A glimpse behind the scenes

Mahyar Tousi's latest YouTube video highlights a revealing piece of correspondence from 2013. It was sent by the BBC's Kevin Fitzpatrick - at the time a reporter for BBC Radio Manchester - to the the then-Labour leader of Oldham Council Jim McMahon [now MP for Oldham West], copying in other councillors, Greater Manchester Police and Kevin's BBC boss.

Though it shows that the BBC had - quite rightly - been asking questions about child sexual exploitation involving Oldham's 'Asian community', it proves that Oldham Council and the GMP asked the BBC not to broadcast anything about it and that the BBC agreed - 'for the time being'.

The council and the police were worried about 'tensions in the town ahead of Lee Rigby's funeral'.

We've long assumed that these sorts of conversations went on and that things were not being reported because of concerns about 'social cohesion', but it's still startling to see the evidence in black and white. 

Wonder what happened next, after the funeral?

Buried in Manchester

I've just been reading a Twitter thread by ex-BBC/ex-Channel 4 reporter Michael Crick:

• Oldham child sex exploitation report is extraordinary: “Offender A worked for Oldham Council between 1998 and 2006. He was employed as a welfare rights officer in the welfare rights unit of the council seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community centre”.
• “In May 2012 he was found guilty of two rapes, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation […] offender A lived in Oldham and was a member of the Oldham Labour Party”.
• And: “At the end of Sept 2008, the Probation Service notified Oldham Council that offender A had been charged with sexual assault. No action was taken by Oldham Cl to undertake a safeguarding assessment of Off A following this information or to liaise with colleagues in GM Police.”
• “Furthermore, it was known by the police that offender A was a council employee and insufficient enquiries were made into whether his role gave him access to vulnerable adults and children.”
• “… throughout this period, legitimate concerns on the part of both the council & the police that high-profile convictions of predominantly Pakistani offenders across the country could be capitalised on by a far-right agenda & lead to the victimisation of the Pakistani community”.
• Jim McMahon, Labour’s Shadow Defra Secretary, who was leader of Oldham Council from 2011 to 2016, clearly has some very difficult questions to answer.

Turning to the broadcast media, Sky News have a long, prominent report about it on their website's home page:

The BBC, in contrast, isn't presently reporting the story at all on their news website's home page. You have to go to their UK page to find it, and it's right at the very end of their long list of stories:

We're in very familiar territory here.

UPDATE

Newsniffer reveals an interesting series of edits to the BBC report. 

Those of us who have monitored the BBC over the last decade and more used to comment on how the BBC, if forced to name the ethnic backgrounds of most of the perpetrators, would use the ambiguous, somewhat misleading term 'Asian/Asians'. 

Later versions of today's BBC report note that the inquiry specifically called this out:

The report pointed out that while most arrests for child sex offences by GMP in the period between September 2009 and July 2010 then identified the alleged offenders as being Asian, they were likely to have generally related to British men of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage. 

What is astonishing here is that the earliest versions of the BBC report show the BBC still doing precisely that, just as they always used to do - thus showing just the kind of mindset and massaging of language the inquiry criticised:

The independent inquiry was set up after allegations circulated on social media that Oldham Council was covering up what it knew about Asian grooming gangs in the town.

Then suddenly the BBC removed the word 'Asian' [click to enlarge]:

The article still had to go through a few more versions before they added 'the issue of grooming by "predominantly Pakistani offenders"' and removed the final use of 'Asian' in that old, familiar, misleading BBC kind of usage as...:

She went to Oldham police station to report being raped by an Asian man in October 2006 and was told to come back when she was "not drunk".

was edited and became:

She went to Oldham police station to report being sexually assaulted in October 2006 and was told to come back when she was "not drunk".

This was the moment they finally introduced the phrase "British men of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage" into the article when they quoted directly from the inquiry report criticising the use of the term 'Asian' and the lack of use of 'Pakistani' and 'Bangladeshi'.

So what we have here is truly remarkable: The BBC began by reporting this story in exactly the way the inquiry report criticised. Then they obviously panicked and began editing out 'Asian' and adding in 'Pakistani' and 'Bangladeshi'.

Thanks to Newsniffer though they've been caught in the act.

The BBC, Sky and grooming gangs

A week ago today Sky News at Ten led on new evidence about grooming gangs preying on young girls in Hull, with one girl telling them that she was raped by 150 men. The men involved are reported to have 'Asian or Middle Eastern' backgrounds. A series of reports followed for nearly a week, featuring the evidence and testimony of the alleged victims, and it was given round-the-clock coverage by the broadcaster.

 

Meanwhile, the BBC has today posted a video about the Rochdale grooming gang: ‘My life just started crumbling’: Is British media Islamophobic? on how a Muslim man was wrongly accused by the Mail of Sunday of being a ''fixer'' linked to the Rochdale grooming gang. 

That striking contrast led me to do a spot of research...

A search on TVEyes for the words 'grooming' AND 'gang' during the past six months [1 June-30 November] brought up just one mention on the BBC News Channel - that was on Friday 10 September 2021 at 1.55pm. 

A search for words 'grooming' AND 'gangs' brought up another single mention  - on the BBC News Channel on Tuesday 5 October 2021 at 12.00pm - and that was only because the BBC was broadcasting Priti Patel's Conservative Party Conference speech live and she used the term 'grooming gangs'. 

Contrast that to Sky News over the same six month period. The term 'grooming gangs' was used on 20 separate occasions and the term 'grooming gang' 44 other times.

So though it may feel as if Sky are as bad as the BBC sometimes, they aren't in this case.

"His grubby organisation"

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse published its findings this week on allegations linked to the Archdiocese of Birmingham when the present leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, served archbishop there. The IICSA found that the then Archbishop of Birmingham defended the reputation of the church rather than protecting children in the face of allegations of sexual abuse.

The BBC has some involvement in the story. According to The Guardian:

In 2003 the BBC broadcast a documentary that traced [serial child abuser and priest James] Robinson to a caravan park in the US. Nichols issued a press release complaining that the programme was “hostile” to the Catholic church. This response was “misplaced and missed the point”, the IICSA report said."

Veteran BBC reporter Hugh Sykes's take on this is quite startling:

Putting 'cardinal' in inverted commas and describing the whole Catholic Church as a "grubby organisation" suggests real anger from Hugh.

Addressing the problem directly?

During the reign of Pope Benedict XVI, sections of the BBC personally hostile to Benedict - especially Ed Stourton's Sunday and the BBC's Rome correspondent David Willey - would feature regular criticism of Benedict's Vatican for doing too little about priestly child abuse in the Catholic Church. 

Here's one 2010 example from David Willey:

Pope Benedict has plenty of opportunity during his brief weekend visit to Malta to talk about the clerical sexual abuse which has scandalised members of his faith around the world, and created a credibility crisis for the world's largest Church, the Church of Rome.

But he has chosen to speak in generalities and metaphor rather than to address the problem directly.

Given that Sunday has been rigorous in its coverage of child abuse with regards to the Catholic Church, covering its every twist and turn, it will be interesting to see how (or if) it covers this story:

The former Pope, Benedict XVI, defrocked nearly 400 priests over a two-year period for allegedly raping and molesting children, according to a leaked Vatican document.

That's from Sky News today, and the Sky report goes on to say:

Before becoming pope, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took action after determining that bishops around the world were not following church policy and putting accused clerics on trial in church tribunals.

This is not the picture of Benedict painted over time by Messrs Stourton and Willey, so how will they report this story?

Probably grudgingly, and perhaps in the manner of BBC News's online take on the same story which briskly mentions that "Close to 400 priests were defrocked in only two years by the former Pope Benedict XVI over claims of child abuse, the Vatican has confirmed", merely adding:

Benedict, who was elected in 2005, took the helm as the scandal of child sex abuse by priests was breaking.

We'll see.

Whitewashing Sex Gangs III

Mary Hockaday

This week's Newswatch with Samira Ahmed discussed the BBC's coverage of the Oxford street grooming case. In the course of the programme Samira interviewed the head of the BBC newsroom, Mary Hockaday. 

The section began with an extract from last Tuesday's Six O'Clock News on BBC One:

Newsreader: The court heard how the girls were plied with alcohol and drugs before being abused. The men will be sentenced next month. Just to warn you, Tom Symond's report contains disturbing details of the gang's activities.

Reporter: The men behind one of the most serious cases in recent years of what's become known as "street grooming. Their victims vulnerable young teenage girls in Oxford.

The majority of Newswatch correspondents complained that the Muslim or "Asian" element was being "underplayed". Three such complaints were read out.

- "Your report tonight went to bizarrely contrived efforts to disguise the obvious sectarian element involved ie gangs of Muslim men grooming and raping girls drawn from indigenous non-Muslim groups."

- "This huge story is being slanted quite outrageously by BBC News. This is racially organised targeting of sexual violence on minors, and is far from an isolated case. You are deliberately ignoring that and being racist is your partiality."

- "Why do you never mention the religion of those mentioned in sexual abuse cases? We all know they are predominantly Muslim." 

The part of the interview with Mary Hockaday which dealt with this matter is worth transcribing (before Newswatch vanishes from the i-Player), especially in the light of our earlier posts on this issue - and the comments of Dr. Taj Hargey:

Samira Ahmed: The six o'clock lead story, which we showed a clip of at the beginning there...no mention of ethnicity or religion until the end of the second background package, eight minutes in; in fact no mention at all of the fact they were Muslim. Why?

Mary Hockaday: This was reporting of a court case and, primarily, the task was to report the findings, the verdicts and what had happened, and for much of our reporting and our court reporting we were conveying the details and the information of what had emerged through the trial and then particularly on that day. Part of it is, as you say, in our reporting with Alison Holt, we did come to the issue of the ethnicity of the defendants...

Samira Ahmed (interrupting): It was mentioned very, very briefly, right at the very end. I mean, there have been five similar cases now - Shropshire, Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham and Derby as well...there's a great blog-post by Mark Easton about it on the BBC website...The charge is that the BBC seemed to be more worried about offending Pakistani Muslims that it did about covering all the issues - and it was relevant to the case.  

Mary Hockaday: Yes, I can absolutely assure you that was not our particular concern on that day. We certainly do not attempt to slant our coverage and we certainly don't ignore any aspects of the case. What we're trying to do is report it in the round, and actually during the court case the word used usually by the police was "Asian". We undertook to make our own further enquiries so that we were sure about the more detailed ethnicity of the defendants and that is something - many of Pakistan heritage, some of North African - that we included in our reporting through the day on the channel. We discuss all stories, both about the accuracy, the weight, the issues arisen, and in these cases very much about the language used....

Samira Ahmed (interrupting): But on this, were reporters told "Don't use the word 'Muslim' or don't say they're Asian up front. I mean...

Mary Hockaday: We don't tell our reporters. We don't give them a sort of rule book for language. We are asking them to report accurately. If you look at the reporting as a whole, both on the Six O'Clock News then on all the other outlets, these are not issues that we shied away from. I mean, as you say...

Samira Ahmed (interrupting): But on the Six O'Clock News you did. 

Mary Hockaday: ...Mark Easton in his blog and also on air, Alison Holt, in many of the guests in discussions, the issues you've touched on, but also others - the questions for the police, for the social services, the broader question I think for all of us that we see reflected in the very many different kinds of child abuse and exploitation cases that we found ourselves reporting on, about how this society does or doesn't listen to children.

That was an instance of fine interviewing by Samira. 

It has to be said, however, that the edition of the Six O'Clock News under discussion does sound to have downplayed the sectarian element in the story. The evidence provided by Samira makes that plain and little that Mary Hockaday said in response really countered that charge. She was also rather evasive about the "Muslim question".

I did also raise an eyebrow at Mary's contention that "We don't tell our reporters. We don't give them a sort of rule book for language" as I was under the impression that certain words were specifically discouraged under the corporation's Editorial Guidelines - "terrorist", for instance - and that, say for their Israel-Palestinian coverage, they has long existing what could be described as "a sort of rule book for language". 

Was the Six O'Clock News an exception? 

Carolyn Quinn

It might be instructive to check out how that evening's P.M. on Radio 4 one hour earlier dealt with the story. 

Although both of the introductions provided by Carolyn Quinn (to the whole programme and to Mike Sargeant's report) shied away from any mention of matter racial or religious, the coverage did twice mention the Pakistani and North African ethnicity of the abusers (in passing), though Mike Sergeant didn't mention the ethnicity of their victims anywhere in his report; indeed, his report stayed away from any ethnic or Muslim angle until, towards the end, he suddenly said that there are "questions for the Muslim community". He didn't spell out what those questions were though, and then featured an Oxford imam saying that enough's enough, that the community should tackle the issue and it shouldn't be swept under the carpet. Listeners unfamiliar with the story might have been left wondering why the imam was saying that. The following interview between Carolyn and Natasha Finlayson of the Who Cares Trust avoided such issues altogether. 

So, unlike the Six O'Clock News, the "Muslim" issue was raised on P.M., albeit very briefly and with no context being give for the benefit of Radio 4 listeners. The angle, therefore, wasn't ignored but it clearly was downplayed. 

By the time of that night's The World Tonight the main news bulletin was informing listeners of the Pakistani and North African ethnicity of the abusers and that "the girls were white". The failure of the authorities to look out for vulnerable girls was one of the two main angles, with the county council's role coming in for the strongest questioning but presenter David Eades then laid out the other - albeit using the "Asian" word that infuriates so many, including many non-Muslim Asians:

The inescapable truths of this case are twofold: That again the authorities failed to protect vulnerable girls and again that a gang overwhelmingly of Asian men were found guilty of appalling abuse of white girls. The echoes of Rochdale and Rotherham are clear. It's also clear the local Asian community in the Oxford area fear the impact all this could have on them. The Asian Network's Catrin Nye has been there to gauge their views.

Catrin Nye

Catrin's report on the Pakistani community emphasised how "tight knit" the community is. Everyone knew the perpetrators. She talks to one young man and asks him what impact this might have. He says people with daughters might start thinking all young Asian men are paedos, which is wrong, because it's a small minority that have done something wrong. Every race and creed is doing it, he says.  Other man says much the same.  It's every race and creed. The view is expressed that a flash, gangster element has come in and preyed on the girls just because they are vulnerable. Another expresses caution about talking about the issue, says they should stick together and repeats much the same 'everyone's doing it' line as the previous vox pops. It's every race and creed. Two others say it's nothing to do with their religion after Catrin asks them what they make of the charge that Muslim men disrespect non-Muslim women. She says they are all concerned about a backlash as a result of this case. 

A very clear message was conveyed by that report: Every race and creed is doing it. 

David Eades then continued, persisting with his "Asian" formulation - which he never deviated from:

As with the other well-documented cases, the crimes in Oxford do provoke argument as to how much focus should be placed on that Asian connection. I spoke to Yasmin Qureshi, Labour MP for Bolton South. She's a lawyer and Asian, and I asked her whether it's inevitable that young Asian men, like the ones we've just heard from, would feel tarnished by this case?

Yasmin Qureshi said, yes, she understood. It's like how young Afro-Caribbean men were stereotyped years ago, she claimed. The Pakistani origin of many of the abusers in these cases shouldn't mean they aren't investigated, she continued, but as "I know of" "one defendant" in "one case" who raped his own daughter, so "it can't be to do with culture or religion" [Yes, she really did say that!!!] 

So, do you think dwelling on the Pakistani ethnicity of the perps and the white ethnicity of the girls is "out of order?", asked David Eades. "I think that is not right and it is not helpful in the debate," she replied, before going on to attack media reporting. This is about opportunity and vulnerability, she claimed. 

David Eades pointed to people who say, yes, but it keeps happening, meaning there's "a trend" - to which the Labour MP responded that the victims in these cases "just happen to be young girls" [yes, she really did phrase it like that], they're from broken homes, in care, vulnerable, young, alone, lost. The men pick on them for their vulnerability. 

Yasmin Qureshi, MP

But, David persisted, "these are organised groups from the same ethnic background". Only because "they happen to socialise with each other, because they happen to know each other", Yasmin replied.

Well, you can't say that the issue of ethnicity wasn't aired by The World Tonight. The issue of Islam, however, was downplayed again - especially by the programme's presenter. The choice of speakers with regards to this aspect of the story, however, was biased entirely in favour of those defending the "Asian" community against the charges we often hear, including from other "Asian" spokespeople such as Taj Hargey and Mohammed Shafiq. 

Whitewashing sex gangs? There certainly seems to have been an element of that, doesn't there? - at least in these three BBC programmes from Tuesday 14th May. It could have been worse though. At least The World Tonight showed that the BBC was venturing a little bit further than it might once have done. 

Whitewashing Sex Gangs (II)

Following on from Sue's Whitewashing Sex Gangs post, the closing section of Radio 4's Sunday dealt (as Sue pointed out) with the same highly controversial issue of child grooming by Muslim gangs in the wake of the Oxford abuse trial, where several men with backgrounds in several Muslim countries (not just Pakistan) used and abused a number of under-aged white girls in the most degrading and cruel ways imaginable.

For a programme that has exhaustively pursued the Roman Catholic Church over the particular issue of clerical child abuse in recent years, this is a subject the programme needed to tackle. There is a perception among some viewers and listeners that the BBC treads far too gingerly around this issue. Sunday has not exactly ignored it over the past few years, though it had dealt with the issue far less frequently than it has dealt with the issue of abuse by Catholics. You can read the detailed evidence for this contention here - a complete survey of 93 editions of the programme in 2011 and 2012 which found that the issue of Muslim paedophile gangs, child abuse by imams and within Islamic institutions and other such matters was discussed on just three editions (3.2%), as compared to the 26 editions (28%) featuring discussion of Catholic clerical abuse.

Many people believe there's a link between the teachings of Islam and this specific form of child abuse against non-Muslim girls, however hotly denied this may be by the police or the Children's Commission. 

As Sue said, this edition of Sunday closed with a debate between Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain and Dr. Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation. Like Sue, I found Dr. Hargey's contribution magnificent -  "Good man!" was my (somewhat old-fashioned) exclamation on hearing him - and Sheikh Mogra's disgraceful attempts to undo the damage turned out to be a complete disaster (for him). Dr. Hargey won, all hands down. Sheikh Mogra sounded like a creep.

This was partly down to Edward Stourton's evident surprise at and refusal to accept Sheikh Mogra's feeble and blindingly obvious attempts to slip and slide in order to evade the point of Dr. Hargey's comments. "Good man, Ed!", I thought (stroking my whiskers, and sipping on my breakfast pint of port). 

Here is a transcription of that discussion, I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

Ed: Dr. Hargey, in what sense do you think the religious background of men in a case like this predisposes them to commit this kind of crime?

Dr. Hargey: Well, it's the mood music from the mosques and the madrassas, the drip-drip effect over many decades that says that women of another culture and another race, especially British women who are immodestly dressed and who are, therefore, impure and immoral, and they are fair game. They don't say that directly, but I think that they have juxtaposed that Muslim women wear the hijab, the niqab, the headscarf and the face mask and, of course, our women are better; other women, by an unspoken subtext, not so good. And I think this is what we need to address. I think we cannot bury our heads in the sand and say this is not an issue that effects the Muslim community. It does. Most of the perpetrators - whether Rochdale, Telford, or Derby, or wherever - are Muslim men and whether they are Pakistani, it doesn't really matter. What is important is that they are Muslim. So where do they get this idea about women? Where does this misogyny about women and patriarchy come from? 

Ed: Your answer to that question is very clear. It comes from the mosques?

Dr. Hargey: Not just from them, but from the madrassas, from the community. It's pervasive. I mean, just to blame the mosques would be unfair, but I think we need to examine Islamic theology and especially certain fatwas and so forth that denigrate women, that patronises them, that regards them as chattels, as possessions; for example, Saudi Arabia, looked upon as the so-called leader of the Islamic community, they don't even allow the women to travel unaccompanied by male relatives. So we have a whole mindset that needs to be combated. I think that what we are trying to do is to solve the problem at the end of the production line. It's never going to work. We need to go to the beginning of the production line and see how women and men...how women are objectified in Muslim society.

Ed: Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, two very clear points: The first being that that's the message that comes through in all sorts of ways in the Muslim community; and the second that that's directly related to this kind of case. What's your response to those two...?

Sheikh Mogra: I totally disagree with most of the assessments and analysis of Dr. Hargey there. The mosques and the madrassas would be the last place where encouragement would be taught for sexual misbehaviour...

Ed (interrupting): That's not what he's saying though. He's saying that a view of women comes across that leads to that.

Sheikh Mogra

Sheikh Mogra: The teachings of Islam and the theology of Islam is very, very clear. Sexual relations can only be between a male and a female who are married to one another. The fatwas that are issued are very, very clear about that and this idea of suggesting that a distant country is influencing us here, how our youngsters have behaved on the street is absolutely...something very difficult to connect with this issue. When the specific example of women not being allowed to travel alone..I'm just thinking if these young girls, who have been exploited and have been pounced upon, had been accompanied by a male then they would have  been safer. But let's not go into the situation of distant countries. For me the issue here really is 'What can we do now to ensure that this menace is eradicated from our societies and from our communities.

Ed: But, forgive me, you didn't quite address the point - or at least I didn't think you did - which was not to do with the teaching on sexual relations in Islam, it was to do with the attitude to women that comes across in all sorts of different ways.

Sheikh Mogra: Well, let me share with you what Islam teaches about the attitudes that Muslims should have towards women. Their is very, very categoric teachings within the Koran and within the Kadith traditions that the woman is to be honoured, is to be given respect and dignity. We cannot allow cultural practices to be packaged as if they were Islamic teachings. They is Islam, and the teachings of Islam, which is very clear and there is the cultural behaviour which is be condemned because it is does not fit with the teachings of Islam. 

Ed: Let me bring in Dr. Hargey there. Your response to that?

Dr. Hargey: Yes, we due respect, what the sheikh is talking about is about Muslim attitudes towards Muslim women, not to non-Muslim women. This is the issue....

Sheikh Mogra (interrupting): Absolutely not!...

Ed: Just a second, Sheikh Mogra, please, Sheikh Mogra, do forgive me, Let Dr. Hargey finish.

Dr. Hargey: And for the sheikh to talk about Saudi Arabia as some distant country is very disingenuous. Thi is the country that brings a Wahhabi type of Islam right to our shores. so we can't just dismiss that. But the issue here is really how Muslim society, whether it is the imams, whether it is the mosques and madrassas or elders, whatever, how they view women of the other - the other meaning 'the kaffir women' - OK, the kaffir women, the non-believing women...

Ed (interrupting): ...the kaffir women are the non-believers?

Dr. Hargey: Yes, the non-believing women are fair game, they are easy meat...

Sheikh Mogra (interrupting): Absolutely not! Absolutely not!

Ed: Sheikh Mogra, I'll come back to you in a moment.

Dr. Hargey: ...because they are are not fit, because the way they dress they are inviting this kind of thing in their mindset...

Taj Hargey

Ed (interrupting): All right, let...Sheikh Mogra, you've told us how things should be but Dr. Hargey is presenting us with a picture of how he thinks thinks actually are.

Sheikh Mogra: That is not true. Muslims have been living in this country for six, seven decades or more and  

non-Muslim women have been dressing in the way that they have been dressing for all that time. So this is not an issue of Muslim men looking at non-Muslim women and the way that they are dressing to say they are fair game. The law is the law. You can not have any relations, you can not... 

Dr. Hargey (interrupting): So why...

Ed (interrupting): Just a second! 

Sheikh Mogra: There is no space and room in the teachings of Islam where Muslims have got license to abuse other non-Muslim women just because of the way they dress, the way they live, or whatever their lifestyles are. The bottom line here is that we have an issue in our country where young women are being abused, just because...

Ed (interrupting): Forgive me, we're running out of time. I just want a quick response to that from Dr. Hargey.

Dr. Hargey: So why is it that all the victims are non-Muslim white women, young girls? There isn't a single Muslim girl that's been groomed and abused by a Muslim gang. So clearly there's an issue of race, religion, culture, whatever, and we should stop burying our heads in the sand and talk about the wonderful hadith and talk about what Islam says, because the reality is very different on the street.

Ed: Forgive me, I'm going to have to end it there. It's fascinating stuff. Thank you both very much indeed for coming in to talk to us this morning.

....and thank you Ed for hosting it!

Whitewashing?

Many of you will remember last year's high-profile child sexual abuse scandal trial in Rochdale. As the abuse was perpetrated by eight men of Pakistani origin and one Afghan asylum seeker and all the victims were white under-aged girls, the case provoked a nationwide debate on whether the crimes had a racial/religious/cultural motivation. Concerns were raised that the police, CPS, local council and social services had failed to investigate the abuse properly out of fear of being accused of being racist/anti-Muslim. 

The debate raged across blogs, newspapers, radio and television. Even the BBC, which has been (justly) accused on treading over-cautiously in such matters over the years, aired the debate over the racial/religious aspects (albeit in their own, somewhat circumscribed way). Question Time and all the major Radio 4 programmes debated the issue. 

Though there was some resistance to admit the racial/religious elements to the crime from parts of the police, the Children's Commission, the CPS (etc), plenty of people, including Trevor Phillips of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation and local Labour MP Simon Danczuk, claimed that attempts to deny the racial element in the crimes were "fatuous" or "daft". 

There were critics of the BBC who thought that the BBC was also trying to downplay the racial/religious element. I (like some other commenters at Biased BBC) found good things and bad things in BBC's reporting at the time to be and felt that, with some stand-out exceptions, the BBC wasn't whitewashing the issue. You can read the relevant Biased BBC threads on this here and here. 

The BBC returned to the story this week in an edition of File on 4, presented by Jane Deith (a freelance reporter for the BBC and Channel 4 News):  

Rochdale Abuse: Failed Victims?

The high profile child sex abuse case in Rochdale last summer - in which nine men were jailed for more than 70 years for grooming underage girls - has been defined as a watershed moment in how the authorities deal with this kind of abuse.

But were there crucial failings?

In an exclusive interview for File on 4, one of the police officers involved in the case claims that flaws in the way it was handled meant important witness evidence was dropped and some abusers were never prosecuted - leaving a new generation of girls potentially at risk and victims seriously let down.

Jane Deith also hears complaints that witnesses were left without adequate support to help them re-build their lives.

Earlier this month the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, published new guidelines for police and prosecutors in such cases. But have they come too late for many victims?

It was a powerful piece of investigative reporting, tenaciously pursuing many serious questions for the police, the CPS, the council and social services. 

Remarkably, however, it completely avoided the racial/religious element to the story - and I do mean 'completely'. Not once was the racial or religious background of either the perpetrators - or their victims - mentioned. Not once were the words 'Pakistani', 'Afghan' or 'Muslim' used. The abusers were simply 'men'.(Nor, incidentally, was the word 'Labour' used to describe the local council).

I didn't quite believe my ears first time round, so I re-listened to make sure I hadn't missed something. I hadn't. Just as many critics of the BBC would assume, this BBC documentary about the Rochdale Abuse chose to ignore the charged racial/religious element to the story. Completely. 

It was all about process and judgemental attitudes towards the victims. Nothing to do with the race, culture or religion of the attackers.

Rather like the police, CPS and local council at the time, I feel a bit ginger about discussing this. Clearly not as ginger as the BBC though, it seems. 

Triple standards?

Since drafting my Double Standard? post in mid October, the BBC itself has been sent reeling by the Jimmy Savile scandal - a dizzying swirl of child sex abuse and sleaze allegations made worse by accusations of a decades-long cover-up and recent bungling by the leadership of the corporation. I was waiting to see how Sunday, given its long track record of keenly pursuing the Catholic Church over the issue, would respond to its own institution's travails. Would it go after the BBC the way it goes after the Catholic Church? Would it seek out victims of the alleged abuse and critics of the way historic child abuse seems to have been turned a blind eye to by the BBC, canvassing those angrily denouncing the morality of the BBC or claiming an institutional cover-up? Would Ed Stourton ask questions critical of the present leadership of the BBC, especially of the DG and the chairman of the BBC Trust (Lord Patten, trustee - like Ed- of The Tablet) for their handling of the affair?

The programme stayed very quiet on the issue throughout the 21st October edition, when the crisis at the BBC was already in full swing. By the 28th October edition, Sunday really had no choice but to discuss the scandal, given that it had been the biggest news story in the country's media for a couple of weeks by this stage. It was something it simply could not ignore. 

The test I pre-set (in my own head) for the makers of Sunday was to see if they would, somehow, twist it against the Roman Catholic Church. If they didn't I would be able to happily report that my leniency towards them in that earlier post (re charges of anti-Catholic bias, and relentlessness in their cover of the Catholic priestly abuse scandal in particular) was justified by their actions. If they did, then I would probably no longer be able to give them the benefit of the doubt. How did they fare? 

In the light of all that has gone before in that earlier post, what do you make of the way Ed Stourton announced the subject during the programme's introduction?:

"Welcome to Sunday. As the Archbishop of Westminster asks the Pope to remove Jimmy Savile's papal knighthood, we'll debate why big organisations can foster a culture of silence where evil can flourish?"

Straight in goes Ed with his attempt to tie the Catholic Church to the BBC's mess over child abuse. Unbelievable! (I almost spat out my cornflakes in surprise.) That one sentence really says it all - an attempt (however pre-deliberated) to shift the focus from the (unmentioned) BBC onto the Catholic Church and other big organisations. Not a good start from Ed, was it?  

Midway through the programme we got this taster from Ed of the (pre-recorded) closing discussion of the affair, which continued down the generalising path found in the introduction:

"What goes wrong in an institution to stop people reporting abuse of the kind Jimmy Savile has now been accused of? 

(Another voice:) 'All the institutions we're describing - and add in any business that's not a co-operative or a   partnership - and you have a totalitarian state with a monarch, aristocrats, robber barons and everybody else is a peasant.'" 

Again no use of 'BBC' there, as you will have noticed. 

The closing discussion is described on the programme's webpage like this:

"In the light of the Savile case we explore to what extent being part of an organisation influences an individual's moral choices, with guests Dr John Blenkinsopp, of Teeside University Business School, Professor Roger Steere - Visiting Professor of Organisational Ethics at the Cass Business School, and Donald Findlater, Director of Research and Development at the child protection charity the Lucy Faithfull Foundation."

That's a very revealing list of guests - someone from a child protection charity and two people whose expertise lies in the area of business ethics - largely reinforcing what seems to have been the programme's clear intention to shift the focus from the BBC onto large institutions in general, especially businesses and the Roman Catholic Church. None of the guests said anything specific about the BBC, and none were encouraged to do so by Ed Stourton.

What follows is a transcription of Ed's contributions to that debate. Please see what you make of them. Does he seem to be trying to steer the discussion away from the BBC and onto large organisations in general? Does he try to tie in the Roman Catholic Church again?: 

"How is it that the abuse of vulnerable people can go on for years in a big organisation without anyone saying anything about it? The question is especially difficult to answer when the organisation in question is supposed to be dedicated to public service. It's a question we've asked often enough on this programme over the past few years about the Roman Catholic Church in relation to the paedophile priests scandal. Now people are asking it about the BBC in relation to the Jimmy Savile affair. Dr John Blenkinsopp is the assistant dean of Teeside University Business School. Roger Steare is Visiting Professor of Organisational Ethics and Corporate Philosopher in Residence at the Cass Business School, and Donald Findlater is Director of Research and Development at the child protection charity the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. I asked John Blenkinsopp how a culture of silence can develop in an organisation."

"Well, standing up and being counted in circumstances like that, Professor Steare, requires what, in an old-fashioned way, I suppose one would call 'moral courage' and I think you've done some work trying to measure what a 'moral character' is?"

"Sorry, just to pick you up on that, do people notice when they are crossing that line or is it something, I don't know, that happens when you're half-asleep or concentrating on something else?"

"Well, I'd like to pick that up in a moment or two but, Donald Findlater, you have worked with, I think, both the Catholic and the Anglican Churches in these areas. Do the sort of descriptions of what happens that we've just heard  match what you've found?"

"Do you think, John Blenkinsopp, in this area it's right to..erm..compare institutions like the BBC and the Catholic Church. I was just looking at a headline in The Guardian  - 'The BBC's real crime was to act like the Catholic church'?" 

"Well, let's talk about how we..or how you can combat these tendencies. Er..John Blenkinsopp, staying with you, what would you do to change the culture of a big organisation where something like this has occurred?"

"Turning to you, Roger Steare, it is a question of creating a democratic organisation, is it?"

"Donald Findlater, the news came through at the end of last week that the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, had written to the Vatican suggesting that Jimmy Saville's papal knighthood be removed posthumously. It does raise the interesting question of whether, when something awful emerges about somebody after their death, it undoes all the good that they did when they were alive?" 

"That, Professor Steare, does pose a slight challenge to your solution because you've got to have a management that's simultaneously open to democratic culture and is telling people quite clearly the way they should behave?"

"Roger Steare, ending that discussion."

Well, that was pretty blatant, wasn't it? Ed Stourton, at all stages of this edition of Sunday tried to generalise the issue, focusing it on business (which hasn't been implicated in a child abuse scandal!!) and appearing to want to smear some of what Chris Patten called "the tsunami of fifth" from the BBC/Savile scandal onto the Roman Catholic Church instead - including those two mentions of Savile's papal knighthood, one of which opened the programme! The edition gave no impression that the programme was anywhere near as keen to investigate allegations of paedophile rings at the BBC as it has been, on Ed's own admission, about historic priestly child abuse. It looks as if we could be in 'double standards' territory again. 

Maybe I was being over-generous in my earlier lenient view of Sunday's coverage of Catholic abuse scandal stories. This edition of the programme suggests there may be more to the charge of obsessive coverage of the issue than meets the eye, whilst also spotlighting its presenter's personal biases.

If you were wondering by the way, the Guardian headline referred to by Ed came from an article by Jonathan Freedland and, yes, you will have spotted that Ed didn't ask anything specifically about Chris Patten.  

'Today' III: "Well, quite!"

Another of the main stories on the 24/10/2012 edition of Today - the subject of this, the third of an ongoing sequence of posts - was the Jimmy Savile/BBC paedophile crisis. 

The Today website headlined the story like this: 

"The chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, has said the Jimmy Savile scandal should not be used to question the corporation's independence."

That, indeed, was the angle the programme pursued - not an angle I guess they'd be unhappy to pursue,  given that it allows them to change the subject somewhat! 

As far as guest selection goes, the programme chose a balanced pair of interviewees and cannot be faulted for their choices. Sir Christopher Bland, former BBC chairman, acted as the BBC's defender and David Elstein, who has held top jobs at Channel 5 and BSkyB, acted as its (not wholly unfriendly) critic. Quite right and proper. (You can hear this double interview in full here).

Let's see how James Naughtie conducted himself. Does he display neutrality here? (My transcriptions follow the usual format):

"The Culture Secretary Maria Miller has written to the chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, raising "very real concerns" about public trust in the BBC. He responded by saying, "I know that you will not want to give any impression that you're questioning the independence of the BBC." That cool exchange focuses on the long-term problem, beyond all the sordid details of the Savile scandal itself - how best can the BBC demonstrate that it remains robust and independent and retain public confidence. No senior BBC executives are available for interview this morning and the Culture Secretary also declined our request. Sir Christopher Bland joins us from Westminster, former BBC chairman of course, and also we can speak to David Elstein, former chief executive of Channel 5 and former head of programming at BSkyB. 

"Sir Christopher, what do you think the BBC needs to do to safeguard its independence and to retain public trust as it goes through this horrendous period?"

[Sir CB: It needs to wait for the two inquiries. "At the moment the noise of people jumping to conclusions is almost overwhelming".  A lot of it happened "long ago." BBC needs to keep calm and pursue to truth forensically.]

"David Elstein, how do you see it?"

[DE: "The BBC is a very trusted organisation". Despite ineptitude at the top, it's hard to see the issue as being about the BBC not being trusted. The problem is it's very slow and backwards in dealing with crises (like many large organisations)  - a problem compounded by Lord Patten and the BBC Trust choosing "an insider" to be Director General just when a crisis was about to break...]

{interrupting} "Well, they couldn't know that and...

[DE: ..and the investigation being channelled through the BBC board and trust, the chairman of whom has already "compromised his own position". Problem of process not of trust.]

"Yes, I mean, you make a fair point about George Entwistle's position being an awkward one because of his previous job. That's just the way the cards fell. I mean nobody could have predicted that. It's not a piece of bureaucratic incompetence...."

[DE: "Oh, I don't agree with you at all. Jim. I don't agree with you at all."  If Patten had had his wits about him he'd have read the news articles in Jan and Feb of this year reporting the Savile/Newsnight problem. He didn't read them, or come across the story until Sep, Oct. If he had, he's have asked the right questions at the DG interviews...]

[Sir CB, interrupting: "I don't think that's right and fair.."]

"Sir Christopher, come in on that one because it is..."

[Sir CB: if you followed up every rumour about the BBC as DG you'd have no time for your proper job. YOU didn't say at the time, this is a major scandal.]

[DE: "It's not a case of what I thought about the story at the time...]

[Sir CB, interrupting: "Well, what did you think about the story at the time?]

[DE: It looks to me as if it were a story that would be investigated at some time. The issue is 'When do you read your press cutting?' Your were excellent chairman, but I can't believe chairman had no red light flashing.]

"Do you think that Maria Miller, David Elstein - and then Sir Christopher on this as well - do you think Maria Miller was right to write what was a pretty sharp letter - which has been responded to sharply by Chris Patten?"

[DE: "I think it was unfortunate and opportunistic of her and pretty unwelcome at a time when the BBC's got many a problem in dealing with this...]

{interrupting} "She's been in post, you know, for three weeks. Probably a lack of experience."

[DE: "Yeah, given that her first contribution to all of this was to misread her parliamentary brief...]

{interrupting} "Well, quite!"

[DE: "..and misdescribe the Newsnight item in the first place, she's not exactly covered herself in glory as we go along."]

"And I take it Christopher that..." 

[DE: "I do have a problem..."]

"Sorry, yes?" 

[DE: "I do have a problem with what Chris Bland is recommending, that the BBC sit tight and wait...]

"Well, hang on!..."

   

[DE: One inquiry could take a year...]

{interrupting} "But the Nick Pollard inquiry into the central..."

[DE, interrupting: "Even that is..."]

"But hang on!...into the central question of, you know, how it happened, vis a vis Newsnight and the investigation and what the sequence of events was and who was involved is going to report before December. Now, I mean, you CANNOT do a report of that kind more quickly. I mean that is..that is, you know, a piece of expedition."

[Sir CB: "I think that's right]

[DE: I think the BBC should do something "direct and dramatic", "take control of the process of compensating victims of child abuse perpetrated on BBC premises during the production of BBC programmes by people employed by the BBC..."  

{interrupting} "Yes, but I mean finding them and knowing when it happened and going back 35 years, I mean that's not as easy as it sounds. You accept that?

[Crosstalk between Sir CB & DE]

"OK, Sir Christopher Bland?" 

[Sir CB, the Smith inquiry has to go back over many years, examine what happened and until then we wont' know if the allegations are absolutely justified.]

"Do you think the inquiries, the two inquiries, are being done in the proper way and on a time-scale that is adequate for their purpose?"

[Sir CB: "Yes." But it's not a time-scale to suit the politicians, press or "to some extent" the BBC. Until they are complete we won't know what really happened "and we need to recognise that]

"Christopher Bland, David Elstein, thank you both."

So, did James Naughtie act as a neutral umpire there? Hardly! It sounded more like a three-way debate with David Elstein on one side and Sir Christopher and Jim on the other. It sounded like that because it was like that. If Sir Christopher wasn't interrupting and disagreeing with David Elstein then Jim was. That's undeniable, surely? Add to that the easier questions to Sir Christopher from James Naughtie and you have an interviewer very clearly taking sides in a debate.  

Hang on!...

That's one aspect of the bias. The other is, I think, far more serious and I am quite amazed that nobody seems to have picked up on it - especially given James Naughtie's famous gaffe over the surname of the previous hulture [sic] secretary.

I'd like to 'replay' one part of the interview for you:

"Do you think that Maria Miller, David Elstein - and then Sir Christopher on this as well - do you think Maria Miller was right to write what was a pretty sharp letter - which has been responded to sharply by Chris Patten?"

[DE: "I think it was unfortunate and opportunistic of her and pretty unwelcome at a time when the BBC's got many a problem in dealing with this...]

{interrupting} "She's been in post, you know, for three weeks. Probably a lack of experience."

[DE: "Yeah, given that her first contribution to all of this was to misread her parliamentary brief...]

{interrupting} "Well, quite!"

[DE: "..and misdescribe the Newsnight item in the first place, she's not exactly covered herself in glory as we go along."]

"And I take it Christopher that..." (which question, I suspect, was likely to end with "...that you go along with that?", thus prolonging the two-pronged attack on the minister while turning it into a three-pronged attack! Impossible to be sure about that, of course!)

Maria Miller refused to go onto Today. No one defended her. She was only attacked. Who's to blame for that?

That said, can anyone please explain to me how this is anything other than a supposedly impartial BBC interviewer publicly joining in an attack on the Culture Secretary? For my money (unless I'm missing something) that "Well, quite!" surely merits joining his other famous 'slips of the tongue'  ("First up after the news, we're going to be talking to Jeremy Cunt," and "If we win the election, does Gordon Brown remain chancellor?") on the James Naughtie Wall of Fame - except that there was no question of a 'slip of the tongue' here. This was an open dig followed by an open endorsement of a criticism of a leading Conservative politician. Surely, he shouldn't have said what he said, should he? 

Double standards?

Before pursuing the interaction of Sunday with its Tablet guests (see previous post), I want spend this and the following post outlining why some people might mistakenly believe the programme to be anti-Catholic. As someone whose eyes have been inexorably drawn to comments on blogs and newspaper websites on this subject (especially since beginning this survey), I can safely confirm that there are plenty of people out there who believe that the BBC is actively campaigning against the Roman Catholic Church; indeed, that it is institutionally anti-Catholic. However absurd this may sound to some of you, it doesn't sound remotely absurd to others. Indeed, I must admit that my early, much more casual listening to Sunday would often leave me wondering why on earth there weren't crowds of furious Catholics hammering on the studio door whenever the programme was being broadcast!

I want to outline the 'evidence' of an anti-Catholic agenda on Sunday for you. If you've read my previous post I hope you will appreciate that this isn't really evidence of an anti-Catholic agenda at all. It's actually evidence, I believe, of the programme's liberal Catholic 'agenda' [I'll put the word in inverted commas for the time being], with clericalism, conservative figures and traditional social attitudes within the Church being its principle targets. 

There's a lot to discuss here, so I want to start on this post with just one strand of the argument - what some people might see as the programme's rather relentless and disproportionate coverage of the Roman Catholic clerical abuse scandal. The decades of child sex abuse carried out by priests and Catholic institutions and, it appears, extensively covered up by the Church has been one of the major ongoing religious news stories of the past few years. The Church has suffered severe setbacks to its reputation and influence in several countries as a result of the revelations, from the public realisation of the sheer scale of the abuse and, above all, from that evidence of a massive cover-up. The BBC has rightly gone after the Catholic hierarchy over this. However, has Sunday in particular gone over the top in its coverage of clerical child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church?

Before I list the editions that have - to varying degrees - dwelt on the issue, would you care to have a guess - working on the 93 editions between 9/1/2011 and 14/10/2012 - as to how many of those 93 editions have featured the Catholic abuse scandal?  What total (in advance) would you consider appropriate? 

Here's a comprehensive overview:

23/1/2011 - "A new documentary in Ireland has shed more light on the role of the Vatican in the cover-up of abuse in the Catholic Church. We will examine the claims based on a letter sent by one of John Paul II closest advisers."

20/2/2011 - Question from Jane Little about the Catholic Church during an interview about the upcoming Irish general election with David Quinn of the Irish Independent : "I'm wondering how much the child abuse scandal, for example, has eroded trust in the institution?" 

27/3/2011 - "Kevin Bocquet explores claims made by survivors of clerical abuse at a top Manchester school in the 50s and 60s at the hands of an alleged paedophile priest. The Diocese has apologised, but for victims that gesture is too little and too late."

10/4/2011 - "Is the Catholic church still ignoring official guidelines about defrocking priests who are convicted of child abuse? Kevin Bocquet returns to Salford to investigate these claims."

1/5/2011 - John Paul II beatification special. Various reports and interviews allude to the paedophile priest scandal, ending with a debate on the subject featuring an a survivor/campaigner.

12/6/2011 - "This week the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) published a damning critique of the Irish state's failure to protect women [and sexually-abused children] confined to the Irish Church's 'Magdalene Laundries'. Edward speaks to Mary Currington, a former Magdalene survivor."

19/6/2011 - "A BBC1 documentary will investigate the sexual abuse by teachers of the Catholic Rosminian order in two schools in the UK and Africa. Reporter Olenka Frienkel tells Edward how after initially supporting the victims, the head of the order is now ignoring their claims for compensation."

26/6/2011 - A statement by the Rosminian order  is read out concerning last week's report.

17/7/2011 - "This week a report into abuse in the Cloyne diocese in Ireland painted a depressing and familiar picture of failings in the safeguarding policy of the Irish Catholic Church. Jane will hear from Ian Elliot, who first brought the failings of the Church to light, and priest Father Brian Darcy." 

31/7/2011 - "Is this the end of Catholic Ireland? The Irish Prime Minister has accused the Vatican of complicity in the rape of children and the Papal Nuncio has been recalled to Rome. Jane speaks to correspondent Ruth McDonald."

4/9/2011 - "In Ireland, a consultation has begun on the future of primary education. At present the Catholic Church runs ninety three per cent of primary schools, but all sides agree that such a state of affairs is no longer tenable. Ruth McDonald reports." [Turns out to be because of the child abuse scandal.]

18/9/2011 - Passing mention of the abuse scandal during a report from Dublin on the Irish Catholic Church's involvement in education followed by another passing mention (by Ed Stourton) during his introduction to a piece on the anniversary of Pope Benedict's visit to the U.K.

25/9/2011 - Discussion, following William Crawley's lead, of "the abuse tsunami" during an interview about Benedict's visit to Germany. 

30/10/2011 - "The Vatican has ordered an inquiry into child sex abuse at Ealing Abbey and the adjoining school in west London. Jane speaks to Sean O'Neill, Crime Editor of the Times on the paper's investigation into a number of high-profile cases at the Abbey. She also hears from Bishop John Arnold, the man appointed by Rome to conduct the Apostolic Visitation."

6/11/2011 - Discussion of the abuse scandal during an interview between BBC reporters about the closure of the Vatican embassy in Ireland.

13/11/2011 -  "Who employs a priest? In a week that the high court has ruled that the Catholic church as an organisation was responsible for the actions of one of its priests..and not God... Kevin Bocquet talks to those at the heart of this dispute and looks at attitudes to employment amongst other denominations and faiths.

This week Lord Carlile published a report into abuse at St Benedict's in Ealing, West London. His report detailed a failure to detect, investigate and stop the abuse. Edward talks to Lord Carlile about his recommendation for a new governing structure to separate the school from the religious order and he hears from Abbot Martin Shipperlee from Ealing Abbey ."

4/12/2011 - "A report by the Church in Ireland into the Raphoe Diocese has revealed more shocking stories of clergy abuse and cover ups. Edward will speak to Mary Harte, who has been following the case, and the Bishop of Raphoe Phillip Boyce."

18/12/2011 - A report from the Netherlands: "Even by the grim standards set by recent revelations about the scale of child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, the figures to emerge from a Dutch inquiry into the matter are shocking." 

15/1/2012 - A discussion about Catholic abuse between Ed Stourton and The Tablet's Catherine Pepinster following the resignation of Baroness Scotland from a Catholic child protection body.

5/2/2012 - "As Catholic bishops gather in Rome for a global conference on child abuse, we ask what they hope to achieve. The Tablet's Vatican correspondent Robert Mickens joins us live."

12/2/2012 - "The Tablet's Vatican correspondent Robert Mickens joins William from Rome on the Catholic Church's global conference on child abuse."

25/3/2012 - "The results of the Apostolic Visitation to Ireland, ordered by Pope Benedict in the wake of the Child Abuse scandal was made public this week. Cardinal Sean Brady gives William his reaction to the findings of the report and Michael Kelly of the Irish Times discusses the public response."

6/5/2012 - "Victims of child abuse in Ireland are calling for the resignation of Cardinal Sean Brady after a BBC investigation revealed more details of his role in investigating Ireland's most notorious paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth in 1975. We speak to the Michael Kelly, Deputy Editor of the Irish Catholic Newspaper and Father Brian Darcy."

10/6/2012 - Report featuring discussion about the impact of the paedophile priests scandal during a discussion about the Catholic Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, followed by more such discussion between Edward Stourton and William Crawley. 

15/7/2012 - "The High Court ruled against the Portsmouth Diocese this week saying that the Catholic Church can be held liable for the wrongdoings of its [paedophile] priests. Joshua Rozenburg explains the wider implications."

14/10/2012 - Passing references/questions throughout the special Vatican II edition. 

So, there have been 26 editions featuring items about the Catholic child abuse scandal, some containing several separate features, others including only brief discussions. This means that 28% of all the editions of Sunday throughout the period of this survey contained features on the Catholic clerical abuse scandal (particularly in a neighbouring country, the Republic of Ireland). Does that seem disproportionate to you? Or fair enough, given the importance of the story?

Listing the editions in that way does make it look rather like an attempt to give the Church a bad press. However, to state the obvious, 67 editions (72%) contained no mention of the abuse scandal. Moreover, given that the editions that deal with the priestly abuse scandal tend to cluster around significant developments in a continuing major story (and that the programme went over three months without such a feature when there were no such developments), it seems to me that such intensive coverage is fair enough.  

That is, of course, if the issue is viewed in isolation.

My next post will set such stories in the context of other 'bad news stories' for the Vatican featured on Sunday - and there are an awful lot of them, some of them less easy to justify. Taken as a whole, they do give the impression of being of a campaign against...well, against things liberal Catholics disapprove of. I'll try to fathom out exactly what later.

Still, the programme seems to me to have a solid case that the extent of its coverage of the priestly abuse scandal has not been unduly out of proportion to the importance of the story. I would be curious to know what Catholic readers make of this.

The issue of disproportionality, however, that seems to exercise a lot of comments field critics of the BBC across the blogosphere is what strikes them as being the contrast between such intensive coverage of abuse in the Catholic Church and what they see as the systematic, radical under-reporting of child abuse in other religious communities - by which they almost invariably mean the Muslim community. Is Sunday guilty of this double standard?

Well, there has been very little coverage of child abuse issues beyond the Catholic Church. There have been two editions (2/9/2012 and 29/5/2011) dealing with a clerical abuse scandal within the Anglican diocese of Chichester and, beyond the Christian fold, there have been three editions (13/5/2012, 27/11/2011, 20/2/2011) that have included sections devoted (or partly devoted) to the issue of child abuse from within the Muslim community.

Strong emotions were raised by the convictions for child grooming of nine Muslim men in Rochdale earlier this year. There was a widespread perception (which anyone who reads the internet could hardly fail to have picked up on) that the risk posed by paedophile rings emerging from within the Muslim (particularly the Pakistani) community - some of which targeted white girls - has been downplayed to a dangerous extent by sections of the media (as well as by the police, social services and most of the political class) for reasons of over-sensitivity to (Muslim) community sensibilities and the fear of being accused of racism.

How does Sunday, BBC Radio 4's flagship religious and moral news programme, stand up in the light of such perceptions?

By only discussing the issue of Muslim paedophile gangs, child abuse by imams and within Islamic institutions and other such matters on just three editions (3.2%), as compared to the 26 editions (28%) featuring discussion of Catholic clerical abuse, Sunday does rather leave itself exposed to charges of double standards, doesn't it?

Put in a nutshell, these charges might run as follows: On the one hand the programme has strongly pursued the Catholic Church, picking up on case after case of abuse and keeping listeners regularly updated on the twists and turns of many of those stories. On the other hand the programme has evidently been treading with extreme caution around the issue of child abuse within the mosques and madrassas of the United Kingdom and the world and has rarely responded to widely-reported cases of abuse emanating from within Islamic communities. The central charge, then, would be of Sunday itself being complicit in the downplaying of such issues, doubtless for the same reasons of  'political correctness' .

Is this fair? Is the extent of abuse within the Catholic Church (much of it historic) so much greater than that within and around the mosques and madrassas, thus justifying the much greater attention paid to it by Sunday? Worldwide? Within the United Kingdom?

It's beyond me to answer most of those questions as yet. Like many of you (if I may be presumptuous), I can't say I'm at all clear on the relative numbers for comparisons of scale between present day British Catholic and British Muslim child abuse or between present day (and historic) worldwide Catholic and worldwide Muslim child abuse (or abuse, let it be pointed out - because I have so far failed to do so -, by other faiths and denominations). I suspect a true appraisal of BBC reporting of child abuse and its tie-in to specific faiths will need a proper sense of such scales.

That said, the dramatic difference between the amounts of coverage given to Catholic and Muslim child abuse on Sunday raises questions about over-sensitivity towards Muslim feeling and (more dubiously) under-sensitivity to Catholic feeling - a variation on Roger Bolton's theme about the lack of a "level playing field" between Christianity and Islam, with the latter not having to "put up with what Christianity does".