Dorothy Byrne
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Shaunagh talks to Dorothy Byrne
This episode features Channel 4's Editor at Large, Dorothy Byrne. Dorothy is an iconic figure in the world of broadcasting in the UK and is one of the longest-serving heads of commissioning in the television industry. She has been responsible for news and current affairs programmes that have had global and national impact, winning her numerous international Emmy, BAFTA and RTS Awards.
We chat about Dorothy being a single mum having to return to work five weeks after giving birth, we talk about her film on marital rape which proved a huge challenge to get commissioned and we delve into a hilarious quagmire Dorothy faced in an edit suite with two male colleagues.
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Credits
Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.
Episode transcript
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Shaunagh Connaire
Welcome to Media Tribe, the podcast that's on a mission to restore faith in journalism. I'm Shaunagh Connaire, an award-winning journalist with over 10 years of experience working for some of the biggest news outlets in the industry. Every week, I'm going to introduce you to some of the world's most respected journalists, filmmakers, and media executives. And you're going to hear the story behind the storyteller. You'll get a sense of the integrity and hard graft that's involved in journalism, and hopefully you'll go away feeling that this craft is worth valuing.
Dorothy Byrne
I had to go back to work. I didn't want to go back to work. Going back to work when your child is five and a half weeks old is awful.
Dorothy Byrne
When I first went back, I tried expressing milk in the toilet, and sometimes I would become so physically desperate for her, where I just thought I have to see her, I feel physically ill. And then I would have to ring her nanny and say, you've just got to bring her here because I have to hold onto her.
Shaunagh Connaire
My guest today is the iconic editor at large at Channel Four Television in the UK and chair of the Ethical Journalism Network, Dorothy Byrne. Dorothy Byrne, you're so welcome to the Media Tribe.
Dorothy Byrne
Thank you very much. I'm so happy to be here.
Shaunagh Connaire
I think the last time I saw you, Dorothy, might have been in Greece, maybe in the sun sipping wine at a certain wedding.
Dorothy Byrne
Oh yes. At a wonderful wedding. The only problem with that wedding was that my daughter attended it and it gave her the idea that when she gets married, she will also have a very expensive wedding. Whereas, I have suggested she might wish to elope.
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, I can imagine she did have a good time. There was a lot of Irish people, a lot of debauchery. It was certainly a good one. And I think putting journalists and people from [Candice Ligo 00:00:02:04] in the one room, with hindsight, was a wonderful idea, I would say.
Dorothy Byrne
Ah, it was an extraordinary idea. And I think we astonished the Greeks.
Shaunagh Connaire
Exactly, Dorothy. Listen, let's kickstart the interview. You have had, gosh, an illustrious career to say the least. You are editor at large at Channel Four, a woman, obviously, which is a very hard position to get into. I know you started in the eighties, but do you want to tell our audience about your career trajectory and how you landed in this position? Or fought for this position, I should say.
Dorothy Byrne
Well, I think I've been very fortunate in my career. I began, as people did in those days, on a local paper, the [Waltham Forest Guardian 00:02:56] and I worked my way up. I then went to the Northern Echo original newspaper, and then I joined Granada TV where I was the lowly journalist and researcher for Richard and Judy. And then I was lucky enough to get onto World in Action, which I believe was the best current affairs program at the time in the United Kingdom. At the time that I went to work on it, I was the only woman, which was quite strange. I can remember the first day thinking this feels odd, but it also feels vaguely familiar. And I realized I was in a room with all these men. It was the same feeling you get where you've accidentally walked into the gents toilet and it takes you a moment to realize, "Oh, I'm in the wrong place."
Dorothy Byrne
However, of course, I thought I was in the right place and I had a fantastic time there. There were some men who were from not just another century, but maybe from another era, perhaps the Jurassic Era, something like that. But there were some really fantastic people as well. And then I managed to become an editor and I moved to Channel Four and I became the head of news and current affairs.
Dorothy Byrne
So I think I have been very fortunate. Obviously, I think I'm good at my job, but I think a lot of women are good at their job or were good at their jobs and they didn't get on. And I think some people helped me in my career, both men and women. And I think for women to get on, they often need people to support them and sort of sponsor them a little bit. But I also think I had a lot of drive and people say, "How do you get into television journalism? How do you get on in television journalism?" And I say, "Well, you've got to have push and drive and you've got to keep going."
Shaunagh Connaire
I want to point out as well, Dorothy, that you are a mum. I think that's really important, and you're a single mum. I actually remember when I started at Channel Four Unreported World many years ago, I think it was 2012, and there was a tale going around at the time. I don't think I'd met you at this point, but I did hear that Dorothy Byrne had a baby and then was back in the office four hours later. That was the kind of story that was going around. And actually, Dorothy, at the time I said, "Oh my God, she sounds amazing. She's deadly." But actually, with hindsight, that was probably a dangerous thing for people to be saying because other women listening to that, younger women, think that that's what's expected.
Dorothy Byrne
Well, also, it wasn't true. I did go back to work when my child was five and a half weeks. But the reason that I did that is I was the editor of a program on ITV then, and I was freelance. So I had no maternity rights at all, I had to go back to work. I didn't want to go back to work. Going back to work when your child is five and a half weeks old is awful.
Dorothy Byrne
When I first went back, I tried expressing milk in the toilet and the toilet wasn't really a very nice toilet. The whole thing was just so horrible that after three days I just gave up. I thought, "I can't do it." Giving up breastfeeding your child, that is a big thing to give up. And sometimes, I would become so physically desperate for her, because bear in mind, I'd only had her five and a half weeks before, and I would get these waves, which were presumably hormonal waves, where I just thought, "I have to see her. I feel physically ill." And then I would have to ring her nanny and say, "You've just got to get in the car now and bring her here because I have to hold on to her."
Dorothy Byrne
So I didn't go back to work early because I was some driven Amazonian woman. I did it because in this country there are freelance women and there are more and more women and men having to work freelance, don't have proper maternity rights and proper maternity pay. And that's why I went back. Otherwise, I would love to have stayed at home.
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, I'm so glad we're talking about this, Dorothy, actually, because I do believe "the motherhood penalty" as they call it, is a real thing. And the fatherhood premium is also a real thing. I certainly can empathize in many ways in the sense that I felt I had to leave the world of freelancing when I, in my mind, thought it would be nice to have kids at some point. And you kind of have to leave your dream job because freelancing and no maternity leave, it's just not possible. So it is an area in our industry, which I really think needs to improve and people need to respect and see that. And actually, an ex-Channel Four, [inaudible 00:08:44] mentioned on our recording months ago that what she notices on the frontline when she is reporting, that you'll see lots of young women in their late twenties and thirties, but increasingly you don't see women in their late thirties because they've gone off to have babies and then they're kind of seen as redundant. I can certainly relate to that.
Shaunagh Connaire
So I love that we're having this conversation and whoever told me that bloody story, they were in the wrong and hopefully they're listening to this podcast now and we can correct that one.
Dorothy Byrne
And I think that whole thing as well, of helping women to get back into the workplace, is very important. When people look at CVs, they tend to look at women CVS and say, "Well then, she went off and did strange things." I say, "Well, that was because that was the only work she could get either part-time or when she wanted to get back into work." I have laughed that I started out with lots of women and then gradually they all disappeared. And the truth is, they disappear along the way because it just becomes so difficult.
Dorothy Byrne
But the other thing that happens, is that quite a number of women end up not having children who wanted children. Years ago, this specialist magazine for people in television broadcast did a survey of women in broadcasting. Now okay, it was a self-selecting survey, but they asked them if they had children. And I worked out that the rate of women having children in broadcasting based on this survey was lower than it was under the one child policy in China, because it was extraordinary how few women had had children and stayed in the industry.
Shaunagh Connaire
So I would love for them to do another survey. I don't think the situation has changed, personally. So hopefully, this is an area that we should look at further. Dorothy, I don't want to finish this question about your career trajectory without alluding to the fact that you might have a little bit of news that you... It can be an exclusive on the Media Tribe podcast, how lovely.
Dorothy Byrne
Oh, well, it has just been an announced, in fact, that I'm going to be the president of a women's college at Cambridge University. I should say I will carry on working in television as well, but it's a great honor. It will be very hard work. It's a new sphere for me, although I've always been very heavily involved in the education of young people in journalism. I think it's my opportunity to do something, to increase diversity and inclusion in British society. I think we have all been struck looking at the people rolled out as experts in this pandemic, by the number of let's be frank, posh white men who seem to be running the show. And many people would say, not very well. And I have made a joke, but it's actually not funny, that all the time that we haven't had enough PPE equipment to protect both patients and staff, the people running the show have had a surfeit of PPEs, that is, degrees from Oxford in politics, philosophy and economics.
Dorothy Byrne
And may I say, so have the journalists. So there we are with no PPE and one man with a PPE is interviewing another man with a PPE about the fact that none of the rest of us have got any PPE. And we really need to bring people from a much greater diversity of backgrounds into public life. People think that increasing diversity and inclusion is about giving a bit of a hand up to a few disadvantaged people. But actually, it's about saving our country because whatever you think, if Brexit is good or bad, I think we would all agree we need the very best people running the show. And we don't have the very best people running the show because traditionally, they have not gotten into these top universities, that is, people who are not from such a privileged background. So I really want to do something about that.
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, I couldn't think of a better president elect, Dorothy, in Cambridge. That's absolutely stunning news. And I know diversity is something that you personally have championed at Channel Four. And Channel Four, I mean, part of its DNA is diversity. I've always found it to be a brilliant place to work from that perspective.
Shaunagh Connaire
I'm so glad that we've kind of covered my two favorite topics, the motherhood penalty and posh white men running our industry, which they shouldn't. So that's a great massive tick there.
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Shaunagh Connaire
Dorthy, next question. It's kind of the bigger question within the interview, but is there a moment in your career that you're quite proud of? Maybe it's a story or a film or news report that's had impact.
Dorothy Byrne
Oh, I think there are many, and I ought to say that television is a communal activity and it's not one person alone who does a story. Also, I think people think it's one story which changes things. Actually, it's people campaigning, it's people standing up in Parliament, it's people writing articles and people making films all about that subject. So the first film that I ever produced on World in Action was about rape in marriage, which at that point was not a crime. And I hope that that helped to contribute to the fact that the law has been changed so it is now a crime. At the time that I did the film, I interviewed a woman where the only thing that her husband could be prosecuted with, was that he had bruised the inside of her thighs while raping her because he had the right to have sex with her, but he didn't have the right to bruise her legs. So that's something that I'm very proud of.
Shaunagh Connaire
I do believe when you pitched the story of marital rape that, I don't know if it was your executive or a senior, thought it wasn't a story. Can you kind of tell us a little bit more about that? And I guess the timing of when you were doing this, it gives you context as to what you were up against as a female journalist.
Dorothy Byrne
Well, this would have happened maybe in the early eighties and I was very excited. I had just become producer director on World in Action. I was only the second female researcher in the whole history of World in Action ever to be promoted from within the program to be a producer director. So I said that I wanted to do a film about rape in marriage. One man said, "It's not a story." And I said to him, "You're right. It's not a story. It's a national scandal." One man said it was more suitable for morning television. And I said, "Well, how can you talk about rape in morning television? A woman sitting there with her three-year-old child watching a searing exposee about rape in marriage? I don't think you're right, there."
Dorothy Byrne
And then finally one man said, "Well, I don't really see how you're going to be able to do this film because the women that you have found, I found women who were prepared to talk on camera, they don't have witnesses. So what you've got to do is you've got to get witnesses and also we need medical evidence. Really, we will need hospital reports that they were badly injured." And I said, "Hang on a minute. This is not Iran, where evidence of that nature is required to prove that a woman has been raped." And he said, "Well, you can't make it. You can't make it because you'll be libeling the husbands." And I said, "But the husbands did it. So there isn't a problem."
Dorothy Byrne
Anyway, I had to beg to be allowed to ring a lawyer from an outside firm, because at that point, that program used lawyers from outside firms, and having had three men be awful, I spoke to a man at the outside firm and I was ready for battle. And he said, "So, tell me what these women say." And I told him the stories, and he said, "That's appalling. In a libel case, who do you think the jury will believe?" And I said, "There isn't any doubt at all, they will believe the women." And he said, "Good, do it. And ring me and tell me when it's going out so I can watch it."
Shaunagh Connaire
Fantastic. So you've got it over the line. That's extraordinary access that women were willing to speak on camera about being raped. You wonder why women wouldn't come forward with allegations when people, men, make it so, so hard.
Dorothy Byrne
I think I admired those women so much that they were prepared to show their faces, to talk about being raped, but also obviously their husbands or ex-husbands could potentially have tracked them down and they'd lived in very frightening circumstances. I thought they were extraordinarily brave. I give a lot of talks at schools and children often ask who was the most inspirational person that you've met and interviewed. I interviewed Nelson Mandela and he was pretty inspirational, but actually the really brave and inspiring people who I've met, who are speaking out about terrible things that have been done to them, including rape and domestic violence, I think when I lay on my death bed, not for many a year I hope, I think it's probably those people I will think of.
Dorothy Byrne
I can remember as well. I did a program about domestic violence against men.
Shaunagh Connaire
Oh, I didn't know that. For World in Action again, Dorothy?
Dorothy Byrne
No, I did that for Dispatches.
Shaunagh Connaire
Ah, okay. I don't know this one at all.
Dorothy Byrne
I think it was maybe the first program of its sort, but maybe there were others, but there was such a brave police officer in it who had been a victim of his wife's violence. For him to speak out about that was so brave. And he said he would sit in the police station and sometimes the other police officers would talk about, "Oh, I went on a case and it was a man who said that his wife had beaten him," and they would laugh at how weak and useless this man was. And all the time, he was sitting there, himself the victim of terrible domestic violence by his wife, but he felt he couldn't say anything. So it's people like that who inspire me.
Shaunagh Connaire
Amazing. It's just so indicative of Channel Four's mantra and raison d'etre. I mean, you guys really have always, always pushed the boundaries and done stories that nobody else will touch. Let's call a spade a spade.
Shaunagh Connaire
So Dorothy, in case, I mean, I should hope our audience know all about Dispatches and Channel Four News and Unreported World at this point, but do you want to give maybe a headline as to what you guys stand for over there at Channel Four?
Dorothy Byrne
Well, Channel Four television is actually owned by the people of Britain, which even the BBC is not owned by the people of Britain. And I think most people don't realize that because we don't get any money from the British public. We get our money from advertising and a little bit from sponsorship of the lighter programs.
Dorothy Byrne
One of the things that we have been set up to do is to bring ideas into democratic debate and discussion, which otherwise would not get into the realm of public debate, so our aim is to be truly impartial just in the same way as the BBC is, but to talk about issues that perhaps they wouldn't talk about so much. And investigative journalism is very, very important to us, so we have Channel Four News. We're very lucky to have an hour of news a night. In the whole world, that is pretty unusual in democratic countries. A very high proportion of that is international.
Dorothy Byrne
We have a strand, Unreported World, which you yourself worked on so brilliantly, and that does what it says on the tin. It tells you stories that you wouldn't otherwise hear.
Dorothy Byrne
And then Dispatches is our investigative strand. And again, we would aim to do stories that either nobody else would do or that people might do in a different way.
Shaunagh Connaire
Gotcha. Well, that's summed it up really well. Just for American audience in case you're not familiar, but I know our audience will be familiar with Leaving Neverland, which I believe you commissioned, Dorothy, the exposee on Michael Jackson, which was on Channel Four and HBO over here.
Shaunagh Connaire
Dorothy... Oh, sorry. Go on.
Dorothy Byrne
Yeah. I was just want to say about Leaving Neverland, that it's very surprising that it was a UK broadcaster who got that underway. After Michael Jackson died, we sat there for months and months waiting for Americans to do an investigation into Michael Jackson because he was one of their own pedophiles. And it was only when we realized that they're not going to do it, that we set off and investigated him, and HBO came in with us and we did it together.
Shaunagh Connaire
And why do you think that is, Dorothy? Why do you think they shied away from that rather large expose?
Dorothy Byrne
This is a mystery to me. Were they afraid of his fans? Maybe. I don't know. I think you'd have to ask American broadcasters. Michael Jackson, obviously, has a lot of fans and they don't want to face up to the horrible truth about him, but you have to hear the truth.
Shaunagh Connaire
Yeah. Well, I find it extraordinary. Sometimes I walk into a shop over here in New York and you'll still hear his tunes being blasted out and I will leave the shop immediately. I just find it so offensive that people think it's okay to continue playing his music.
Shaunagh Connaire
Dorothy, last question. Always, well, tends to be a bit of a lighter one, but is there a crazy moment in your career that has never made it to air that you'd like to give us all the juicy details on right now?
Dorothy Byrne
Well, I think you know the answer to that. If it has never made it to air, there was a very good reason for it and I'm very sorry, but it won't be making it to air now. There are a few things that it's best kept quiet.
Dorothy Byrne
But one thing that I would say, which isn't a crazy thing, but something I used to do occasionally, I had to take my little girl around, sometimes, to edits at night, but here's a tip to people. One day, I was going to an edit and I heard that one man had said he was going to punch the other man in the face. And the other man said, "Will if he tries to come near me, I'll punch him in the face." And Hettie was three. And I said, "Hettie, I've got good news for you. You are coming out with me tonight and we're going to go to an edit suite and look at a film and I'll get you some nice things to eat." And she said, "Oh, that's lovely, Mommy."
Dorothy Byrne
I walked into the room and there were two men ready to punch each other. I could see it. And I said, "Hello, everybody. I'm afraid I couldn't get a babysitter," which was a lie, "so I brought my little girl with me." And she went, "Hello everybody." And these blokes just had to sit down and be quiet. So I think whenever you think that people are going to be really unpleasant to each other, maybe just find someone else's little girl or take her along. That was the worst incident, but there were other incidents where I thought this is going to get really unpleasant, bring a Hettie.
Shaunagh Connaire
Bring Hettie! I hope Hettie got a credit in that film.
Dorothy Byrne
The non-fight scenes, you know where they put on it, "fight scenes by non-fight scenes, Hettie Byrne."
Shaunagh Connaire
Oh, well, I would love to know who those men were, but I wont to ask you, I'm sure you won't tell me. You can tell me when I've stopped recording, but Dorothy, thank you so, so much for coming on the Media Tribe podcast, I should call you president-elect Byrne. You're kind of a magical figure in the world of broadcasting in the UK. And certainly all of us women look up to you. So thank you so much for coming on and for your time today.
Dorothy Byrne
Well, thank you. I really, really enjoyed it.
Shaunagh Connaire
If you like what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, that's very good news because I'm going to be dropping new shows every week and every month on my new Media Tribes Spotlight series. Also, if you haven't already, make sure to take a listen to previous shows with some legendary folk in the industry. And as ever, please, please, please, do leave me a rating and review as it really does help other people find this podcast.
Shaunagh Connaire
Finally, if you do have any guest suggestions, drop me a note on Twitter, I'm @Shaunagh, with a G-H, or @ShaunaghConnaire on Instagram. And again, that's with the G-H. Right, that's it. See you soon.
Shaunagh Connaire
This episode was edited by Ryan Ferguson.
