Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The BBC and religion

It is to David Lammy’s credit that he hasn’t deleted what my Spectator colleague, Hugo Rifkind, describes as his new all-time favourite tweet. For those who haven’t come across it yet, this is how the Tottenham MP responded to the BBC’s coverage of the papal election where it mentioned “white smoke”:

There were more solid grounds for criticising the BBC that day: the corporation again showed its problems understanding religion. It managed to find a translator for the Vatican election who didn’t know the Lord’s Prayer. As Pope Francis hit his knees, and the crowd joined him in unison, the translator was desperately trying to work out what was going on:

‘Our father who are in the Heaven, be your name blessed… be your will done as in earth so above….deliver us from our sins as we deliver them from, um, from the sinners…’

It’s not the first time the BBC has been thrown by covering people in prayer. It was the same in the Olympics: when runners would pray on the start-up line, or at the finish, the BBC commentators maintained a baffled silence.

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The American commentators were able to explain it all to viewers, putting the athletes – and their incredible stories – in to perspective. The runner Lopez Lomong (right) was a Somalian refugee saved by Catholic missionaries and taken to America. So if he looked as if he was giving thanks, this is why. When Mo Farah prayed after winning, the BBC commentators pretended it wasn’t happening. Which is a shame: it was (for me) a wonderful moment: a Muslim who fell to his knees, bowed to the southeast and prayed – while crowds roared a man called Mohammed became Britain’s new national hero. It was a wonderful reminder that the Olympics was being hosted by one of the tolerant nations on earth.

Once, Brits made Oscar-winning films about faith and athletics. Now, the BBC as an institution just doesn’t understand it. No comprende. This blind spot manifests itself everywhere: in BBC America’s failure to broadcast the spectacular Carols From Kings, one of the most beautiful spectacles of English Christianity. It’s as if the producers can’t work out why anyone in the modern world want to watch people singing songs about God.

But the biggest reminder of the BBC’s problem with religious coverage comes at 7.50am each morning: Radio Four’s Thought for The Day slot. It’s quite something to give a prime breakfast time slot to someone from the God squad. The speakers are described as being ‘from across the world’s major faiths,’ but almost always from the political left. Their ‘thought’ can often be summed up as: ‘Jesus was left-wing, too.’ That’s not much of an exaggeration: I remember one finishing a Thought for The Day by saying ‘That’s not just Polly Toynbee’s message – it’s God’s.’

How I miss Rabbi Lionel Blue (right), whose wonderful, subtle and apolitical insights would stick in your mind for days (or even years). You don’t have to be religious to be moved by original and well-expressed religious thought. As the atheist Douglas Murray argued in The Spectator recently, non-believers are interested in religion. Yet on Thought for The Day, the highest-profile given to any religious broadcast, we get lobotomised inanity. The quality gap with the rest of the Today programme is often stunning. As Charles Moore once observed in his Spectator column:

‘As a regular Radio 4 listener, I find there is no more discouraging phrase currently in use than “John Bell of the Iona Community”‘

So why is it so bad? I can only guess that the producers of the Today programme hate the slot, but are forced to keep it by the BBC hierarchy due to some public service mandate – so they fill it with junk as a protest. That slot is perhaps the nation’s no1 pulpit, a chance to talk to 7m listeners. But in the Sunday Times Magazine today, Justin Welby tells Dominic Lawson that even he never listens to it. And this takes us back to the biggest problem with the BBC: its outdated remit as a public service broadcaster. It does so many things brilliantly, why force it to do what it obviously is uncomfortable with? When something is done from a reluctant sense of duty, it’s seldom done well.

The BBC justifies its licence fee on the ground that it performs a vital national service, and we’d be lost without it. Two decades ago, this was perhaps true. No longer. Sky News regularly bests the BBC (as it did over the Jubilee celebrations) and on the papal election night, Sky’s translator not only knew the Our Father but recited it alongside intelligent comment from Austen Ivereigh and (best of all) stunning HD footage. Sky Arts offers quality not to be found on any subsidised British channel, rejecting the as false the choice between commercial and highbrow. You can guarantee that, on Wednesday, Sky’s Jeff Randall will cover the Budget better than anyone.

If people want religion, they can find it on the proliferation of channels who specialise in it. Catholics can watch EWTN, for example. If the BBC dropped its religious slots there would hardly be howls of protest. I’m not even sure many people would notice – certainly not the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The BBC is a world-class broadcaster, a great national asset. No one one Europe does current affairs better. And I’d happily pay twice the licence fee for CBeebies alone. I’m not criticising its coverage of the conclave, I just don’t think you can say that the BBC covers religion better than its commercial rivals. As the BBC’s rivals grow stronger and the media grows more diverse, its claim to offer an inimitable ‘public service’ necessarily grows weaker.

UPDATE: I’m told that Thought For The Day is not produced by the Today team but by some other part of the Beeb empire. This helps explain the quality gap. Also Shenagh Fogarty from Five Live tweets that she was proud of its conclave coverage, which I didn’t hear. I can believe it: Five Live is another BBC service which is itself worth the licence fee.

And this from Jon Sopel:-

And this from another great BBC creation: Peter Mannion MP

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