BBC: Church steps up gay rights attack. Or maybe not.
There’s a BBC article on their website entitled: “Church steps up gay marriage attack”.
Here’s a snippet:
The Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti, has written to every parish in Scotland, urging all Catholics to oppose the planned legislation.
Gosh I didn’t know this was “planned legislation” but thought it was planned for consultation. Am I wrong? Does the BBC know something we don’t?
Anyway, I digress.
Interestingly, this article began life with a different headline:
Did you notice the difference? Originally the article was entitled: “Church steps up gay rights attack”. Isn’t that revealing? Not only is ‘gay marriage’ planned legislation; but was originally already considered a ‘gay right’ by the BBC.
It’s all in the phrasing isn’t it. This could have been entitled: “Church set to defend the sanctity of marriage”, or some such; but no, the Church is on the “attack”.
Good ol’ BBC. Anyone would think they have an agenda…..
Tags: Christianity, Church Life, Media
October 9th, 2011 at 10:51 pm
Great minds indeed
October 14th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
The BBC it just thinks the centre of British politics is somewhere to the pink side of the Guardian.. or more worryingly.. does it just want to ensure that’s where the centre is?
I’ve just come back from honeymoon in Barbados and when you’ve been out of the country for a couple of weeks you see it even more clearly just how one-eyed and biassed the BBC is and just how crazy this country is getting.. anyone for the Mayflower? (if only it weren’t going to America anyway…)
October 15th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Poor old BBC – They get accused of bias from both sides. The following appeared in the latest NSS newsleter:
We’re all in this together – except the BBC’s religion department
Editorial by Terry Sanderson
Last week the BBC announced how it intended to make the swingeing cuts to help it cope with the freeze in the TV licence fee.
In all the reports I saw, there was no mention of the religious propaganda department, which is based in Manchester and produces such wildly popular programmes as Thought for the Day, Pause for Thought, Songs of Praise and endless church services on BBC Radio 4. The last time we checked, using a Freedom of Information request, this department was gobbling up £10 million of licence-payers’ money each year.
The BBC has said it intends to concentrate much more of its resources on serving the popular audience of BBC1 and cutting down the more highbrow output of BBC2. Many of us will be relieved that Radio 4, the jewel in the talk radio crown, is to remain ring-fenced.
But what of religious affairs? Given that the BBC’s own research repeatedly shows that religious programmes are the least watched, valued or appreciated on TV, why is the religious affairs department apparently untouched?
Commercial TV was given permission by Ofcom to abandon religious programming when it showed that it was economically unsustainable. Advertisers simply wouldn’t buy time in the ad breaks because they knew no-one was watching.
The BBC is in a slightly different position. It is a public service broadcaster, charged with serving the whole community with its many and varied needs.
There is room for some religion on the BBC, of course. Songs of Praise serves a purpose for some elderly or disabled people who can’t get to church (although having watched a recent edition, I would argue with the BBC’s claim that it is not an hour of blatant Christian proselytising).
Before the BBC starts to cut programmes that are valued and enjoyed and will reach a significant audience, it should urgently rethink the big, expensive department that mostly broadcasts its stuff into a vacuum.
There’s no pleasing people….
October 15th, 2011 at 10:18 pm
A life-long friend of mine has worked for the BBC for the last 25 years. He genuinely believes that the BBC is impartial and balanced. He is typical of many of their staff – lives in a nice West London suburb, has mildly liberal-left views, asumes all right- (=left) thinking people think like him, and they all talk among themselves and convince themselves that’show everyone thinks.What I’m getting at is that the prejudice is largely unintentional and even unknowable. A very senior and eminent BBC journalist I talked to about this – terribly pleasant chap – said: ‘Oh we don’t just decide our viewpoint ourselves: we talk to our friends….’ He was genuinely oblivious to the fact that his (and his colleagues’) firends might not be a balanced cross-section of society.