This Unfair Age Barrier

Press Gazette Online
Posted 14 November 2002 00:00 GMT

The media are currently taking part in a campaign to find the employers who make the best use of the skills, enthusiasm and experience of older workers. The campaign will culminate next month during Age Positive Week when, at a glittering dinner, a national winner will be chosen from regional finalists.

It is an excellent initiative, designed to celebrate those firms that ignore outdated age stereotypes and employ and promote people simply on their merits. All those taking part should be congratulated. But the newspaper and broadcasting industries should not be surprised if their participation raises a wry smile among some of their own older staff and freelances.

There is no doubt that many media professionals on the wrong side of 40 believe their skills are undervalued. Their complaints over the media’s obsession with youth, not just as an audience but in whom they employ, have increasingly surfaced in the columns of newspapers and magazines, including

Press Gazette. As one seasoned writer stated: “There appears to be an inalienable belief that the paper which gets the youngest editor or the TV station that can produce an executive scarcely out of Pampers has achieved a magnificent coup.” Or as another journalist, writing about his fruitless 10,000 mile odyssey in search of a staff job at the age of 55, after 30 years in the business, said, editors seem scared to deal with those people with more experience than themselves.

Age discrimination in media employment has been well highlighted. Less well documented, however, has been age discrimination in media freelancing - a career direction embarked upon by many a journalist over 50 when pushed out of their office to make way for youth - or, if among one of the luckier ones, when lured out of full-time employment by an attractive pension plan or redundancy settlement.

While freelancing undoubtedly works well for some, a three-year study of freelance media working I’ve just completed emphasises the obstacles these journalists and broadcasters face. It highlights how media industry managers continually undermine the vast experience accumulated by their oldest freelances; how those with the power to hire freelances much prefer to do so through word of mouth and how this makes it harder and harder for the oldest freelances to be sufficiently in touch with the current group of commissioners to secure work.

Older freelances are more likely to earn less, receive less on-the-job training and network less than younger groups. Unsurprisingly, they’re vulnerable to diminishing sources of work. One survey of freelance journalists found that the youngest and oldest ‘enjoyed’ the lowest financial rewards. Low earnings were reported as common for professionals approaching retirement age. Those aged 55 to 65 years were the most likely age group to earn less than £10,000 a year.

One older freelance producer-director was turned down by a major TV channel because his “visual style” was seen as old-hat. His years of success as a presenter, writer, producer and director were now proving a handicap. “It’s almost like you’re posthumous,” he says.

Another freelance in his 60s feels he still has a great deal to offer as a press photographer, but had lost touch with his regular sources of work during an illness. On recovery, he was sceptical of finding more work. “I’ve now got to a stage when I’m rather nervous of walking into [my former Fleet Street newspaper] and saying: ‘Hi, do you remember me?’” He felt they were more likely to say: “Never heard of you” or “You’re too old” than “Welcome back”.

Until now, there has been little these journalists and broadcasters could do about ageist attitudes. Before long, though, they will get the chance to test their cases in court. It means those newspapers and broadcasters who gave so much attention to the case of Sharon Haugh - the 56-year-old investment banker suing City fund management house Schroders in the US courts for age discrimination - may soon find themselves on the wrong end of both the law and the headlines.

The Government’s promise to introduce by 2006 a law to ban age discrimination will open the way for such court action to be taken here in the UK, broadly bringing ageism into line with the employment law protection already given on grounds of race, gender and disability. It will affect private and public sector employers, professional organisations and providers of training and careers guidance.

Our courts will entertain cases of indirect as well as direct discrimination, not only from employees but from the self-employed and unemployed. Crucially, it will be up to employers to prove that they have not discriminated, rather than for individuals to bear the burden of proof.

There will be loopholes, of course, for positions or practices that can be clearly justifiable. But it may be difficult for the media industry to find genuine and legitimate reasons for the way the over-50s have been marginalised.

And UK media companies don’t have to look as far as investment banking to see what the future may hold. For the comments of many older journalists and broadcasters bear a striking resemblance to the many allegations that form part of the large-scale class action already launched by Hollywood writers against US TV companies. The Hollywood class action is a serious case. The publicity in the US press has been extensive and, if the litigants win, the legal compensation could run into many millions of dollars. The legal case began in October 2000 when lawyers filed a single suit in the federal court, naming TV networks, studios and talent agents. The writers claim these outfits have engaged in a pattern or practice of refusing to hire or represent them because of their age.

“If the stereotypes had been directed against women or members of a racial group, everyone would be up in arms,” says the lead counsel involved in the case. “Numerous powerful figures in Hollywood apparently believe, however, that directing such comments against older writers is not only legal, but unquestionable.”

To believe the over-50s represent a vast, uniform forest of ‘dead wood’ is to ignore the rich experience and individual track records this generation can bring to their writing and broadcasting. It is to ignore the ageing society in which we live, and which the media need to reflect.

Importantly too, it is to misunderstand the way working practices in media organisations systematically discriminate - often indirectly - against older workers. As the UK’s new law on age discrimination in employment goes through the consultative and parliamentary process, wise media employers in this country may give this some pause for thought.

Dr Kerry Platman is a research fellow at the Open University Business School specialising in age and employment issues. Her latest publication is The Price of Freedom: The myths and realities of the portfolio career for experienced, older professionals.

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