Monday, November 26, 2007

What the papers didn't say.



I see Stephen Bates is still at it …the now non-religious correspondent is on page 2 of today’s Grauniad sounding off about the Archbishop of Canterbury and claiming he has been thrown into a political controversy thanks to his remarks in a Muslim magazine. You have to get three quarters of the way through the piece to discover that this political controversy amounts to a blogger in America called Katherine who didn't like what he reportedly said. Gosh. Rowan must be worried.

Guardian editors were, of course, probably a bit piqued to see the story on the Sunday Times’ front page when it had been totally missed on Saturday’s Guardian or in Sunday’s Observer, its sister paper. We know SB doesn’t think much of the ABC but the worst he does here is accuse the ST of selective reporting. Gosh again. The Grauniad would never do that. (I like it really.)

I was doing the Sunday Paper review on the newly crowned local radio station of the year yesterday. Yes BBC Radio Leeds has won the award again for its lively and informative approach. Whether the slot from 8am to 8.30am was lively and informative I leave the listeners to judge but we certainly romped through seven or eight stories including both of the main religious stories – the Archbishop of Canterbury, and more interestingly the one on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph about Tony Blair and his decision not to go pubic on his faith because people would think he was a ‘nutter’.

Richard Staples was also keen to talk about Borders and their ‘O Come All Ye Faithless’ cards (see previous blog), and I found I had revised my views a bit. As an ironic commentary on Richard Dawkins and his dismal faithlessness, the cards have grown on me a bit. I’m seeing them now as a bit of a send-up, knowingly and humorously shooting themselves in the foot – though that’s after I’ve had time to think about them and discuss them on the radio. Maybe I’m being a bit too sophisticated.

Still trying to get my Power Point presentation together for the gathering of DC’s (Diocesan Commmunicators) in London on December 6th. I’ve been searching the interweb for hours in an attempt to get hold of the excellently produced Caritas TV adverts to download, but so far nothing. I did however manage to download, edit and embed an interview with the head of the Vatican website, a Sister Judith Zoebelein. Remarkable woman - she has been in that post since 1995. Ive had to keep it to a minute or so, but if you watch the whole thing (see it here) its quite funny when they get onto the subject of Second Life – clearly some confusion, not helped by the French student who is asking the question but quite enlightening.
The website itself still looks like it did ten years ago and appears to have been created in the dark ages, and with a staff of 17 (‘not enough’ according to Sister Judith) you’d think they’d have done something about the design. Several people I met in Rome were a bit despairing of the site, but although it's a bit dull on the outside, it's quite sophisticated once you get into it. Sort of like the Da Vinci Code in reverse.

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Religious journalists

Journalists are funny people. Stephen Bates of the Guardian keeps writing to me. Generally along the lines of ‘I’m no longer the Guardian’s Religious correspondent -please don’t send me any more of your religious press releases’ and then ‘As requested earlier, please remove me from your distribution list - send it to Riazat Butt instead’, followed by ‘Look I asked you before, I won't ask you again. I don't want any more religious stuff - I've had it up to here with religion’. Well, along those lines.

So yesterday I duly got round to amending my distribution list and sent Stephen an apologetic note. Imagine my surprise then, not ten minutes later, when I turned to page 3 of the said organ to read 'Former PM to be accepted into the Roman Catholic Church' by Stephen Bates. Call me old fashioned .....

To be honest I don’t know why I ever bothered in the first place. As far as I could make out the Guardian only ever had about four stories which it repeated every week. Obviously Tony Blair becoming a Catholic which has now been happening for at least eight years, yawn. Then there’s Gay clergy, women bishops and most important the Imminent Break up of The Worldwide Anglican Communion – a body which most of our parishioners don’t even know existed in the first place. The Guardian generally takes the stance that God doesn’t exist and the church is an irrelevant minority occupation by a few harmless old folk and the Anglican church a minority of a minority. Despite this Stephen somehow managed to convince his editors that this Imminent Break Up of the Worldwide Anglican Communion story was so important that they should let him end his religious tenure on a high note, paying for him to go to New Orleans and watch the US bishops eat the Archbishop of Canterbury for breakfast, carry out a few gay blessings and then split from the rest of the ‘stick in the mud’ Anglican communion for good. As it happens, none of the above took place. It must have been a terrible disappointment.

Oddly, if you asked him as we once did, why his stories where always so negative, his defence was that actually his wife was an evangelical Christian and he only had the good of the church in mind. Ho hmmm. You could imagine the conversations at home,‘Darling I’m back from my bible study at Doreen’s house’. SB,‘Any arguments? – any dissenting views?’ Mrs B ‘ No Doreen led a very good Bible study – and we all seemed to agree.’ SB ‘A woman leading a Bible study?! Do my ears deceive me?!! There must have been a few rumbles of discontent about that. Did anyone walk out? I need to phone the Vicar’ and so on…

But that’s journalists for you, and who can blame them. I took part in a visit to the new, and breathtaking, Daily Telegraph offices in Victoria last week with a group of church communicators and it was a superb day. Well organised and a chance to hear from some religious journalists including Jonathan Petre of the Daily and Jonathan Wynne-Jones of the Sunday Telegraph. I almost felt sorry for them. The way they have to convince their editors that they have a story so important and sensational that its got to be included, that if you include it newspapers will be flying out of the shops… and then spend hours working on it while watching it drop down the batting order until its finally kicked into touch. It’s no wonder that at every stage of this process the original story gets a little bit sexed up, a bit more sensationalised until black is white, day is night, the Worldwide Anglican Communion has become a huge and important and real er thing which is about to explode causing global warming and the end of the civilised world as we know it. Keep at it guys – it might still happen.

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