The BBC worldview: opponents of papal visit are decent human rights activists, opponents of New York mosque are racists and loonies By Ed West Religion Last updated: September 2nd, 2010
British people opposed to the visit of Pope Benedict XVI: human rights activists concerned about child abuse and Aids victims.
Americans opposed to the New York mosque: racists and loonies.
In its coverage of race and immigration in the United States, the BBC has a very simple formula from which it rarely strays, and this is no exception.
Firstly it will use the word “Right-wing” as often as possible to describe the bad guys (here it used it twice in the first sentence).
Secondly, it will play hillbilly music to accompany any gathering of conservative white Americans, to signify to metropolitan British viewers that these are stupid hicks who almost certainly have sexual relations with family members.
Then it will suggest Right-wing Americans are “scared”, or as Newsnight put it: “President Obama spells the end of America as they know it… Barack Obama is the symbol of the other… and that terrifies them… President Obama has been accused by his opponents of representing another America, one they fear.”
When discussing immigration, a programme will interview the thickest, laziest, fattest white American possible, who will naturally explain his opposition in economically illiterate terms. It will then interview the most hard-working foreign labourer in America, who has four physics degrees back home and sounds more articulate than the average Harvard Law Professor.
The producers then blame this opposition on economic concerns, and make allusions to a “fear” of crime, although they’ll never point out that, empirically and statistically, this fear is based on actual truths. Nor will they ever explain that there are legitimate non-economic reasons why people do wish to live in neighbourhoods alongside people like them.
But the Tea Party conservatives in the programme were worse than racists, it seems, although there wasn’t a shred of actual racism on display; these Americans were Islamophobes – for opposing the Park 51 mosque in New York.
Personally I don’t oppose the mosque, but then it’s not my country (and Dan Hannan has said all there is sensible to say on this matter). The Cordoba Institute could have been more sensitive, but they still have the right to worship where they like.
The BBC, as always, completely glossed over genuine concerns about the people behind the mosque, and the things they’ve said; as it does, always, with anything Islamic.
But if the mosque protestors are Islamophobes, then the anti-pope protestors are surely Cathophobes: there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, since people have every right to detest a religion and its leaders, and no religion has the right to demand respect. But it doesn’t mean the media should just roll with their agenda either.
If the Tea Party is “Right-wing”, why didn’t the BBC describe the National Secular Society as a “Left-wing pressure group”? And in discussing their opposition to papal views, why is it assumed that the socially liberal values of this tiny organisation are the moral norms of our society?
The main difference between the papal visit and the Ground Zero mosque is that the Pope will only be here for four days. This, as the BBC was once again quick to point out, will cost taxpayers around £10m, which is not much more than last weekend’s Notting Hill Carnival, for instance, and a fraction of the amount non-football fans have to pay to police football matches. In their obsession with an event that affects them not one iota, opponents remind me of the people who get upset about Gay Pride taking part in one small corner of their town once a year.
Living in a democracy means paying for things that don’t interest us and which we often object to, and that includes foreign leaders we don’t like. The reason we’re entertaining this particular foreign leader is that the Catholic Church is the largest provider of charity, aid and emergency relief around the world, not to mention its work in female education, the largest driver down of birth rates in the world (far more effective than abortion or even contraception). When the earthquake hit Haiti, Catholics raised £150m for the people there; when floods hit Pakistan, where Christians have a rough time and so the Church has little reach, rather less help was forthcoming.
If we want to achieve the UN goals of reducing poverty around the world, then it is surely in everyone’s interest that one of the world’s largest economies has good relations with the world’s most active charitable organisation.
And speaking of the United Nations, it was reported last week that UN peacekeepers in Congo have done nothing to stop the rape of women and baby boys by soldiers. If the anti-Catholic protests really are about sex crimes, then I assume we’ll see the same human rights activists out in force next time a UN official makes a visit to Britain – with blanket favourable coverage by the BBC, of course.
