The BHA has today submitted a response to the current review of BBC Radio 3, 4 and 7. The BBC is carrying out an in-depth review of the radio stations as part of its commitment to “get the best out of the BBC for licence fee payers.”
The BHA has used the review to highlight the BBC’s continued failure to cover a full range of beliefs and their refusal to commission programming that raises issues from a specifically non-religious perspective. The response focuses on BBC Radio 4’s obligation to broadcast 200 hours of religious programming per year and the fact that the Thought for the Day slot continues to give only a religious perspective on moral and ethical issues.
Pepper Harow, BHA Campaigns Officer, said, ‘The BBC continues to fail those in society that live their lives on the basis of non-religious beliefs. Despite Humanism being a belief system recognised in broadcasting law, there has been no programming that seeks to explore such beliefs. In contrast, hours of religious programming is broadcast every year despite studies showing that religion is becoming less and less important to people.
‘Thought for the Day in particular provides an unchallenged platform reserved explicitly for religious individuals during the peak listening period of the BBC’s most influential news and discussion programmes. To suggest that humanists are unable to provide an ethical perspective on current affairs is at best misguided and at worst insulting. It is time for the BBC to listen to its non-religious service users and open up their broadcasting to cover a wider range of beliefs.’
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For further comment or information, contact Pepper Harow on 020 7462 4992.
Read the BHA’s submission here.
Read more about the BHA’s work on broadcasting.
The British Humanist Association (BHA) is the national charity representing and supporting the growing population of ethically concerned, non-religious. It is the largest organisation in the UK campaigning for a secular state and an end to discrimination based on religion or belief.