Sunday 2 August 2015

The other 'm-word' at the BBC



Just to supplement your Sunday afternoon reading, there are two more fine pieces about BBC bias at Conservative Woman.

The first is David Keighley's post The BBC’s ‘religion’ is the promotion of equality not Christianity, which notes senior BBC editor Christine Morgan's remarks on this week's Feedback about the purpose of the BBC's coverage of religion - "Part of it is explaining this fantastic multi-faith, multi-cultural society that we have back to Britain". David says:
Put another way, in BBC-land, religious output is not any more primarily focused on thinking about Christianity and religion itself or faith; it’s a medium through which the multi-cultural agenda can be pursued and amplified.
He then relates that to Roger Bolton's own criticisms of the BBC's coverage of religion (that too many BBC editors are ignorant of religion and have a 'liberal elite' outlook, that Christianity is uniquely singled out for mockery at the BBC, and social conservatives are often seen as mad) - which, incidentally, formed the subject of this very blog's first main post.

(That post was written on 28 October 2012, so the BBC clearly didn't pay much attention to Roger Bolton at the time, given the continuation of much of the same kinds of thing ever since).

The second Conservative Woman piece I'd like to recommend is Laura Perrins's PC Jenni Murray bans the word ‘mother’. Perhaps, she should now take charge of Calais, in which Laura recounts her colleague Belinda Brown's experiences of appearing on Woman's Hour. 

It seems - and it's back to 'every week is Language Awareness Week now!' territory - that Dame Jenni didn't like Belinda's use of a particular word:
....the mere mention of the word 'mother' was just too much for Jenni; she had to sit down. No hang on she was already sitting down so instead she attempted to censor, censor, her guest. Please could we use the word 'parent' instead, she asked, as sometimes fathers do this role. 
Yes, sometimes father do take on the caring role but it is mostly mothers, Belinda pointed out. 

1 comment:

  1. Well, Jenni wasn’t so much objecting to the word ‘mother’ as to the assumption that it would be the mother, rather than the father who would prefer to stay at home and not have to stick his/her child in a nursery.

    In the recent Women’s Hour interview with Jeremy Corbyn it was a given that everyone wants free or subsidised childcare so they can go out to work.
    Of course it’s not only socialists that make that assumption. The conservatives seem to think so too.

    Plenty of people would rather have their “parental subsidy” in the form of child benefit so that they could make an unforced choice about who’ll be in charge of their children during the early years.

    The language police thing is getting out of control. If a bloke decides he’s a she, for instance, you’d better not contravene the new gender realignment-on-demand regulations.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.