AT AL-BEEB, THE SPIRIT OF JOHN REITH LIVES ON....

"Sir" John Reith (1889-1971), a Scot from Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, was the founder and first Director General of the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation. An extreme leftist, his concept of broadcasting was that of "educating" the "masses", preferably with leftist ideas. It is telling that, upon his appointment to the BBC in the early twenties, when asked if he was going to give the people what they wanted, he curtly replied: "No. Something better than that." Also not surprisingly for a leftist, he absolutely hated Winston Churchill, calling him on at least one occasion "that bloody shit" and in the thirties "seeing to it that he was seldom heard over the BBC", while on the other hand he displayed a not to be misunderstood admiration for archsocialists Hitler and Mussolini. His own daughter, Marista Leishman, notes in her biography of her father that in March 1933, he was "certain that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again . . . They are being ruthless and most determined.". And six years later, when the Nazis overran Czechoslowakia, he wrote that "Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency."

But perhaps no other trait characterizes leftist scum like Reith as much as hatred of Christianity. When on 30 July 1954 the Independent Television Authority was created, Reith, characteristically, decried the move since it effectively ended the BBC's broadcasting monopoly. By then a member of the House of Lords, he adressed that legislative body with the words:

"... Somebody introduced Christianity into England and somebody introduced smallpox, bubonic plague and the Black Death. Somebody is minded now to introduce sponsored broadcasting ... Need we be ashamed of moral values, or of intellectual and ethical objectives? It is these that are here and now at stake."

Fifty-five years on, we find that the spirit of Reith still reigns at al-Beeb. It was easy to miss this topic las May, what with US military officials admitting they might have killed Afghan civilians in air raids and North Korea conducting a second nuclear test and what not, but since May 13 of this year, the Head of Religious Programming at the BBC is Aaqil Ahmed... a devout muslim:

...A Muslim TV boss criticised for having a pro-Islam bias has been appointed as head of religious broadcasting at the BBC. Formerly an executive with Channel 4, Aaqil Ahmed has also been accused of dumbing down religious TV programmes.

The BBC has recently appointed a member of the British Humanist Association to its new religion board and a Sikh as producer of its flagship religious show, Songs of Praise.This has led several commentators to say that the BBC is pandering to minority groups at the expense of Christianity. Aaqil Ahmed’s Channel 4 series, Christianity: a History, which consisted of several programmes fronted by figures such as Cherie Blair and Michael Portillo, was dubbed “inaccurate and badly researched”. Channel 4 screened a series of special programmes on Islam last summer, including a feature-length documentary on the Koran, and interviews with Muslims around the world talking about their beliefs. Mr Ahmed has taken part in campaigns for greater Muslim presence in the media and he is a trustee of the Runnymede Trust, an organisation promoting multiculturalism. Church leaders question the BBC’s decision to take Mr Ahmed from Channel 4, accusing the corporation of preferential treatment for minority faiths.

Last year the BBC’s Director General, Mark Thompson, said that Islam should be treated more sensitively by the media than Christianity..."

Mr. Thompson is a worthy successor to Mr. Reith. Hey, what do you expect from a news station heaping praise on Khomeini?



MFBB.