The BBC and Christianity

Jun 8, 2019 by

by David Robertson, theweeflea:

The BBC has been blamed for facilitating Brexit because it was biased against Remainers in that it gave equal time to the ‘lies and propaganda’ of the Leave campaign.   The BBC has been blamed for frustrating Brexit because it was biased against Leavers in that it gave more time to Remainers to spread their ‘lies and propaganda”. If being complained about by both sides is a mark of balance then it appears as though the BBC should be quite pleased with itself. But what about the BBC and Christianity?   Whilst there are a handful of militant atheists who have a fit every time there is a religious service on the Beeb, the majority of complaints tend to be from those of us who think that the BBC has long forgotten and rejected its Christian foundations…

…A problem that is summed up and detailed in Robin Aitken’s The Noble Liar. This is one of those books that I would regard as essential if you want to understand our culture. Aitken is a former BBC journalist and executive who was pensioned off after becoming an internal critic. His earlier work Can We Trust the BBC was enlightening, but this one goes much deeper in its analysis.

Read here

Martin Davie’s overview of Robin Aitken’s, The Noble Liar: How and Why the BBC Distorts the News to Promote a Liberal Agenda, Biteback Books:

Robin Aitken is a former BBC reporter and journalist who spent twenty-five years working across all levels within the Corporation, from local radio to the Today programme. The basic question he addresses in his new book is:

…. why there is such a gulf between the world as the media presents it, and the world as most ordinary people experience it. Why is it that so many people find no echo of their own opinions in the big media outlets that serve them?

In order to answer this question, he argues, we need to look closely at the ethos and influence of the BBC. This is because:

The BBC, by a very large margin, is the most important media organisation in the country, and to understand what has gone wrong, we need to examine this mighty institution in close detail.

In Aitken’s view there are ‘certain obvious biases’ in the BBC’s news coverage, such as its naked hostility to President Trump and the Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, its failure to challenge the theories behind radical feminism, and its consistent down playing of the difficult topic of the place of Islam within Western society.

The reason for these biases, he contends, is that the BBC has developed a corporate ethos that is opposed to social conservatism and unfailingly supportive of liberal political and social causes and the claims of victimisation put forward by feminists and by those claiming to speak for ethnic and sexual minorities.

The title of his book, he writes,

…. draws on a concept originated in Plato’s Republic; a ‘noble lie’ is a myth or an untruth, knowingly propagated by an elite, in order to promote and maintain social harmony or advance an agenda. The BBC prides itself on being a ‘truth teller’: its hard-won, worldwide reputation is built on the foundation stone of audience trust. But what ‘truth’ is the BBC telling? It is the contention of this book that the BBC, along with its media and establishment allies, has become the vehicle for the propagation of a series of noble lies in pursuit of a political agenda.

In other words, the BBC does not necessarily seek simply to portray the world as it is. Rather, it knowingly presents a certain biased picture of the world in order to change the world in a particular liberal direction.

Martin’s opinion:

This is a book that orthodox Christians need to read in order to understand that the BBC’s increasing marginalisation of Christianity and its opposition to traditional Christian sexual ethics are not accidental. Instead they are a sign that, as Aitken puts it in chapter 5 of his book, the BBC has become ‘apostate.’ Having originally had a Christian ethos, its prevailing ideology now has no place for the expression of orthodox Christian belief in terms of either theology or ethics. Clergy and other Christian leaders need to alert Christians to this reality and this book will provide them with the information to help them do that.

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