Catholic PR on the BBC

My complaint letter to the BBC

As a licence fee payer and a citizen, I was disappointed by the BBC’s coverage of the Pope in Britain. I watched large bits of Friday morning’s coverage and I was amazed how much coverage the catholic event took and how little debate or information there was. The tone of the programme was quite like the relaxed and consensual in-situ coverage of a pop music festival. The only people interviewed were children or adult catholic activists and they were typically asked one controversial question and that was it. To a question about the cover-up of child abuse by catholic priest, one activist he had been submitted himself to some of it, but that ‘there was healing’ in the holy presence of the pope. Such a shocking assertion should at least have led to a clarification question from the journalist. (by the way, the term ‘activist’ is not used by your journalists to refer to catholic activists, they are just ‘christians’; muslim individual speaking for their faith, or secular individual speaking against clergy are, by contrast, referred to as activists)

As a media, you may consider that the pope’s visit is a big event worth large coverage and I accept that, although the status of Vatican as a State, and considering the visit of that foreign clergyman as a ‘State visit’ is to me personally a joke. Anyway that might have justified broadcasting meetings with the Queen and government officials, or even let’s say a speech. But catholicism is also a business. At the least, no-one can deny that Catholic schools in this country are a successful and profitable business. Your Friday morning broadcast was, for more than an hour, a huge free advertisement and PR for a private organisation, the catholic education system, funded by taxpayers. With lots of cute little kids in their cute little uniforms telling the camera how excited they were to see the pope. If the BBC was supposed to cover a ‘State visit’ then the rallies with catholic children should not have been covered more than, say a foreign president meeting his fellow countrymen at the embassy i.e. in passing. As ‘head of State’, leader of one particular religion and CEO of catholic schools, the pope must have been delighted by the BBC coverage.