Red corner questioning

The tendency of the media establishment to ask questions that pivot the national conversation towards the liberal left.

The liberal left dominates the old media establishment. Even when it is critical of a Labour Government it is critical from the liberal-left. The BBC fell out with Tony Blair when one of its reporters questioned the war on Iraq. Surveys have revealed the Europhilia of the BBC and its journalists author books that support its ‘leftfield’ worldview. During the Bush-Kerry contest the Corporation’s Washington correspondent attacked the irrational religiosity of Bush supporters who were, reportedly, unafraid of letting facts get in the way of their loyalty to the Republican cause. And Americans are supposed to be the bigoted ones?

Red corner questioning is in the BBC’s DNA – particularly in the Today programme’s DNA.

Ten questions that Radio 4's Today programme don't ask

ConservativeHome.com offers you ten lines of questioning that you won’t hear Jim Naughtie pursue:

1. Minister, how much of this extra spending will go directly to patients and how much will be gobbled up by an even fatter bureaucracy?
2. Why don’t you cut taxation on small businesses in order to create more jobs for poor communities?
3. Wouldn’t violent crime be brought under control if we imprisoned more repeat offenders?
4. Isn’t it time that EastEnders stopped presenting religious people in a caricatured way?
5. Shouldn’t your government be taking pre-emptive action against rogue states like Syria that have a record of financing and arming terrorists?
6. Isn’t it morally wrong to abort a child that could survive outside of the womb?
7. Given the ineffectiveness of the welfare state shouldn’t faith-based organisations receive a bigger share of poverty-fighting budgets?
8. How can you support a benefits system that penalises the decision to marry?
9. Given the upsurge in sexually-transmitted disease shouldn’t we admit that the ‘condom-based safe sex culture’ isn’t particularly safe?
10. Why, Mr EU bureaucrat, did you mislead the British people about the political nature of the European project?

Comments

[PJH]

When will the spokesmen of the right stop assuming that right-wing = christian. I am a right-wing athieist and deeply resent questions 4, 6 and 7 being used on my behalf. Keep religion out of politics.

[other]

PJH

a) I thik this was an attack/analysis on the way the biases of the BBC effect the kind of questions they ask even if one isn't pro-life ect those are perfectly reasonable questions

b) you do not have to be religous to be pro-religion

c) supporting the role of religon has been defined as rightwing long before support for markets or even the nation states was , it is clearly right wing, one might as well argue that nationalizing the railways is rightwing because Peter Hitchens supports it, obviously some rightwingers will not be pro-religion in the same way as not all oppose rail re-nationalization.

d) this is also true in the Tory party hence Winston Churchill ( a non-Christian) said that the first purpose of the conservative party is ~"to uphold the Christian religion"

e) the three you object to are mostly not religoius to support faith groups being given more money to fight poverty reflects the privitization of welfare provision, and it's certialy unreasonable to say opposition to killing the unborn is a religious position, would you say that all atheists have to support killing innocents?

[martin sewell]

I think these are all pertinent questions.
PJH I respect your views as I would hope you do mine. The BBC is our National Broadcaster. When it purports to test " official thinking, would you not expect it to do so from many points of the spectrum, thus one might find it very reasonable to put environmental objections to eg a Transport Minister, even if one is not a supporter of Green politics.

The BBC often purports to promote diversity of people's and opinions. It is thus perfectly proper for Tim to hold their feet to the fire when they are manifestly failing to meet their proclaimed standards.

In post Christian Society one of the few secular " sins" is hypocrisy.

[martin sewell]

PS PJH it might be worth us all reading Alan De Botton's latest book which apparently argues the case " What If Religions Are Neither All True or All Nonsense?" He appears to offer a way in which you might be able to see the merits of organised religion whilst not buying into the theology. I heard someone recently making the sound point that faith groups do have a substantial record of socially "organising goodness".

The best example is that slavery existed and exists in all societies over millennia and was widely accepted as "natural" by slave owner and slave alike until a group of twenty 17th Century Evangelical Christians in London began thinking through their theology. It might have happened in another context - but it did actually happen thanks to Christians taking their faith seriously.

[Bony]

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