LONDON - 16 October 2008 - 340 words
Mark
Thompson defends BBC's record on religion
The BBC Director-General, Mark Thompson, gave a robust defence
of the BBC's engagement with religion during his 2008 Theos lecture
on Tuesday night.
In his speech, Mr Thompson said that the relationship between
religion and the media was important "because, quite simply,
religion is back. It's not just in the news, but often leads the
news." The assumption when he joined the BBC back in 1979,
that the decline and marginalization of religion was a straightforward
corollary of modernism and was inevitable, is in the process of
being discredited, he added.
Commenting on a speech given by the Archbishop of Canterbury in
2005 on the media, where he argued that news media often acted
in ways which were "lethally damaging" to journalism's
own reputation, Mr Thompson defended the media and the BBC.
Claims that the BBC was anti-God were "not just too sweeping;
they are not even directionally true", said Mr Thompson.
"I believe that the BBC has maintained the daily and weekly
presence of religion on its services with more consistency and
commitment over decades than any other British media organization,
and also more than most of the rest of what you could call public
Britain.
"This year we celebrated the 80th anniversary of the launch
of the Daily Service. Songs of Praise, Choral Evensong, Thought
For The Day, Prayer For The Day: the reflection of the cycle of
the Christian week and the Christian year is there for anyone
who wants to find it. So too though admittedly less prominently
reflections of some of the key festivals of the UK's other
major faiths. It's hard to square any of this with the idea of
the BBC as the anti-God squad."
In the Q&A following Mr Thompson's speech, chaired by the
broadcaster Jeremy Vine, the Director-General said coverage of
minority faiths should be treated differently from Christianity
because people of those faiths often came from ethnic minorities.
Mr Thompson added that the BBC would show programmes that criticised
Islam if they were of sufficient quality.
© Independent Catholic News 2008
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