Too many ethnic minority faces on TV: BBC Asian chief

London, Jun 26 (UNI) BBC's non-executive director Samir Shah has accused the corporation of rampant ''tokenism'' in their programming saying there are too many ethnic minority faces on TV.

The former head of current affairs at the BBC said these programmes created an ''inauthentic representation of who we are''.

His comments came after Equalities Minister Harriet Harman announced plans to make it legal for a company to promote a black or female candidate over an equally-qualified white man.

Dr Shah said one of the ''odder and plain daft outcomes'' of equal opportunities was over-compensation but genuine problems of discrimination against minorities were not addressed by such tokenism.

''I don't know if there is any systematic data on this but I think we can all agree that there is no shortage of black and Asian reporters and presenters around these days-- especially on news programmes,'' the Daily Mail quoted Dr Shah as saying.

He cited research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission which suggested that even ethnic minorities were embarrassed by the ''plethora of brown faces they see on the screen''.

''I don't think that such over-representation is a brilliant idea. True equality is irrelevant what colour you are,'' he added.

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