If you search hard enough for reaction to the news that Fatima Salaria, a muslim woman, has been appointed Commissioning Editor for Ethics and Religion, you will find some. The usual suspects have duly provided sufficient righteous indignation to prove that they’re still paying attention. The Express headline reads: “BBC puts Muslim in charge of religious television shows”. This ignores the fact the previous person “in charge of religious television shows” was also a Muslim, so this is the least interesting aspect of this story and an odd choice for a headline. It is perhaps newsworthy that the BBC have seen fit to appoint another Muslim given that Britain is, on paper at least, a Christian nation. That’s the angle you’ll find lower down in The Express article which quotes the latest ONS figures that in 2011 “59.3 per cent of the population identify themselves as Christian”. As usual, the story is more complicated. Salaria’s new job is not a like-for-like appointment with her predecessor because Aaqil Ahmed was Head of Religion and Ethics. His job was scrapped. His portfolio was then lumped in with James Purnell’s role as “Head of Radio and Education”, which already seems to be an odd collection. It is hard to discern Salaria’s new job title because the BBC Press Office hasn’t announced the appointment. It looks like she is “commissioning editor for Ethics and Religion” according to the Mail Online. The BBC Press Office is more keen on telling you about BBC One’s Big Painting Challenge inspiring “Snapchat artists across the country”. So do look out for that. The Express headline also suggests that Fatima Salaria will be “in charge of religious television shows”. This is clearly nonsense as all of the above indicates. Salaria is an Editor, not the Head her predecessor was. Besides, all power at the BBC lies with the channels, not those in charge of genres. Note the job title switch. Aaqil Ahmed was Head of Religion and Ethics. Fatima Salaria is Commissioning Editor of Ethics and Religion. Ethics now takes precedence over religion. And all of the above explains my reaction on hearing about this appointment. I received a Facebook message from a non-religious friend who is a regular critic of the BBC. He was interested to know my reaction. I replied that I was ambivalent as I’ve never really expected the BBC to make anything on the subject of religion that I’d be interested in. That sounds more vitriolic than intended and I get more than my money’s worth from the licence fee. But I don’t think Religion and Ethics, sorry, Ethics and Religion is any different to other genres. As a general rule, if you’re a fan of something, a mainstream broadcaster is unlikely to tell you anything you didn’t already know on the subject, or give you insights you hadn’t already seen, heard or read. Take the popular magazine-show Countryfile. If you were brought up in the countryside, as I was, you would spot that it is a very carefully and neatly packaged view of the country. It almost always assumes that the viewer lives in a town and that the extent of their knowledge of the countryside is to make sure you shut gates behind you.
It’s worth noting that Countryfile was a replacement for a show that was specifically about farming, and aimed at farmers, broadcast around lunchtime on Sundays. My dad used to watch it – mainly for the long range weather forecast which was very useful in the pre-internet age. But clearly the show was deemed too specific and niche, so it was broadened out into a show about the countryside. If you want in-depth reporting on farming now, you need to turn to Radio 4’s Farming Today. I do actually watch Countryfile, or at least the bits about Adam’s farm, which do occasionally give some sense of what farming is actually like. But, despite being a Christian, I don’t watch Songs of Praise. In fact, maybe it’s because I’m a Christian that I don’t watch Songs of Praise, because it’s just a pale reflection of what church is, a community as much as a spectacle or experience. And it’s a very fake version of that experience, showing packed churches of smiling faces singing in perfect unison. Plenty of churches in Britain are full on a Sunday, but it’s not neat, or televisual. You kind of have to be there. Which is why I don’t watch The Big Questions, incidentally. Because I’m in church. Television is a difficult media to get right. Or at least it’s very easy to get wrong. It moves fast because the eyes and brain require stimulation. The extremes and oddities make much better TV than the norm. None of this bodes well when trying to portray and reflect the day-to-day life of faith in the believer. This why any vicar in any soap will end up having an illicit relationship, embezzling money or losing their faith, or a combination of those three things. Christians, or believers of various faiths, may wish to see or hear about the more down-to-earth kind of faith – and you can find that on The Daily Service on Radio 4 Long Wave if you really want it – but it does not make for great television. The BBC also has to face the issue of balance. Religion is not balanced. Not even the Church of England, which seems pretty wishy-washy to some. The doctrines and dogma are quite specific and editorially, the preference is for religion to know its place. But religion doesn’t work like that. Not if you’re religious. It seeps out. As St Peter says “We cannot help speaking of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20) This is precisely the kind of religion the BBC is seeking to avoid out of context. So if a sports person suddenly mentions their faith in an interview, or wishes to praise their maker for their abilities, you can see the utter panic and embarrassment in the eyes of the hapless BBC sporting correspondent who was simply not prepared for a living, vibrant faith, and was rather expecting some platitudes about training hard and giving 110%. Religion can be safely contained in ninety-second news stories. We regular get reports on sermons by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope on very slow news days, around Christmas, New Year and Easter. BBC Radio Four has Beyond Belief which can be informed and interesting. There is also the occasional episode of In Our Time which covers something absurdly specific like Pelagianism or the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Documentaries are a place where religion can be controlled, especially historical ones, looking back on how Christian Britain used to be. TV has produced a few examples. In Our Time’s Melvyn Bragg made a superb expensive-looking hour-long programme about Bible-translator, William Tyndale. That said, much of his praise for Tyndale was about the formation of the English language rather than Tyndale’s hope that he could help his fellow countrymen meet Christ in scripture for themselves. But that is to be expected as Bragg does not claim to be a Christian. He has said recently that he does “not believe in the ‘fundamental tenets’ of Christianity”. Fair enough. But why have non-religious presenters of shows about religion and faith? Again, we return to the tyranny of TV. It’s a ratings game. They need eyeballs and they’d rather have someone famous than pious. It’s understandable. Moreover, they could argue with some justification that everyone is entitled to their opinion about religion. But they tend to have ex-players talking about football on Match of the Day, and trained chefs talking about food on the panoply of cooking shows made every year. Why not the same with religion - sorry, there I go again – Ethics and Religion? Perhaps the BBC thinks that having non-religious presenters doesn’t matter because the audience isn’t that interested in religion either. This may be true. Only about ten percent of the population go to church or a mosque. The BBC has to be more mindful of the ninety per cent. Fair enough. Although they keep pushing out news and documentaries about politics and ninety per cent of the population aren’t interested in that either. Presumably, The Big Questions is being made for non-religious people. But if that is the case, why schedule it on a Sunday morning where non-religious people might mistake it for something that it isn’t? Why not broadcast it on a Tuesday night? Or a Saturday afternoon? We return to the compartmentalisation of religion. It’s religious, so it goes out on a Sunday. Those who want it can find it. And those who don’t can avoid it. I do listen to religious media, mostly via podcasts and straight from the horse’s mouth: sermons, interviews or discussions with Christians, by Christians and for Christians. There is no need to add caveats, or worry about the non-religious listener since they’re unlikely to be downloading hour-long sermons on Nehemiah or discussions about substitutionary atonement. These shows don’t talk about religious experience, they are a religious experience. They are about the content of the religion and the theology. These are largely programmes the BBC would never and could never do. Maybe the BBC could find a way if they really put their mind to it and invested heavily, or made some public and firm commitments to serve the faithful and the faithless. They could find new voices and presenters if they looked hard and decided to champion them. But the BBC has little intention of so doing. The Corporation takes pride in many things: natural history documentaries; ‘shiny floor’ entertainment shows; high-end drama; the occasional landmark sitcom; sporadic sports coverage where the rights permit. Coverage of religion is not, never has been and never will be, on that list. The closest in recent times has probably been Wolf Hall, although that has been played more a political drama than a religious one. Fatima Salaria may well prove me wrong, and I’d be happy with that. But the odds are stacked against her. The fact is that the BBC doesn’t understand religion and doesn’t want to. That’s why they’ve changed and downgraded Head of Religion and Ethics to Editor of ‘Ethics and Religion’. Ethics stem from religion, even if that religion is a post-Judeo-Christian-quasi-socialist-secularism. That is the one religion the BBC most effectively and passionately preaches. Comments are closed.
|
James CaryComedy Writer. Christian. Father. Husband. Fan of CS Lewis, GK Chesterton and PG Wodehouse. Lives in Somerset. ArchivesCategories |