BBC Accused of 'anti-Christian' Bias by Catholics

[Teddy Bear]

Naturally the BBC denies it, but they've also denied left-wing bias until Thompson recently admitted it was on a MASSIVE scale.

Catholic church accuses BBC of 'anti-Christian' bias
Britain’s most senior Catholic has accused the BBC of harbouring an institutional bias against “Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular”.

By Heidi Blake

Cardinal Keith O’Brien said the BBC’s news coverage is contaminated by “a radically secular and socially liberal mindset”.

The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh said the corporation’s intolerance of religion is equivalent to its “massive” political bias against the Conservatives in the 1980s.

He also accused the corporation of plotting a “hatchet job” on the Vatican in a documentary about clerical sex abuse on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.

Cardinal O’Brien believes that atheists like Professor Richard Dawkins are given a disproportionate amount of airtime while mainstream Christian views are marginalised.

He is also angered by a 15 per cent slump in religious programming over the past 20 years and believes the broadcaster should appoint a religion editor to address the decline.

He said: “This week the BBC’s director general [Mark Thompson] admitted that the corporation had displayed ‘massive bias’ in its political coverage throughout the 1980s, acknowledging the existence of an institutional political bias.”

“Our detailed research into BBC news coverage of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, together with a systematic analysis of output by the Catholic church, has revealed a consistent anti-Christian institutional bias.”

He added that insiders at the BBC had privately admitted that there is a cultural intolerance of Christianity at the corporation.

“Senior news managers have admitted to the Catholic church that a radically secular and socially liberal mindset pervades their newsrooms.

“This sadly taints BBC news and current affairs coverage of religious issues, particularly matters of Christian beliefs.”

Cardinal O’Brien joined calls by the Church of England for the BBC to appoint a religion editor to spearhead the corporation’s coverage of faith issues.

The Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester and the Church of England’s lead spokesman on communications, made the request last month in a submission to the BBC Trust’s ongoing review of BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 7.

He wrote: "We see no logical distinction between the genre of arts, science and business (all of which include reflecting and discerning between different opinions and perspectives, and have BBC editors) and that of religion.”

Cardinal O’Brien also voiced fears that the broadcaster will use a forthcoming documentary called Benedict –Trials of a Pope to humiliate the pontiff on the eve of his visit to Britain.

The programme, which charts the clerical child abuse crisis that has dogged the Catholic church, has been made by Mark Dowd, a homosexual former Dominican friar. It will be aired on September 15.

Senior Catholic figures have suggested that the Pope could meet with victims of abuse by Roman Catholic priests when he visits Britain later this month.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols told BBC1’ Andrew Marr show yesterday: "The pattern of his last five or six visits has been that he has met victims of abuse

"But the rules are very clear, that is done without any pre-announcement, it is done in private and it is done confidentially, which is quite right and proper so I think we have to wait and see.”

The BBC dismissed Cardinal O’Brien’s criticism of its religious coverage and denied that it had marginalised mainstream religious issues, which it said were placed “at the heart” of its schedule.

A spokeswoman said: “The BBC’s commitment to religious broadcasting is unequivocal. BBC news and current affairs has a dedicated religion correspondent, and works closely with BBC Religion, ensuring topical religious and ethical affairs stories are featured across all BBC networks.”

In response to the Cardinal's attack on the forthcoming documentary by Mr Dowd, she said: "Mark is just one presenter in a range of programming that will include live news and events coverage of the visit itself, and other documentaries across radio and TV."

[colinmoore]

One only had to watch Eight out of ten cats (last night) to witness the vilification of the Pope and Christianity (all in fun of course) When are the British public going to stand up against this river of slime flowing from the beeb and refuse the license fee. REMEMBER the jails are full and even burglers are just cautioned these days.Colin

[Teddy Bear]

Yeah, I recall during the Bush years all a so called comedian had to do was to take the piss out of Bush to guarantee their appearance at the Beeb. I notice none have satirised Obama, and there's a guy begging for it.Strange that these same heroes don't vilify Islam or any of the Muslim leaders in the same way, under the BBC pretext of respect for religion, which roughly translates as SHIT-SCARED. Catholics, or any other faiths however are an easy target.

For any wanting to know their rights in avoiding to pay the licence fee, and avoid getting caught, I advise a visit to the anti-TVL site here.

[djfearross]

Catholic Church in Spain fights Franco-era image

6 November 2010 Last updated at 02:38 GMT

By Sarah Rainsford

BBC News, Toledo

Just inside the ancient city walls of Toledo, the church of Santiago el Mayor is still busy on Sundays.

Whilst one priest says Mass, another hears confession in a booth at the back. There are several services in a row but the congregation is shrinking, even in this former bastion of Spanish Catholicism.

One priest estimates that only around 10% of his parishioners attend Mass regularly now. The national average is 14.4%.

It is one indication of the state of the Church here, as Pope Benedict XVI arrives for his second visit since taking office.

Following a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, he will consecrate the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Anton Gaudi's famous unfinished work.

The Church in Spain has largely escaped the sexual abuse scandals that caused so much damage in Ireland, America and elsewhere but it is facing its own set of challenges.

For four decades, the Church was closely allied with General Franco's dictatorship.

After the transition, many Spaniards turned away as democracy and secularism became synonymous.

"It's true we don't have as much influence as we used to have," Fr Gonzalo admits after Mass in Toledo, laughing that his own nephews see him as a "dinosaur".

"But perhaps it's necessary to be more humble now, and accept we are not called to have quick results?

"We preach the Gospel and perhaps the ones coming afterwards will harvest what we have sown."

But the society the Church is preaching to has been transformed.

'Failure to adjust'
Spain was one of the first countries in Europe to legalise same-sex marriage: two-thirds of Spaniards said they agreed with that.

This country is also now home to the biggest brothel in Europe. The divorce rate has soared by over 200% in a decade.

Despite protests from the Church, the Socialist government has ended obligatory religious education in state schools and legalised abortion on demand in a drive to secularise.

A reform to remove religious symbols from state institutions, including schools, will be the next battleground.

"We need to find a new way to be in society as people with a message to offer, not to impose like in the past," believes Juan Rubio, editor of Vida Nueva magazine.

He argues the Catholic hierarchy has failed to adjust to Spain's new social reality: "The power in the Church, the Bishops, are in a fortress. They are afraid."

Increasingly sidelined politically, the Church is still functioning on the ground even in Chueca - the Madrid neighbourhood that has become Spain's gay capital, crammed full of rainbow flags and adverts for same-sex saunas.

'Secular intolerance'

At San Jose church - one of several serving the parish - a steady flow of the faithful drop in from early morning to attend Mass or just to pray.

Immigration from Latin America has helped fill the pews but some new arrivals have been shocked by the kind of Catholicism they have found here.

"The teachers at my sons' state school make fun of them for being devout," says Ines, from Venezuela.

"There's no tolerance and that's hard."

Fr Miguel Angel, the San Jose parish priest, says: "We are living in the midst of paganism and indifference.

"The next generation's faith is weak. But it does exist - and we can build on those foundations."

But just up the road, a group of men meet every week whose faith is far from weak. They come together in a Chueca basement to sing hymns and pray. Devout, active Catholics, they are also actively gay.

"We want to show the world there is no sin in being homosexual, that it's an expression of God's love," explains Oscar - who was confirmed as a Catholic like most here, but says the group do not feel welcome in any church.

"I think they just do their job, celebrate Mass, but they don't care about our necessities, our lives.

"They have to stick to the official message that homosexuality is not permitted. I don't think they're interested in working with us pastorally."

'Privatised' faith
Like elsewhere, religion in Spain is being "privatised," becoming a matter of personal conscience, not Commandments.

But in the birthplace of Opus Dei, and other ultra-conservative groups, there are still Catholics anxious to resist that.

Back in Toledo, another group of young Catholics also meet every week to explore their faith and pray.

They call their group "Catholic Pride", formed to defend the traditional values its members feel are under attack now.

"Our government is not Catholic," explains Isabel, upset at her religion's fall from fashion.

"Not only that, it has no respect for Catholics or for Spain's Catholic tradition."

There is certainly residual religious feeling in Spain, even though religious practice has plummeted.

The latest poll showed that 73% of Spaniards still define themselves as Catholic.

But that figure is falling, every year.

--------------------------------------------

As per usual from the BBC, NOTHING positive to say when it comes to Christians. And of course, the BBC taking their usual course to mention child abuse and homosexuality in anything even remotely related to the Catholic church.

Amazingly, under one particular religion called ISLAM homosexuals are sent to jail or executed but here a connection is never drawn.

[Teddy Bear]

The irony is, the more they focus on negativity within the Christian or Catholic church to further their own mindset and beliefs (or lack of), the more they show just how cowardly and hypocritical they are in relation to Islam.

In addition, while they try to present facts that show how society is better with the Church diminishing, I'm not so sure we should be proud of
This country is also now home to the biggest brothel in Europe. The divorce rate has soared by over 200% in a decade.
and
"The teachers at my sons' state school make fun of them for being devout," says Ines, from Venezuela.

"There's no tolerance and that's hard."

Love to see those teachers making fun of Muslims - but we know they're too chicken-shit for that - just like the BBC.

[Teddy Bear]

A couple of excellent articles by Damian Thompson recently in the Telegraph that further highlight this bias.

The BBC's anti-Christian bias: the Sunday programme disgraces itself again
By Damian Thompson Religion Last updated: January 2nd, 2011
477 Comments

Nowhere in the BBC’s output is Left-liberal bias more thickly applied than on Radio 4’s Sunday programme. If you didn’t think you could actually hear a lip curl, try listening to any of its “reports” that involve Christian conservatives. (The programme’s heavily loaded discussion of Catholic issues during the Pope’s visit was easily the low point of the BBC’s otherwise good coverage.) Radical Islam, on the other hand? Let me refer you to a Spectator Coffee House post by Nick Cohen, who describes this morning’s twisted little number far better than I could:

Alas, whenever you believe that you have nailed British hypocrisy, the BBC comes along and proves that it is worse than you thought. If there were an award for intellectual cowardice, a gold medal for journalistic double standards, this morning’s effort by Radio 4 deserves it.
The BBC began its report (here 28 minutes in) on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by saying that after the attack “some in the west felt personally threatened by Muslims. They believed that Muslims had nothing hatred for America and its allies.” Note how at once the BBC avoids discussion of radical Islam, which does indeed have nothing but hatred for the West, for the Jews, for the Hindus and for the free thinkers, atheists, agnostics, liberals, secularist and democrats. Hatred that is complemented by its loathing for those Muslims or ex-Muslins who do not share its fascistic values, and whom it is slaughtering and oppressing wherever it has the power to kill.

Instead of acknowledging radical Islam’s existence, the BBC politely ignores what was in front of its nose and implies that to oppose radical Islam is to incubate a racist hated of all Muslims.

The only fanatic it quotes is Pastor Jones, the Florida preacher who wanted to burn the Koran. He is a nasty piece of work, to be sure, but an insignificant figure whose global notoriety owes everything to media corporations such as the BBC. The fanaticism we should worry about is Christian fanaticism not Islamist fanaticism, the suggestion runs. At the very least there is a moral equivalence between the two. The BBC then mentions the 7/7 bombings, which as I remember them were perpetrated by men with “nothing but hatred for the West”. Instead of finding someone who can talk about the killings with honesty and intelligence, it drags up a vicar so wet you could wring him out. His contribution is to blame the media for “piling on the agony” – as if journalists were the suicide bombers – and to describe the atrocity in tellingly woozy and illiterate language as “something international,” when it was all too clearly “something domestic”.
I am glad to say that in the studio discussion afterwards, Stephen Pollard exploded. “The idea that there is some kind of equivalence of extremism” between a Florida pastor with a tiny congregation and a global clerical fascist movement was “fantasy,” he boomed.

Here is my first prediction for 2011. Radio 4 will not invite Mr Pollard back for a very long time.

How interesting, by the way, that it should be Stephen Pollard, the brilliant editor of the Jewish Chronicle, rather than the Catholic studio guest, Paul Vallely, who pointed out the anti-Christian double standards in Kevin Bouquet’s report.

Update: Stephen has now linked to the programme from his JC.com blog under the headline: “BBC: Radio 4: The threat from Christian extremists is as bad as jihadi terror”.

And this one:

Ed Stourton reveals his liberal Catholic bias again as he puts the boot into the Ordinariate
By Damian Thompson Religion Last updated: January 31st, 2011
308 Comments

Dr William Oddie has written a Catholic Herald blog post entitled: “Surprise, Surprise. Ed Stourton puts the boot into the Ordinariate.” I urge you to read it. Radio 4’s Sunday programme offers perhaps the most undiluted liberal bias to be found anywhere on the BBC: I blogged earlier this month about a disgracefully slanted report on the programme that equated Christian conservatives with murderous Islamists. Yesterday’s discussion of the Ordinariate was introduced by Ed Stourton, whose interviews with his fellow liberal Catholics often sound as if they were taped at a meeting of the board of the Tablet (on which he sits). This was no exception.
Stourton was chatting with one of the Sunday programme’s favourite Catholic commentators, Dr Tina Beattie, a straight-from-central-casting 1970s feminist (and director of the Tablet, according to the website of Roehampton University). In December 2009, Dr Beattie attacked Pope Benedict XVI’s teaching on the family in a particularly repulsive manner, invoking the case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian rapist who fathered seven children by his own daughter. As William Oddie says, she represents a very particular and extreme point of view within the Church. But you would never have guessed that from the way her fellow Tabletista set up the interview:

Edward Stourton: Do all Britain’s Roman Catholics welcome the ordinariate, the body set up by Pope Benedict to allow disaffected Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while maintaining many of their own traditions. No, is the short answer. Tina Beattie teaches Catholic studies at Roehampton University and, Tina Beattie, your problem with this is what?

Tina Beattie: Well, I don’t want to call it a problem, but I think many of us are perplexed about what this means in terms of the Catholic Communion, and indeed obviously for relations between our two Churches. The Catholic Church has a unity that’s not based on likemindedness or sameness, and it’s very puzzling to know how this very homogeneous, small group of likeminded people, offered a quasi-independent place within the Catholic Communion, is going to fit in and become part of us.

Stourton: And is your objection partly to do with the fact that you don’t like what they stand for? Particularly on the question of women’s role in the Church?

Beattie: I’m not happy about that, no. And I think actually, dare I say it, it’s a peculiarly Protestant thing to join a church because of what one doesn’t like, as a gesture of protest – that’s where the word comes from. It would be wonderful if they were coming in for the positives, and the joy, and the wonders of being part of this worldwide Communion.

To which one can only reply: who are you calling Protestant, Dr Beattie? The leaders of the Ordinariate accept the teachings of the Magisterium. She does not. Someone should perhaps have been allowed to point this out. But, as Dr Oddie observes, that’s not how they do things on the Sunday programme. Instead, it was the usual tactic – “maintaining a bogus appearance of impartiality while actually setting everything up to arrive at the wished-for conclusion”.

[thehighlandrebel]

Listening to 'what the papers say' at the end of the politics hour tonight 2/10/11 on R4 was interesting.

Several people were commenting on the outrage of the recent killing of the Al Qaeda terrorist in Yemen blaming the US etc. and making out that those who trying to protect us from radical islam terrorism are criminals and murderers.

On the same programme they lay into Christianity by vehemently mocking the farmer in Northern Ireland who wouldn't allow Rhianna to strip off on his land.

I don't know if it will be available on I - player but if it is then it's worth a listen.

I didn't quite catch the name of the programme compiler but it was obviously a Muslim name.

I cannot say how relieved I am since I stopped paying the extortion tax to have this sh1te transmitted.

[Teddy Bear]

That would be Mehdi Hasan of The New Statesman

Follow the link to listen again.

[thehighlandrebel]

Thanks Teddy.

I wonder if Rhianna had decided to strip off in a mosque and the imam complained would al-bbc's response have been the same.

[Teddy Bear]

I notice the last comment has somebody trying to justify her attempted strip inasmuch as God would say she has a lovely set of boobies, and that's how Christians should see it.

Makes you wonder why the BBC don't run that as a response to the Muslim hijab and burkha code - oh yeah they don't want to offend minorities - just the majorities that pay their wages.

The farmer himself had this to say about the incident, not that the BBC are interested.
“What happened was that I approached the film crew and asked them to stop, and then Rihanna came over and spoke to me a short time later.

“I think the story was taken up wrong from the start, and I was stereotyped for simply being a Christian, but it has not really fazed me.

“To be honest much was made of my religious beliefs, but it was not necessarily a religious issue at all.

“I believe it was a moral one, and many people have told me that they would have acted in the same way as I had,” he added.

Sounds good to me, but I'm not surprised the BBC would attempt to undermine good values.