Actually Happening to Independent Black British Media
The talent is unquestionably there. There are Black British journalists writing for the Guardian, the Independent, iNews and when they put pen to paper, the work is excellent. The issue is that those institutions hold the keys. They decide who gets commissioned, who gets the platform, who gets the reach. When it comes to the Black British media landscape; Black Ballad, the Voice, the Community Reporter, Blackcurrent News - platforms that exist outside of those gatekeeping structures they survive against a fragile backdrop with the pressures of advertising revenue and engagement.
More people are consuming their news and commentary through TikTok and Instagram Reels than through verifiable outlets. Media literacy is in a difficult place right now across the board which is not unique to Black British communities but it has specific implications for a community that has historically been misrepresented, underreported and actively harmed by mainstream media narratives. When independent Black British media shrinks, we lose the platforms most likely to tell our stories accurately, critically and with genuine investment in our communities. The mainstream does not fill that gap.
I have been working in PR and communications for a long time and I want to share something that rarely makes it into these conversations about Black British media. Getting stories about Black British people, Black British businesses and Black British communities placed in mainstream media outlets is still a negotiation that requires significantly more justification than it should. Pitching a story about a Black British entrepreneur, a community initiative or a cultural moment to a mainstream newsdesk involves explaining its relevance in ways that would never be required for a comparable story about a white subject. The assumption of universal interest simply does not extend to us in the same way and anyone working in PR who tells you differently is either very new to this industry or not being straight with you. This matters for the media consumption conversation because it reveals something important about what the mainstream is actually willing to offer us. We are not just passive consumers making imperfect choices, we are audiences being actively underserved by institutions that will cover our communities selectively, sensationally and on their own terms. The gap between what Black British audiences say they want and what they actually consume is real. The gap between what mainstream media is willing to provide and what our communities actually need is equally real and it gets far less scrutiny.
Independent Black British media exists to some extent, to fill a void that the mainstream created and continues to maintain. Understanding that context changes the conversation about whether we are supporting it adequately. It is not just a question of taste or attention spans, it’s a question of what happens to our communities when the platforms telling our stories on our terms cannot survive. From my perspective, in the current attention economy, being serious or “boring” is genuinely harder to monetise than being entertaining. Algorithms reward engagement, and engagement frequently rewards provocation, personality and brevity over depth, nuance and complexity.
Black creators and journalists doing serious work are navigating a system that was not designed to reward what they are building. Expecting them to compete on the same terms as content engineered purely for clicks and then questioning why the numbers do not match up, is not a fair assessment. It is a convenient way of avoiding the harder question about what we as an audience are actually prepared to do. If independent Black British media is going to survive and there are real reasons to believe that it might not, then Black British audiences have to be honest about what survival requires from them: consistent consumption, engagement, financial support, subscribing and sharing content beyond our immediate circles and intentional showing up even when the algorithm has not pushed content onto our feeds.
For me this conversation is not just about media in the abstract, it’s relevant to every Black British professional, creator and entrepreneur trying to build visibility and communicate their work to an audience with specific and varied tastes. Understanding how your community actually consumes content, not how you wish they did or how they present themselves as consuming it is foundational to any serious personal branding strategy. Knowing the gap between stated values and actual behaviour is not cynicism, it is strategic clarity which allows you to show up in a way that is both authentic and genuinely effective. The most powerful and durable personal brands are not built on performing a version of yourself that looks respectable to the right people. They are built on showing up honestly, understanding your audience, and communicating your value in a way that actually lands. That principle applies to Black British media as much as it applies to your LinkedIn profile or your next speaking pitch.
The question I keep returning to is a simple one: what does the Black British community actually want from its media and are we willing to be honest enough about our own habits to have a real conversation about it? The talent exists and so do the stories! The platforms, when they have had space to breathe and genuine audience support, have been great. Whether we support them enough to let them survive is a question only we can answer. I will keep watching my reality TV. I will keep enjoying my gist with absolutely no apology and I will keep having this conversation too because both things can be true, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.