BBC religious broadcasting ‘poor and underfunded’ Archbishop of York says

RELIGIOUS broadcasting is increasingly becoming “the poor and underfunded relative in a BBC which, I feel, must be reminded of its core business”, the Archbishop of York has said.

Speaking on Tuesday during a Religion Media Centre briefing on the Green Paper on the BBC Royal Charter review (News, 16 January), Archbishop Cottrell spoke “with sadness and a few distress” concerning the “sometimes appalling lack of non secular literacy in a lot of the BBC”. He described religious and public-service broadcasting as “a precious bulwark against polarisation, intolerance, prejudice, and chaos.

“The fact is that religion is an important a part of how hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of individuals in Britain today get their belonging, their values, their purpose, and their identity,” he said. “For those of us who’ve faith, our faith doesn’t live in a box or a compartment in our lives. It is concerning the whole of life.”

Community centres including the local church, mosque, gurdwara, and synagogue, and institutions akin to the BBC, the NHS, the Scouts, and the Women’s Institute, certain the nation together, he said. “We need policies at every level in government life, and within the BBC that strengthens those institutions. It troubles me that I don’t see that larger political vision to do this.”

Figures show a dramatic decline in religious broadcasting across the networks. The volume of original UK-produced content on religion and ethics at peak time on all public-service broadcasting platforms had fallen by 85 per cent between 2011 and 2022, the broadcaster Roger Bolton told the briefing.

He found a mismatch between the importance of faith to people throughout the country and the best way during which it was represented within the media, nevertheless well that was done. The debate on the Green Paper should deal with “the basic query of what we wish the BBC to do and what the necessity is”, he said. “We’re at crisis point, particularly whenever you have a look at the shifts in technology to digital.”

The RC Bishop of Salford, the Rt Revd John Arnold, appreciated the variability that religious broadcasting offered, but as necessary were “the opportunities that there are to construct a way of collaboration in our society. which is cosmopolitan.

“We could accomplish that well in helping people of various faiths to know each other through showing what we imagine in common, . . . to point out a respect for the range of faiths in our society for the time being, and likewise to present that result in those young individuals who, it seems, right across the board, are showing an increased interest in faith and in some type of affiliation to a Christian Church.”

The executive director of the Sandford St Martin Trust, Anna McNamee, didn’t wish to underestimate the BBC’s contribution in the sector of non secular broadcasting historically. It had, she said, been “absolutely fundamental”.

But the downward trajectory needed to be acknowledged. The consultation currently happening within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was “a possibility to truly not only have a look at the BBC now but at what we wish it to be and what we want it to be moving forward, given all of the changes that we’re experiencing.”

The Head of Digital on the production company CTVC, Alison Green, detected a way of “light” religious programming finding it easier to get commissioned. “I feel it’s much tougher to provide you with real journalistic religious-educational programming. I feel it’s so necessary to take into consideration where that content is placed,” she said.

“The strength of places like YouTube is you can really make programming for various audiences there, and there’s an appetite in those spaces for journalistic content. . . Moving into different platforms and broadening the audience definitely allows for more of that content to be made.”

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, the Convener of the Rabbinic Court of Great Britain, considered the BBC’s religious broadcasting to make a vital contribution to general knowledge, and as “a part of the social cohesion to know the person on the desk, in a classroom, living in the home opposite or whom we meet on the street. Don’t lose sight of that,” he warned.

He also spoke of a decline in trust within the BBC, particularly among the many Jewish community, about an establishment that was presupposed to be rooted in impartiality. Among “own goals” were references on Holocaust Memorial Day to “six million people” versus “six million Jews”. The BBC was a priceless institution in so many respects, however it needed to do way more within the religious sphere, he said.

Bishop Arnold emphasised that “85 per cent of the world’s population imagine in one in every of the most important faiths. . . If we don’t underpin our broadcasting with religious and ethical teaching, then we’re going to go the best way that a lot dangerous damage has been done on social media — by just people’s opinions.”

Archbishop Cottrell concluded: “I hear the cry of friends, sisters and brothers, and other faith communities for his or her almost invisibility in some areas of broadcasting —or being seen as a type of quaint exotic.

“I would like to say I feel public-service broadcasting can survive as a valued a part of our society and a latest media landscape, but that might require an ambition from throughout the BBC and inside Government that I’m undecided is there for the time being. It’s got to be a vision which is greater than surviving alongside others.”