Take three more Tablets

Today's Sunday featured another interviewer from the liberal Catholic magazine The Tablet. 

That's the third within the space of a month. (Christopher Lamb, 13 October; Christopher Lamb, 27 October; and Liz Dodd, 10 November). 

This blog's first substantial post noted the dominance of guests from The Tablet (the Catholic equivalent of the Guardian) at the expense of the more conservative Catholic Herald. 

There were dozens from The Tablet over an 18-month period but not even one from the Catholic Herald. 

There was such a fuss as a result of our evidence that The Tablet guests on Sunday dropped to near zero for a while and a smattering of Catholic Herald guests began appearing. 

Now, eight years later, things look to have gone back to where they started: The Catholic Herald guests are gone again, and The Tablet guests are back in force. 

And, yes, The Tablet's trustees still include Lord Chris Patten, Baroness Shirley Williams, Baroness Helena Kennedy....and Sunday's main presenter Edward Stourton. 

It stank then, and it stinks now.

That would be both a Catholic and a BBC bias matter

Old hobby-horse time again (sorry)...

Frankie

It's probably a peculiar quirk of this particular, peculiar blog that our very first posts concentrated, in minute detail, on a BBC radio programme most people doubtless sleep through even if they're aware of it - which most people aren't - namely Radio 4's Sunday. 

Our very first 'hit' at Is the BBC biased? was to stir up a veritable hornet's nest over what might seem a very recherché issue: the programme's massively pronounced bias towards a particular Catholic magazine, The Tablet, and the total exclusion of its main UK rival The Catholic Herald.

This very heavy bias seemed far worse because of the fact that the programme's main presenter Edward Stourton was (and is) a trustee of The Tablet. 

For newbies, and to put it crudely, The Tablet is a liberal Catholic magazine (the Catholic Guardian, so to speak) and The Catholic Herald is a conservative Catholic magazine (the Catholic Spectator, so to speak). 

Over 22 months of close monitoring (without deliberately looking or, to begin with, knowing anything about The Tablet or the Catholic Herald) I'd found literally dozens upon dozens of appearances on Tablet trustee Ed's programmes by liberal Catholic Tablet guests and literally no appearances - not a single one! - by Catholic Herald writers.

It was as stark an example of BBC bias as it was possible to imagine (however little it mattered to me or you personally).

It helped that the then head of the Daily Telegraph's blog (RIP), Damian Thompson, was closely associated with the Catholic Herald and a sharp critic of the BBC and that I tweeted him a link to our most damning post.

After the storm broke the programme instantly dropped its Tablet horde for a couple of years or more, and even invited on some Catholic Herald guests for a while. 

Things, alas, have begun slipping again recently in the past couple of years. Tablet guests are returning and the Catholic Herald guests have vanished again. 

*******

And then (liberal) Pope Francis replaced (conservative) Pope Benedict.

And suddenly on Sunday, the papacy could do no wrong (for a few years).

It often felt like I was listening to puff pieces for Pope Francis after years of hatchet jobs on Pope Benedict.

(Please feel free to scour our archives for very lengthy proofs of that).

*******

And another thing I found in my intense study of Sunday (2010-12) was that the programme, in the years of conservative Catholic pope Benedict XVI, focused with relentless intensity (and quite rightly so) on Roman Catholic child abuse and was never afraid to question Pope Benedict's role in the matter, with Ed Stourton (never a fan of Pope Benedict) often in the thick of that questioning.  

I've listened to every episode of the programme both before and since that original study and I can say, with total confidence, that the emphasis on Catholic child abuse and the Pope's attitude to it dropped massively after Pope Benedict resigned and Pope Francis took over.

It didn't disappear, but it became much less of a preoccupation.

(And Anglican abuse came into sharper focus).

And the Pope-of-the-day's position on the matter has rarely been raised since.

Benny

So, to put it another way, until today's edition I've never heard anything on Sunday that focused sharp questions on Pope Francis's reaction to clerical child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

It's as if, once the hated Pope Benedict had shuffled off this Vatican coil into nearby retirement, and, as a nice, liberal, PC pope was elected in his place, everything came good for Sunday.

Even last week, when Sunday broadcast a special edition to mark Pope Francis's visit to Ireland, the then-breaking story that Cardinal Viganò - an archbishop of the Catholic Church who had served as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016 and who had previously served as Secretary-General of the Governorate of Vatican City State from 2009 to 2011 - had accused the present pontiff of covering up a child abuse scandal didn't get a mention on the programme.

Some listening (conservative) Catholics were staggered and wondered why. And Damian Thompson has been tweeting about liberal media double standards all week ever since. 

Well, today the programme finally turned to the issue of Pope Francis and his alleged role in covering-up a child abuse scandal and, knowing what I know of the programme and its past history, I suspected it would come out in support of Pope Francis in much the same-if-also-polar-opposite way it used to come out against Pope Benedict. 

So did it focus sharp questions on Pope Francis?

Well, it was balanced enough in that it featured a Catholic guest who thinks Pope Francis has questions to answer (Edward Pentin) and another Catholic guest who thinks it's the Pope's "right-wing" critics who have questions to answer (Austen Ivereigh).

In light of everything I've mentioned earlier in this post (and at this blog since its inception), however, it didn't surprise me in the slightest that Edward Stourton put challenging question after challenging question to Edward Pentin (the conservative Catholic) whilst giving Austen Iverleigh (the liberal Catholic) an easy ride. The difference in tone was palpable.

Nor did it remotely surprise me that Edward Stourton, in a later interview with Vincent Nichols, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, went way beyond BBC impartiality and, as if in passing, compared the claims of Cardinal Viganò (and Edward Pentin) about cover-ups around Pope Francis to Dan Brown novels - a comparison Ed brought into the conversation.

Nor did it remotely surprise me that Ed introduced Mr Pentin as a "conservative" whilst not introducing Mr Ivereigh as a "liberal". (This was classic 'bias by labelling').

Nor did it remotely surprise me that Ed (Tablet trustee) failed to mention that Austen Ivereigh - the man he gave an easier ride to - used to be a deputy editor of The Tablet.

I feel as if I'm somewhat entering into an ecumenical matter here, but the bias seems very clear to me, especially perhaps because I remain detached from it (not being a Catholic, not being religious).

Please listen to the programme for yourself and this interview and see if you see what I mean.

Correction

St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham

Returning to a topic we looked at last month...

David has contacted me with an update (for which many thanks). Following his complaint to the BBC, BBC Bitesize have now updated their page to remove their grotesquely wrong claim that the Church banned dissection.  

Incidentally, it turns out that the Bitesize page I was looking at was an archive version. The live page had exactly the same statements. So, yes, British pupils were still being fed this false claim by the BBC right up until a few days ago.

Click to enlarge to compare versions

It's excellent that the BBC corrected this mistake following David's complaint  (after some fifteen or so years) but - as you'll see if you read the latest version - the overall bias of the page remains, including the closing 'cultural cringe' towards Islam.

That would be an ecumenical matter

The second post ever published on this blog might seem somewhat recherché to some of you now but the outcry it provoked among conservative Catholics evidently hit a raw nerve with the BBC.

Our findings proved that Radio 4's Sunday programme, presented by a trustee of the liberal Catholic magazine The Tablet (Edward Stourton), overwhelmingly used Catholic voices associated with The Tablet to discuss Catholic matters.

It was a palpable hit. Things changed on Sunday for a few years after that. We heard far less from Tablet voices and, in the immediate wake of the outcry, Sunday suddenly began featuring voices from the Tablet's main rival, the conservative Catholic Herald (previously totally excluded). 

As we've not pursued the matter much since then, Sunday has started slipping back again, especially in the past couple of years. Maybe it's time to revisit that second post.

*******

Meanwhile, the death of the liberal former Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy O'Connor brought tributes on this morning's Today from Tablet editor Catherine Pepinster and, yes, Edward Stourton, and reminded me of my own favourite long-term study of the BBC: my ten-year review of the speakers on Thought For The Day.

A side-finding of that study was that Today's choice of Catholic voices was entirely restricted to liberal Catholic voices. There wasn't a single conservative Catholic among them.

The phrase 'BBC Catholic' was used by some conservative Catholics about such people - evidently with good reason.

*******

Talking of conservative Catholic critics of the BBC....

The Catholic Herald had a very interesting piece by David Paton this week on the BBC's schools output.

It focused on a BBC Bitesize page called Medical stagnation in the Middle Ages which blamed Christianity for medical stagnation in the Middle Ages and repeated now-discredited claims that the Church prohibited dissection (in favour of "superstition") but provided one glimmer of good news: namely Islam...

The relevant BBC Bitesize passage reads: 

The question here is whether that page, from the early 2000s ('no longer updated'), still plays a part in the education of British pupils. It's to be hoped not.

Even BBC Radio 4 Making History presenter Tom Holland (a wonderful historian and engaging tweeter) was aghast on learning about this BBC Bitesize commentary, calling it "so grotesquely wrong as to be laughable".

"Is the BBC a friend or foe of Catholics?"

Here's an interesting discussion on the question 'Is the BBC a friend or foe of Catholics?', courtesy of the Catholic Herald. The debate, hosted by associate editor Madeleine Teehan, involved the magazine's deputy editor Ed West and Jack Valero of Catholic Voices.

For a flavour of where Is the BBC Biased? stands on this subject, please take a read through some of these past posts:

Take one 'Tablet' three times a day
Double Standards?
I Have Two Lists...(One is More Little Than the Other)
Triple Standards?
This coming 'Sunday'...
If you're In Search of the Real Pope Benedict, perhaps give Radio 4 a miss
Habemus papam Franciscum
Odds and Ends

[If you can't be bothered, we say it's a friend of liberal Catholics.]

Praise be!

Sunday is continuing to improve in its handling of Catholic matters. Today's edition was another Catholic-centred programme, in anticipation of the coming papal conclave. 

As you will know if you've been reading this blog from the start, all the Catholic specials from 2011 and 2012 largely consisted of gatherings of Ed Stourton and his usual team from the liberal Catholic magazine The Tablet. Too many like-minded discussions resulted. This time, however, Samira Ahmed was the presenter and we were given a well-balanced panel consisting liberal Catholic Fr Thomas Reese, conservative Catholic Jack Valero and, from the mainstream of the Church, Sr Jane Livesey. A range of opinions resulted. Good!

The programme also featured David Willey reporting on the preparations in Rome and an extract from a new work of fiction by Sarah Dunant recreating the election of the Borgia pope. 

There was also, inevitably (and wholly reasonably) a report from Kevin Bouquet on the moral standing of the Catholic Church in Scotland in the wake of the scandals of the last couple of weeks. We heard from Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith of the Catholic Herald, Barbara Dorris of the abuse survivors' organisation SNAP, Catholic parishioners outside an Edinburgh cathedral and leading Catholic theologian Prof. John Haldane. Again, a decent cross-section of Catholic opinion. 

As you can see from that list, the long drought (i.e. complete absence) of any contributors from the Catholic Herald on the programme in 2011 and 2012 (in contrast to the large number of guests from its liberal rival The Tablet) is well and truly over. It was the overwhelming and unanswerable evidence of an imbalance (and the appearance of a conflict of interest) provided by this blog - as taken up by Damian Thompson and James MacMillan at the Telegraph and by other leading British Catholic bloggers - which sent the complaints pouring into Sunday. The BBC has clearly taken this on board and acted to remedy the situation - at least as far as Sunday is concerned. (You see, it can work!!) 

Moving onto the Church of England, last week's edition began a series of three Letters to Justin in anticipation of the moment when Justin Welby becomes the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I wrote about the series last week. It seemed a good test of the programme's commitment to impartiality to see whether it chose a representative range of Anglican opinion: 

This week's essayist was Sunday regular Canon Rosie Harper, a left-wing feminist from the liberal wing of the Church who used her talk to call for the Church of England to fully embrace her progressive values on social issues. Assuming the Sunday team are committed to the spirit of impartiality, next Sunday's speaker will be a social (and perhaps political) conservative from the other wing of the Church. The third and final speaker would then, presumably, be someone from the centre ground of Anglicanism. That would be the fair way to do it. 

If something like that happens then Sunday will have shown that it values BBC's guidelines on impartiality and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. 

If, however, they neglect to include a conservative Anglican speaker or if they feature a second firmly liberal Anglican who shares Canon Rosie's general outlook, they will have failed to meet the spirit of impartiality.  

Well, this week's talk was from Bishop Michael Nazir Ali - a leading Anglican from the Church's conservative wing. So, so far so good! 

All the programme now needs to do is to avoid giving next week's final Letter to Justin to someone like Giles Fraser (another voice from the Church's liberal wing) and that sigh of relief can well and truly be breathed!

We'll see.

Ditto

Just as a follow-up to the previous post...

This morning's Sunday was largely focusing on Roman Catholic matters again, examining (a) the accusations being made against the UK's most senior Catholic, Cardinal O'Brien, as reported in the Observer; (b) the latest news from the Vatican following Pope Benedict's resignation; (c) tensions between the Vatican and the English Catholic Church; and (d) a letter to the Independent by a number of liberal British Catholics calling for more democracy in the Church. 

What of our ongoing concerns? Well, I spoke too soon about Robert Mickens. Yes, Robert Mickens of the Tablet was back, talking in collegiate fashion to Ed Stourton about the "spiny and prickly questions" brought about by Benedict's decision to resign. Then Tina Beattie of the Tablet reappeared as the most-used 'talking head' in a report by Trevor Barnes, spreading her anti-conservative message. 

So was this a relapse on Sunday's part? No, because for the final discussion (on those calls for the advancement of 'the spirit of Vatican II' and the democratising of the Catholic Church) featured Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith of the Catholic Herald as one of its contributors (alongside one of the signatories of the letter) - as requested by me a couple of weeks ago! (Actually, I asked "How about Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith instead of Tina Beattie?" We got both! - which is fine by me. That's how it should be.)

So, after two years without a single guest from the more traditionalist Catholic Herald (while there were over 20 appearances by contributors to the more liberal Tablet), two have appeared within two weeks...which suggests to me that the BBC did listen to those complaints sent to the programme and to the Complaints Unit on the strength of this blog's presentation of the evidence. I'll stick with "Result!" then - and keep my fingers crossed!

The rest of Sunday included an interview with Dr Usama Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation after "three men from Birmingham" (as Ed put it) were convicted of plotting terrorists acts that would seek to rival the 9/11 attacks in terms of bloodiness. Dr Hasan discussed the issue of Muslim charities in light of their fraudulent involvement with one, and said that "jihad" has two meanings, of which the "peaceful" meaning of a spiritually-guided fight against such things as poverty and hunger is the important one for most Muslims. 

Just as Sunday tends to turn to the Tablet for Catholic issues, so it tends to turn to the Quilliam Foundation for Muslim matters. For Jewish concerns, it favours Ed Kessler and Rabbi Jonathan Romain. For Sikh matters, it turns to...well, er, no, it doesn't actually turn to anyone because it almost never discusses Sikh issues (just once in two years!). In a similar way, for Pakistani political issues, it (like Dateline London) turns to Dr Shahid Sadullah. He's a nice, liberal Pakistani journalist. Dr Sadullah was on today, discussing Pakistani political issues.

Away from the Sunday "speed-dial" contributors, there was a piece examining the religious impulses behind the Chartist movement and an interview with the new Director for Reconciliation for the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury.

Worth a "listen again", perhaps, if you missed it.

Result! (Possibly)

I think I'm going to chalk this up as a victory for Is the BBC Biased? 

Our post Take one 'Tablet' three times a day created quite a flurry of interest, including from Damian Thompson and James MacMillan at the Daily Telegraph and on various popular Catholic blogs. Many a reader complained directly to the BBC about the extraordinary biasing of the Radio 4's Sunday in favour of the liberal Catholic magazine The Tablet (dozens of appearances by people associated with that newspaper) and the complete exclusion (for at least two years) of writers from its more conservative rival The Catholic Herald - a point I brought up again a few days ago on the post This coming 'Sunday'....

I've noted before the marked decline in Tabletistas on the programme ever since and this morning's edition went one step further. Was it in response to my challenge? We know they read us because they've linked to us twice already (rather surprisingly).

Unlike before, when two or three people from the Tablet would get together for a chat at the end of a Catholic-centred special, today we had Clifford Longley of...yes, obviously...The Tablet discussing the Pope's resignation with....drum roll....Madeleine Teahan of The Catholic Herald, who provided a rare, orthodox, pro-Benedict perspective. 

Praise be!

Similarly, though much of the early part of Sunday was more typical, with Ed Stourton and David Willey gossiping and criticising the Vatican, it should be noted that the programme's striking use of the highly liberal Robert Mickens of The Tablet as if he were Sunday's other (unofficial) Rome correspondent did not occur this morning. I think I'll chalk that one up too!

That was followed by a fairly negative report on the Pope's difficulties with other faiths. The choice of topic was possibly a sign of bias but Kevin Bocquet balanced his report quite well - far better than, say, Tim Whewell in his remarkably negative Newsnight report from last Monday, where Catherine Pepinster of The Tablet and Geoffrey Robertson QC were hostile witnesses for the Pope - and in Mr Robertson's case an extremely hostile one! - with no helpful witnesses for balance. 

Moreover, the canvassing of four opinions from around the world on this morning's Sunday may have contained two strongly liberal voices critical of Pope Benedict, namely Roberto J. Blancarte, president of the Center for the Study of Religions in Mexico, and Italian left-liberal Vatican correspondent Marco Politi (alongside John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, a studiously impartial commentator despite admitting to liberal tendencies), but at least the fourth and final voice was a conservative, pro-Benedict one, namely Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban. A biased selection for sure, but it could have been worse.

So the programme is being much more careful it seems - and for that they must be applauded. 

Shame about last night's In Search of the Real Pope Benedict though!

This coming 'Sunday'...

I note that the the 'Top Stories' at the moment on The Catholic Herald's website are:

• Pope Benedict XVI to resign: full statement
• Pope Benedict XVI's resignation: reactions
• Here we go again. The Pope has used a stick in public, so speculation about his retirement has started up. But it’s quite simple: popes don’t retire
• Morning Catholic must-reads: 11/02/13
• Will the 'Hitler's pope' slur be put to rest?

The third item on that list, when you click into it, is a post by Dr William Oddie from March of last year making a prediction which in the light of today's news makes him look like a poor prophet. Ah yes, The Catholic Herald's enemies are obviously already gathering ammo for a hatchet job on one of the Herald's star conservative columnists.

Still, given the evidence presented in my post about the extraordinary dominance of commentators from The Tablet (The Catholic Herald's liberal rival) on BBC Radio 4's Sunday, as presented by Tablet trustee Ed Stourton, it would be expected - were this not the BBC - that the coverage of Pope Benedict's resignation on this week's Sunday would include at least someone from The Catholic Herald. 

Since my expose and the subsequent tranche of complaints made by conservative Catholics to the BBC in protest, Tabletistas have been absent from Sunday. Will this change this Sunday, given that they might feel that the fuss is dying down? Will the programme resist the urge to dial the usual suspects - Catherine Pepinster, Robert Mickens, Tina Beattie and John Wilkins, who usually appear en masse for such occasions, alongside their Tablet colleague Ed?

Wouldn't it be something if a programme which has featured dozens of guests from the left-leaning Tablet over the last couple of years but not a single guest from the right-leaning Catholic Herald decided at last to redress the balance? 

Instead of the four usual suspects from The Tablet (like the four who appeared on the last big Catholic-centred edition), how about Ed interviewing a few Catholic Heralders? How about Luke Coppen, editor of the Catholic Herald in place of Ms. Pepinster? How about Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith instead of Tina Beattie? How about Damian Thompson instead of John Wilkins? How about Edward Pentin instead of Robert Mickens?

How about it Sunday? What's stopping you?

You may not be a Catholic (and I'm certainly not a Catholic) but Sunday's total bias in favour of one liberal Catholic magazine at the expense of a conservative Catholic magazine remains indefensible - and important, if you want to argue that the BBC is not biased. In this case the BBC emphatically has been biased. 

Watch this space to see whether Sunday has learned its lesson or whether it's simply incapable of learning its lesson.

Who's telling it straight?

A few media outlets have reported a landmark ruling this week. The Leeds-based Roman Catholic adoption agency Catholic Care lost its appeal against a tribunal ruling which said that it cannot change its Memorandum of Association to exclude same-sex couples from using its adoption service. This could have significant consequences.

I was intrigued to see how this story was reported, bearing in mind Roger Bolton's criticisms of the BBC's failure to do justice to socially-conservative attitudes.

If there's one media outlet you can usually rely on not only to give socially-conservative attitudes a hearing but also to place them well ahead of liberal social attitudes (and sometimes the actual point of a story), there's always the Daily Mail. The Mail article by Steve Doughty, Catholic adoption agency loses five year legal battle over its refusal to accept gay couples, begins with something found in Paragraph 45 of the judgement:

Roman Catholics who  support traditional marriage and oppose gay rights are not bigots, a High Court judge declared yesterday.

Mr Justice Sales said those who follow religious beliefs long established across Europe ‘cannot be equated with racist bigots’.

Rather, he said, these Christian views ‘have a legitimate place in a pluralist, tolerant and broadminded society’.

This makes up the first three paragraphs of his piece. Only in the the fifth paragraph do we get what I would have thought was the main point of the story:

Despite his call for tolerance, Mr Justice Sales rejected the claims of the Leeds-based agency. 

The judge said that Parliament had outlawed discrimination against gay couples and that Catholic Care had failed to demonstrate why it should be exempt from this legislation. Catholic Care's opponents were the Charity Commission. It was they who had make the 'bigot' charge against the adoption agency. 

So, Steve made the 'judge says social conservatives are not bigots' angle the focus of his report. He seems to know what his readership wants from him and the best-rated comments below his article bear that instinct out. There the judgement against Catholic Care is attacked, as are the "bigotry" of the Left, political correctness and (inevitably) Muslims, while the Catholic Church and traditional Christian viewpoints on gay issues are vigorously defended.

Take one 'Tablet' three times a day

I want to start this survey of Radio 4's Sunday (as you have to start somewhere) with a series of posts discussing its treatment of Roman Catholicism, as some might see the programme's ongoing focus on 'bad news' stories for the Vatican as a sign of BBC anti-Catholicism. I would say at the outset that it is clearly no such thing. It seems to me, if anything, to be evidence of bias in favour of liberal Catholicism.

I'm not the first person to believe this. Holy Smoke blogger, Daily Telegraph columnist and - crucially for this post - former editor of The Catholic Herald, Damian Thompson, wrote a piece nearly two years ago entitled Ed Stourton reveals his liberal Catholic bias again as he puts the boot into the Ordinariate. Damian wrote "Radio 4's Sunday programme offers perhaps the most undiluted liberal bias to be found anywhere on the BBC...Yesterday's discussion of the Ordinariate was introduced by Ed Stourton, whose interviews with his fellow liberal Catholics often sound as if they were taped at a meeting of the board of the Tablet (on which he sits). This was no exception."

Edward Stourton is indeed a trustee of The Tablet, along with the likes of Lord Chris Patten, Baroness Shirley Williams and Baroness Helena Kennedy (as fine a collection of the liberal 'great and the good' as you could hope to gather together on a board). The Tablet is a liberal Catholic magazine, broadly centre-left politically, liable to be critical of conservative trends within the Church - and of Pope Benedict XVI's Vatican in particular. I'm painting in fairly broad strokes but not, I think, inaccurately, by comparing it to the Guardian newspaper. Its rival is The Catholic Herald, rather more conservative, somewhat more right-leaning politically, less regularly critical of the Vatican, more akin to the Daily Telegraph. A read of Damian Thompson's blog, with its occasional digs at 'Tabletistas' (think 'Sandinistas' and 'Guardianistas'), shows that there's a fair gulf of attitude between them.

Here's the first evidence of bias. I think it is quite revealing that, throughout the 22 months of my survey (Jan 2011-now), Sunday has not featured Damian Thompson, former editor of The Catholic Herald, or Luke Coppen, its present editor. Nor has it interviewed any of the other regulars at The Catholic Herald. Indeed, and this might strike you as remarkable, I have not heard a single mention of The Catholic Herald on the programme throughout that time - and I have listened very closely to every episode.

What though of The Tablet? How has it fared on the show whose main presenter is one of its trustees? Have their been any guests from The Tablet appearing on Sunday? 

Yes. 

Its editor, Catherine Pepinster, has appeared on three editions during the time-frame of my survey (25/3/2012, 15/1/2012, 28/8/2011). You may know her from her frequent appearances on Today's Thought For The Day. [She is the second most regular of the Catholic speakers on TFTD, behind fellow Tabletista Clifford Longley]. Fans (like me) of the Platitude Of The Day website will know that she is the holder of the prestigious Platitude Of The Year award 2011. 

Even more conspicuous has been Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent of The Tablet. Robert is immediately recognisable by the ironic tone he uses to dish the dirt on the Vatican. He has appeared on six edition of the programme during my survey period (16/9/2012, 9/9/2012, 3/6/2012, 12/2/2012, 5/2/2012, 1/5/2011). As I shall expand upon later, the irony-tinted Mr. Mickens was treated as if he were a friendly BBC colleague on the occasions Ed Stourton chatted with him (supporting Damian Thompson's characterisation of Sunday as quoted above).

On these occasions, whichever presenter was hosting Sunday [usually Edward] made sure to mention The Tablet. Sometimes this was not the case. To introduce my next Tabletista, here's the former editor of The Catholic Herald again (see earlier link):

"Stourton was chatting with one of the Sunday programme's favourite Catholic commentators, Dr Tina Beattie, a straight-from-central-casting 1970s feminist (and director of the Tablet, according to the website of Roehampton University)."

Tina Beattie is, indeed, a regular Tablet columnist. She's been invited on four times over the period in question (14/10/2012, 9/9/2012, 1/5/2011, 30/1/2011).

And on it goes...The man who, as editor, steered The Tablet leftwards, John Wilkins, has also been invited onto Sunday over this period. He was there for two of the big Sunday specials - those (alongside Tina Beattie) for the 50th anniversary of Vatican II (14/10/2012) and (also alongside Tina Beattie and Robert Mickens) for the beatification of Pope John Paul II (1/5/2011).

As you can see from the previous paragraph, there have been Catholic-centred specials where contributors/editors/trustees of The Tablet have come together en masse, seminar-like, for Sunday. To re-emphasise... the John Paul II episode had a former Tablet editor (John Wilkins), a regular Tablet columnist (Tina Beattie), a reporter for The Tablet (Robert Mickens) and a Tablet trustee (Ed Stourton). I am genuinely curious to know just how this is considered acceptable by the BBC employees who bring us Sunday. As for the Vatican II edition last week, we had former Tablet editor John Wilkins, regular Tablet columnist Tina Beattie and Tablet trustee Edward Stourton, Questionable, isn't it, surely? (In the same edition, during an interview with Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the Catholic leader in England and Wales, Ed dropped in a further plug for The Tablet that made me laugh our loud by its sheer - as it seemed to me at the time - blatancy.)

Since first writing that paragraph, I've discovered that it's even worse than I thought. I'd assumed that the Christopher Lamb sent to report on the feelings of ordinary Catholics during the Vatican II edition was a BBC reporter. He had also been dispatched by Sunday to interview Catherine Tate about the King James Bible (23/10/2011). He's just reappeared, however, on the 28/10/2012 edition where he has been introduced, for the first time, as "The Tablet's Christopher Lamb" - and indeed he is. Curiouser and curiouser.

The links between BBC Radio 4's Sunday and the liberal Tablet are intriguing, to say the least. Here's Catholic Herald director Damian Thompson again (from October 2010), going back before my survey began, to show that this is standard Sunday practice:

"From the strictly impartial BBC Sunday programme at Cofton Park, a classic discussion of the subject of women priests between Tablet editorial consultant Clifford Longley, Tablet director Tina Beattie and the Tablet's favourite bishop, Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton – chaired by Tablet trustee Ed Stourton."

To all this we may add that Ed himself isn't just a BBC presenter and a Tablet trustee, he also pens occasional pieces for The Tablet. His BBC colleague, David Willey - who treads a fairly similar beat to Robert Mickens in Rome and is a regular contributor to Sunday - is also a frequent writer for The Tablet. So if you don't get Robert reporting from The Tablet from the Vatican on Sunday you are likely to get his fellow Tablet scribbler (and BBC veteran) David Willey . Doesn't this get ever more extraordinary?

And on it goes...when Tabletista bogeyman Pope Benedict visited Germany, Sunday (25/9/2011) invited on Christa Pongratz-Lippitt of...The Tablet [duly mentioned] to give her less than wholly enthusiastic appraisal of the visit. 

Sometimes no one from The Tablet even needs to appear for it to get a mention. Here's Jane Little (17/7/2012) raising the issue of donations from Rupert Murdoch to the Catholic Church: "The Catholic Weekly, The Tablet, has called on the Church to give the money back. Should it?" The issue was discussed with the man Damian Thompson called "the Tablet's favourite bishop", Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton, and a chap from the left-leaning think tank the IPPR, Labour advisor Francis Davis of the Guardian - who also, it transpires, writes articles for The Tablet...and talking of Rupert, when The News of the World was shut down (10/7/2011) Clifford Longley  [editorial consultant] "of the Tablet" was on hand to give his view. 

Sometimes a guest can appear whose presence on the programme appears puzzling. Why discuss the film The Rite with Fr Christopher Jamison? As the film is about exorcism, perhaps that's explanation enough, given that Catholic priests are popularly associated with the practice. Except...why this particular Catholic priest? Well, Father Christopher Jamison just happens to write for The Tablet. 

Even one of the most regular Jewish guests, Ed Kessler, who received four invitations (9/1/2011, 6/3/2011, 1/5/2011, 11/12/2011), writes for The Tablet. In his last appearance (so far), late last year, he was  sympathetic to Pope Benedict [having engineered a historic meeting between the Pope and the Chief Rabbi] and has never appeared on the programme since. He has continued to write for The Tablet though, so he could be invited back in time.

That's a lot of Tablets to swallow! 

You may not care very much about turf battles between Catholic magazines or, for that matter, about tussles between opposing wings of the Roman Catholic Church, but do you not agree that the rather relentless-seeming promotion of the liberal Catholic Tablet at the expense of the more conservative Catholic Herald cries out for an explanation? It seems highly biased, does it not?