The BBC doesn't like Christians, and there are discussions of ways to change this. As revealed by the British conservative tabloid the Daily Mail, "the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism." To most on the right, this is not shocking news.
Let's take a step back and consider some recent developments. The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse has come clean on her biases. The management at the NYT stumbles around to get its story straight and now the BBC has this embarrassment on its hands. As of Tuesday, the BBC had not addressed the situation, but it will be interesting to see what its response ends up being.
Are two major media organizations a trend? No, not yet, but this is certainly something worth noting as news organizations struggle to find their place in the fast-changing media landscape. Perhaps all news organizations should be more straightforward with their inherent biases. Much of a newsroom's bias could be easily determined by charting the political and social views of its reporters.
This brings me back to the BBC story, in which the Daily Mail appropriately focused on the staffing of the taxpayer-funded newsroom:
A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.
It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.
One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.
What is most interesting about this report is that a BBC executive claims a "widespread acknowledgement" that the BBC has gone too far toward political correctness. So tell us something we don't know already, but are BBC decision-makers starting to realize this as well? Does this mean the BBC's staff is going to move toward true diversity?
This brings me to another point. BBC Sunday morning political pundit Andrew Marr said in the story that the network has "an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias[,] not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."
What exactly is an "abnormally large number"? Unless the BBC decides to let us know, it will be difficult to determine exactly how abnormal its staffing situation really is. But the irony of the whole situation is that while BBC executives can rant and rave about how they promote multiculturalism, they to fulfill that mission if they do not have a staff and executive team that represents the wide range of views in the social landscape.
I'm not saying that newsrooms should hire political hacks to do their information-gathering. Rather, in considering hiring decisions for reporting positions, and ultimately editing positions, BBC executives should consider diversity of belief an important part of their mission of multiculturalism.