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. 

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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).

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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.

Papal indulgence

The compulsion to fact-check the BBC is growing in me. There really was no reason, other than not trusting the BBC to be accurate, for me to rush to Google to check the following (from one of their main News website reports) - after all, how likely was it that the BBC could get the Pope's family background wrong?:

Well, it turns out that calling Francis "the grandson of Italian migrants" isn't entirely accurate. Surely the more important fact is that his father was an Italian immigrant to Argentina -  though, yes, both of his father's parents were Italian migrants too. (See here and here). On his mother's side his grandfather was Argentinian-born and his grandmother Italian-born (and, therefore, also an Italian migrant. (See here). 

So, as you can see, the BBC was partly right. It turns out that it's a bit more complicated than simply the Pope being "himself the grandson of Italian migrants". On his paternal line, he himself was the son of an Italian migrant, and on his mother's line only one of his grandparents was an Italian migrant.

As I wasted a few interesting minutes researching all of that I thought I'd share it with you (as it's Christmas)!

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Anyhow, BBC Watch has been crunching the numbers and has proven that the BBC's account of the Pope's Urbi et Orbi address got a very specific focus from the BBC. The BBC made it largely about Israel and the Palestinians, despite the vast bulk of the papal address not being about Israel and the Palestinians.

Loving angels (instead)

The Catholics seem to be all over the place. Not so long ago they blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, which accounted for a great deal of Catholic antisemitism back in the day.

Then Pope Benedict XVl decided to forgive them. 

Unfortunately Pope Francis might have decided to unforgive them again, since he’s about  to recognise a Palestinian State and canonise two 19th c. Palestinian nuns in an attempt to 

“strengthen the Christian presence in the Middle East at a time when when hundreds of thousands of Arab Christians are fleeing Islamic violence.”

Does that compute? I don’t quite get it, but hey, as they say on the internet, ‘hope that helps’.

Now it looks like Pope Francis has gawn stark staring bonkers.  He’s given that devious old rogue Mahmoud Abbas a medal, and called him an “Angel of Peace.” 

 The BBC reports:

“The BBC's David Willey in Rome says that after 20 minutes of private talks, Pope Francis gave Mr Abbas the medallion depicting an angel of peace adding: "It is appropriate because you are an angel of peace."

Umpteen other news outlets including the Times of Israel also report that the Pope called Abbas an “Angel of Peace”. What can this mean? Your holiness cannot be serious!

Italian is such an obscure and untranslatable lingo, we can’t expect the BBC to go to the trouble of finding an independent Italian-speaking translator.   What’s that saying -  “A mistranslation can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting its boots on”.

There is a difference between stating something is a fact and wishing it were. 

Italian sources suggest that ‘you are’ was a mistranslation of ‘may you be’ . This is their version, which does sound like a more rational thing to say of Mahmoud Abbas.

“ As is tradition with heads of State or of government, Francis presented presented a gift to the Palestinian leader, commenting: “May the angel of peace destroy the evil spirit of war. I thought of you: may you be an angel of peace.” 

I hope that’s correct, because earlier, Pope Francis apparently did hand out inappropriately flattering compliments willy nilly.

Pope Francis had called Abu Mazen a “man of peace” when he visited Bethlehem in May 2014, just as he called the then Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, a “man of peace” during his subsequent visit to Jerusalem.”

The difference between “You are’ and “may you be” is quite profound, wouldn’t you agree? It’s very nice that the Pope wishes Mahmoud Abbas will turn into an Angel of Peace someday, if that is indeed what he did; but I’d prefer it if his holiness would just butt out. 

May the Pope butt out.

The Pope, "walls", and the BBC's David Willey

BBC Watch's latest post on the BBC's reporting of the Pope's visit to the Middle East takes the BBC's veteran Rome correspondent David Willey [their "Vatican expert"] to task. 

Hadar is spot-on in describing his article (Pope Francis cements reputation for deft diplomacy) as reading in parts "more like a PR communique than a report by an impartial BBC journalist". 

There's been quite a whiff of that about much of David Willey's reporting about Pope Francis since his election as pope - in contrast to his evident dislike for Pope Benedict XVI. [There's a faint reminder of that here in, "Pope Francis has shown greater diplomatic skill than his predecessor, Pope Benedict, during his Holy Land visit in 2009."]

BBC Watch makes several criticisms of David Willey here, the first batch of which focus on the article's "context-free" description of Israel's security barrier [which has saved countless people from terrorist attacks over the years] as a "wall" (though Mr Willey does refer to it more accurately as a "barrier" soon after): 

On successive days he paused to pray in front of two of the most significant walls here, bowing to touch them with his forehead and his hand.

First in Bethlehem, an 8m-high, graffiti-covered concrete section of the barrier that separates the Palestinian territories of the West Bank from Israel; then, in Jerusalem, the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray.”

What of that eye-popping comparison between the two "walls"?

Hadar calls it "bizarre" and says that some might call it "tasteless" too - rather as if someone were to compare the Kaaba (the cube at the centre of Mecca towards which the whole Muslim World faces when it prays), with one of Star Trek's Borg cubes. 

This whole area is deeply fraught though. The BBC are never going to call the barrier "the anti-terrorist fence" - the term BBC Watch uses. They don't like using the word "terrorist" for starters. 

The BBC's own guidelines state:

BBC journalists should try to avoid using terminology favoured by one side or another in any dispute.

The BBC uses the terms “barrier”, “separation barrier” or “West Bank barrier” as acceptable generic descriptions to avoid the political connotations of “security fence” (preferred by the Israeli government) or “apartheid wall” (preferred by the Palestinians).

The United Nations also uses the term “barrier”.

Of course, a reporter standing in front of a concrete section of the barrier might choose to say “this wall” or use a more exact description in the light of what he or she is looking at.

David Willey's piece does, however, place the idea that the barrier is a "wall" firmly at the forefront of his reader's mind through that comparison with the Western Wall and, given that - purely factually-speaking - anyone who isn't a propagandist will admit that the barrier is at least 90% a fence and at most 10% a wall, it is always wrong for BBC reporters to leave their readers with the false impression that the barrier is a wall.

Hadar also takes the BBC's "Vatican expert" up on his use of the word "sacrifice" in the following passage:

At the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Pope Francis paid eloquent tribute to the sacrifice made by six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis all over Europe.

As she says,

...by definition, a “sacrifice made” involves some sort of active personal choice which the millions murdered by the Nazis did not have the opportunity to exercise...

It was certainly an unfortunate choice of words, though I don't think that any malice was meant by it-  and I suspect David Willey would be mortified to think anyone thinks there was. 

Similarly, I think the the post's main charge is also unfair to Mr Willey.

...the fact is that – contrary to the inaccurate impression Willey gives to BBC audiences – the Pope did not mention the figure six million or the word ‘Jews’ throughout his entire speech at Yad Vashem, the full text of which can be read here.  

Yes, Pope Francis didn't use the actual words 'six million' or 'Jews' during his speech at Yad Vashem but David Willey surely isn't wrong to say that it was the Pope's eloquent tribute to them? [Sometimes BBC critics, like us, can't seem the figurative wood for the literal trees].

BBC Watch is like that. It's an earnest, thoughtful site which acts as a invaluable corrective to the BBC's skewed reporting of Israel, but sometimes [just like other BBC bias-related sites, including ours] it can paint the BBC in too harsh a light.

[Unlike some of mine] every article is worth reading closely though. 

Pope “At odds with Israel”

We’ll have to watch out for Quentin Sommervilles’ bizarre take on the Pope’s attitude to Israel. He got off to a bad start when he announced that the Vatican is ‘At odds with Israel because Pope Francis favours a two-state solution’ and went on to say that Israel sees Jerusalem as their capital “unlike the rest of the world”, although that particular bit isn’t in the clip shown here. Can’t wait for tomorrow’s Sunday programme.