In a corner: with the BBC under mounting public scrutiny, Radio 4 finds itself in an unprecedented tight spot

BBC Radio 4′s Thought for the Day (TFTD) has been under the BBC’s long suffering microscope recently for its lack of secular or minority faith representation. Alongside the ongoing DEC Appeal for Gaza saga, which has resulted in staff dissent this week, it appears to be part of a wider predicament Radio 4 can never resolve: in matters of religion, you can’t please everybody.

Despite the hackneyed claims that Radio 4 is stuffy and middle-class, its coverage of religions looks balanced enough from a distance. TFTD rotates between the UK’s most prevalent faiths, with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh speakers, while Beyond Belief explores an award-winningly comprehensive range of faith topics every week.

Both Sunday and the Moral Maze contain religious and non-religious voices, and even that parochial favourite, The Archers has included interfaith marriage in the past, between Usha Gupta, a practicing Hindu, and local vicar Alan Franks.

More recently, the station’s Darwin Season gave airtime to anti-creationist views and religious takes on evolutionary theory.

Going back a few years, the BBC’s 2004 religious impartiality review, ordered by the Board of Governors, found that among listeners surveyed, “The range and depth of output on Radio are regularly praised, particularly from such key suppliers as Religion & Ethics.”

So why, when the controllers let go of the reins, does Radio 4’s religious coverage take on a different flavour? iPM, for example, is a Saturday afternoon version of Eddie Mair’s PM, launched in October, which lets listeners and bloggers choose the content. According to the programme’s own blog, TFTD’s bias towards religious speakers is their most talked about issue so far.

It was iPM that aired a secular Thought for the Afternoon by Ariane Sherine on 9 January, and later producers organised a debate on the subject between humanist philosopher AC Grayling and Christian theologian Alister McGrath.

The battle lines were clearly drawn. Grayling claimed that airtime given to religions was disproportionate: “They are civil society organisations but they get a much larger slice of the pie than other organisations in proportion to actual numbers in society.”

McGrath saw religions as underrepresented by the BBC, claiming they were treated without the importance they deserve: “I take the view very strongly, as many others do, that religion is not being adequately or authentically reflected in British public service broadcasting today. Religion is not just something we talk about, it commands ascent from those who are part of it. ” That conflict between strong sacred convictions and secularists’ refusal to acknowledge religions over other organisations is one the BBC has always found tough to resolve.

McGrath’s sentiments are nothing new: 2004′s religious impartiality review found faith groups did not believe there were enough programmes reflecting the importance of religion in their daily lives. “They interpret this as a bias against religion,” the report claimed.

Is the BBC, lucky enough to possess a Religion and Ethics team devoted to achieving a healthy balance, doomed never to satisfy believers and non-believers? Michael Wakelin, the team’s director, declined to comment, but Mark Damazar, head of Radio 4, responded to iPM’s TFTD debate in a statement:

“Outside TFTD the BBC’s religious output contains both religious and non-religious voices in programmes such as Sunday, Beyond Belief, Moral Maze. In these programmes atheists, humanists and secularists are regularly heard, the religious world is scrutinised, its leaders and proponents are questioned.”

For some secularists, the fact that Radio 4 journalists are denied the chance to scrutinise TFTD’s speakers is evidence of BBC bias. “I think that Radio 4 in particular seems to be driven by a requirement to prosthelytise,” says Keith Porteus-Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society. “TFTD is an uncontested slot. On the Today programme you have always have someone contesting the news.”

Besides attacking TFTD, Mr Wood claimed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s appointment as guest editor on the Today programme between last Christmas and New Year was an example of unabashed BBC religious propagation. He said the Archbishop of Westminster had used it as a platform for Catholic discussion.

Along with broadcasting a trip to Rome and a TFTD held by his brother, the Cardinal interviewed Gordon Brown and said of the Gaza conflict, which had begun that week: “One thing we can’t forget in this conflict is the Christians.”

In light of the BBC’s recent refusal to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee’s humanitarian appeal for Gaza’s stricken people on the grounds of impartiality, handing the reins so liberally to a religious leader feels insensitive and rather contradictory.

It underlies the fine line the BBC treads when trying to satisfy a demanding, multi-faith public. Andrew Graystone, director of the Churches Media Council and occasional leader of Christian worship on Radio 4 agrees that this challenge is all but unattainable: “I’m not in favour of counting the minutes of air-time and dividing them in strict proportion to the size of religious communities, or any other group for that matter. Broadcasting is not democratic. It’s an art-form. Producers and controllers have to make sensible and informed judgemnts about the way the output represents the audience. And of course that’s exactly what they do.”

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