Not so long ago thousands of people took to the streets in countries across the globe all declaring that their very essence of being had been tortured, their souls ripped from their bodies and their rights trampled by a demonic beast. Take the all encompassing doom of swine flu add the personal touch of Harold Shipman sprinkle on the insensitivity of a teacher who dared do name a teddy Mohammed and you have got close to understanding the apocalyptic type disaster facing the world only a few short years ago. What was this threat you may ask? It was this   . . . .

 

Yep, that’s right kids, a cartoon published in a Danish newspaper depicting the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.

Now I know this is all old ground and i’m not going to harp on about boring intellectual rubbish like the interpretations of the Qu’ran. However while the British media clamored to proclaim their utter disgust of such things many of Europe’s papers reprinted them to defend free speech and freedom of expression. Something that does need addressing is the profoundly limp wristed approach that the British media take towards the religions that make up the now multi-cultural society we live in. Just take a look at this report from the BBC regarding large families of Christian ‘fundamentalists’ in America.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8287740.stm

Now the position of the media with regards to faith, in a legal sense, is a very difficult one with more potential pitfalls than Madonna does adoptive children. The usual defences that a journalist may call upon to defend ones self are somewhat ineffective in this instance, as the simple fact of the matter is that both the Danish Muhammed cartoons and the ‘Quiverful’ family are ridiculous to the majority of media consumers.  If this were not the case then, certainly in the Christian story, the pieces would not be reported.

So what is a journalist to do?  The BBC could not have ended their piece with ‘these crackpots will continue to breed until judgement day or their kids are sleeping in hammocks in the garden, whichever comes sooner.’  This would have opened the family to ridicule and thus would have been breaching regulation guidelines.  I understand this and the standard practise of the BBC to report impartially and objectively however if they refused to show images of the Mohammed cartoons and other type religious information then why show this?

Is it time for the BBC to take a stance on religion? Were they right to refuse to broadcast the Gaza appeal? In my opinion the answer is yes to both. The BBC and other media outlets are there to essentially represent the feelings of ‘right minded’ people in the same way that they can be sued for defamation for damaging someones reputation amongst those exact same ’right minded’ people.

If media corporations can be prosecuted for influencing the thoughts of the public then surely they are representative of said public and should behave accordingly.

Religion, science, natural history and many other realms of news are absolute no go zones it seems however as sure as the impending privacy law will arrive, the British media will very soon have to make those difficult questions and make those difficult decisions.