Yet more voices point to religiously illiterate BBC

BBC journalists are illiterate about religion, a former editor for the corporation has said.

Roger Bolton, who presented Radio 4’s “Feedback” programme for over 20 years, was talking to the Religion Media Centre, when he lamented the BBC’s “relative illiteracy about religion, each what it’s and the best way it’s practised”.

He added that there may be “mismatch on the entire between the importance of faith to people throughout the country and the best way it’s represented within the media, nevertheless well it’s done”.

The BBC, he argued, must make an effort to teach its staff on the fact and importance of faith.

Bolton is on no account the primary person to publicly query the BBC’s ability to know and report on religion.

Last month, also talking to the Religion Media Centre, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said, “My concern is rather more concerning the place of faith across the entire output of the BBC, relatively than simply seeing it as religious broadcasting in that relatively more narrow definition. So I note with sadness and a few distress the sometimes appalling lack of non secular literacy in a lot of the BBC.”

The decline in religious broadcasting has also been picked up by The Christian Institute, which said that between 2010 and 2022 the variety of hours dedicated to religion and ethics by public service broadcasters had nearly halved from 243 to 140.

Last 12 months one other former BBC man, Robin Aitken, said that many journalists on the corporation have a “woefully inadequate” understanding of faith. This stems partially from the liberal middle class background of much of the BBC and likewise results in a “general feeling of disdain” for the Church of England and a “mild hostility to the concept of faith”.

The hostility to the historic religion of the country, Aitken argued, also results in skewed editorial priorities. As an example he pointed to the acres of air time given to the persecution to the Rohingya Muslims, compared with the relative silence on the persecution of Christians.