Father Tim vs BBC NI: belated and doomed

So Father Timothy Bartlett has called for an independent investigation of BBC NI to check for anti-Catholic Church bias. I’ve met Timothy on a number of occasions: he’s a pleasant, shrewd,articulate man.  But as so often in cases like this, I find myself wondering “What took you so long?”   

Except you live in an underground pit,  you’ll have noticed that in not just the BBC but the media generally, there is an anti-Catholic clergy bias.  There are all sorts of reasons for this:  the ability of the Catholic Church in the past to deliver a crack of the crozier on anyone who didn’t show it sufficient respect, the fact that there were what sometimes seemed endless reports of Catholic clergy engaging in sexual abuse, the tendency of the Catholic Church to side with the status quo and denounce anything that’d threaten that status quo. 

 All that’s true. It’s also true, however,  that the level of sexual abuse among Catholic clergy is reported as higher than in other Christian denominations for the very good reason that other Christian denominations haven’t engaged in anywhere near the same level of self-examination. I remember after one UTV discussion on Catholic clergy abuse years back, I asked the panel Catholic Church figures compared with other Christian denominations. Nobody on the panel seemed to know.

But immediately the programme went off-air, I was approached by three Protestant clergymen who expressed indignation that I had even asked the question, when everyone knew this was strictly a Catholic clergy problem.  Subsequent events have softened the cough of such Protestant clergymen:  sexual scandals have been popping up alarmingly often in their ranks in recent years. 

 Timothy Bartlett talks about ‘sub-conscious bias’ in the BBC. That’s quite kind of him, because bias in the BBC tends to be clear policy rather than subconscious prejudice.   BBC management tends to bend with the wind: whatever seems to be most powerful, it’ll make sure its sails are trimmmed for maximum smoothness. And while it’s a topic for another day, the bias in the BBC during the Troubles  towards the British authorities, down to and including the absurd ‘voicing’ of Sinn Féin members, was constant . 

So good luck with your call for a cleaning of the stable, Timothy. When there has never been any question of contrition for its reporting of the Troubles, I feel confident  the discovery of holy water in an Orange hall is much more likely than the BBC management coming out and uttering sincere mea culpae for past sins.