Cooking the books
So is the BBC a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Church of England or god’s favorite offspring or what? What’s it playing at?
The BBC has been forced to apologise to an acclaimed psychologist and writer after editing her derogatory comments about religion so that a radio programme broadcast “the opposite” of what she had said…[Dorothy] Rowe, best known for her work on depression, had attempted to comment on the subject proposed by the programme’s producer: “Why so many people want to believe in God and search for faith.” But she was aghast to hear how her words were eventually used…She said the interview “sounds like I am giving unqualified praise to religious belief. There is no mention of what I talked…about at length, that religious belief can cause immense misery. I often summarise this with: ‘The church keeps me in business’.”
What happened…someone’s foot slipped and all the critical parts got accidentally erased?
The row has provided ammunition for secular critics who accuse the BBC of using its programmes to promote religion. Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, who was interviewed for the same programme as Rowe, said: “I gave a long interview, but when I listened to the finished product it contained just a couple of very brief soundbites from me which were not representative of the thoughts I had expressed…This programme was the most blatant piece of religious propaganda I have heard for a long time.”
Sad, isn’t it. The god-huggers want the rest of us to shut up about god, so they start distorting the evidence, so we get more irritated than we were before, so we make more noise, so they even more desperately want us to shut up, so they distort the evidence in even more brazen (and stupid) ways, and round we go.
You sound surprised, Ophelia. You must know by now that religion has only deceit on its side.
I prefer the cockup theory – that the article was created by a Religion Editor, whose role is expected to assume some form of sympathy with the religion under discussion.
No way Australia’s equivalent of the BBC could produce christian apologia except in the Religion sandbox, and I understand the culture is pretty similar over at the BBC.
Eric, yes but the fact that religion has only deceit on its side does not mean that anyone is obliged to use deceit to help religion.
Chrisper – so you acknowledge no difference between deceit and ‘sympathy’? Naturally you prefer the cockup theory, because you have lots of ‘sympathy’ for religion, but the cockup theory is precisely why I asked the mocking question about the foot slipping. It’s unlikely that even a sympathetic religion editor could accidentally omit all the disobliging parts of an interview.
Yes, and? My point is only that the BBC AS A WHOLE is not promoting religion at all, merely catering to its constituency under its Charter. The bullshit part you have ably described is the responsibility of an individual, who has done a Bad Job.
But ChrisPer, for your take on this to actually absolve the BBC of institutional responsibility, the radio show producer in question’s “bad job” would have to have been a personal decision to distort these interviews to promote religion, rather than the producer doing the job as it was expected he or she would do it. But that directly contradicts your own comments about the “culture” of media organizations which accepts (and therefore tacitly endorses) shoddy journalism and uniformly pro-religion propaganda from those who cover religious issues. If this really were a single person’s bad job for which that person is wholly responsible, then the BBC would be obligated to fire that person for this violation of even the most minimal standard of journalistic integrity, wouldn’t they?
But the BBC didn’t fire Christine Morgan (executive producer religion and ethics department) over this, and I’d bet good money that Ms. Morgan has not fired and will not fire any of her subordinates (such as the show’s actual producer) over this either – because you were right the first time: Large media organizations do treat coverage of religion with different standards. Instead of journalistic standards based at least loosely on attempts at accuracy and corroboration and avoiding blatant distortion, the standards of religion coverage are “Don’t rock the boat; don’t piss off the god-botherers; and never, ever tell the bald truth.”
Even if I’m exaggerating – and I really don’t think I am – what matters is that you can’t have it both ways. If in fact it is part of what you refer to as the “culture” of the BBC as an organization that the religion desk is expected and allowed to violate standards of journalism – and, for that matter, standards of simple honesty – to present uniformly positive views of religion in general and Christianity in particular, then the BBC as a whole sure as hell is promoting religion. I don’t see any plausible middle ground here: Either the BBC is a respectable media organization which FIRES PEOPLE who broadcast blatant distortions and lies in the service of some sociopolitical agenda, or it is a willing and active propaganda service for that agenda.
Your assertion that somehow the BBC can employ lying propagandists and give them the airwaves to propagandize without actually being responsible for that propaganda is, at best, unsupported and rather obtuse. But you can still convince me: Find me the part of the BBC’s Charter (which you brought up) that says or implies that “catering to its constituency” permits blatant lying. Even advertisers theoretically aren’t permitted to directly mislead the public under English law, but your stance seems to be that the BBC is encouraged – or at least permitted – to do so as long as its lies constitute “catering to a constituency.” I have doubts about that.
I agree with the points you make, G, but I think, if you look at religious journalism, that most of it depends on some kind of deceit. I’m sorry, but I don’t there is a respectable form of religious journalism. I just finished reading something by George Pitcher in the Telegraph, about George Carey having said something intelligent, for once, and it’s the most one-sided piece of commentary that I’ve read for a long time.
Just like the Andrew Brown pieces – because he was called on the facts, and then issued another statement on why he had ignored them! – that we discussed for so long. Religion depends, essentially, on misrepresentation. So, if you’re going to have a department of your newspaper or TV network called ‘religious affairs’, it’s going to be, and cannot help being, duplicitous, at least, if you’re not going to piss off your constituency. No one may be obliged to use deceit to help religion, but if you’re going to publish ‘religious news’ for religious people, then you’re going to tell lies. And it’s really just as simple as that, as I see it. Of course, it doesn’t need to be as glaring as it was in the BBC piece in which people were quoted to complete opposite effect to what they intended. That’s carrying it to extremes. But still, it’s not surprising.
But just reporting something that the pope says, for example, may be done with perfect objectivity, but by reporting it in a context which is overloaded with significance, for, after all, its the pope you’re quoting, is already to misrepresent in a none too subtle way.
The Andrew Brown piece, though, was at Comment is Free. I really wonder if he would have been able to do that – and if he would have done it in the first place – in the paper itself. I think probably not, though I’m not sure. My guess though is that the sense of an editor breathing over one’s shoulder inhibits wild paraphrases like the one Brown allowed himself and then defended on CiF.
I only recently purchased a radio-alarm and thus, like seemingly every celebrity interviewed in newspapers, wake up to the Today programme. It’s in a bit of an odd mixed-up magazine-style but is an enjoyable enough programme, except that, including of course TfTD, it does seem to promote conservative religious views quite openly.
After the Pope’s comments about homosexuality and the environment I awoke to two women essentially agreeing wholeheartedly with his views, one of whom hoped that, I paraphrase, ‘the world would listen’. It’s quite a blatant lack of balance.
… the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labelled as being 3000 years old,… that is … a proper university.
The only way children get morals {is} from religion…you actually need God in order to be moral.
Today the theory of evolution is …open to doubt…
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, …design, … purpose, … evil and … good, not… blind pitiless indifference.
Taken from various writings by Richard Dawkins.
Heehee.
G, you are making stuff up just as much as the offending article was. The hysterical claim that I said the BBC escapes responsibility for employing lying propagandists and giving them the airwaves yada yada is tripe.
I contrasted the overblown claim that the BBC was a ‘wholly-owned subsiduary of the Church of England’ with ‘A Religion reporter wrote a Bad Work’. We note that the opening sentence of the quote is ‘The BBC has been forced to apologise’, which means it recognised the piece did not meet their standards even for religion reporting and acted to correct the situation. It has not sought to escape the responsibility of the institution.
Now chrisper – it wasn’t a claim, it was a question, a rather obviously rhetorical and hyperbolic question. (I don’t actually think the BBC is god’s favorite offspring, so it seems a safe bet that I don’t think it’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of the C of E, either.)
I do wish I had better opponents.
If you think I am an opponent, you really do need better-quality ones. I am that far more humble species, the foolish admirer hanging around hoping some glamour rubs off on him.
Mmph!
Flattery will get you everywhere!
Heehee.