Three cheers for Ekklesia

I think it only fair to highlight cases where religious writers run a worthwhile story, and Ekklesia (see sidebar) do that often.
Yesterday they ran a story (Texas man executed after court case Bible row) on the Texan case of a man whose fate was decided after jurors consulted the Bible for guidance.
In brief, they decided he should die, and now he has. This despite a 30 day reprieve being requested to allow officials to examine a rifle for DNA evidence that someone else handled the weapon during the attack that led to a brutal murder.
Texas’s governor showed a lack of humanity, legal knowledge or, indeed, any intelligence at all probably not seen since the days of his most famous predecessor, George ‘Dubya’ Bush. We can only hope he doesn’t follow further in Dubya’s footsteps or we’re all in deep doo-doos.
Ekklesia’s Lizzie Clifford has also produced a fascinating paper on the latest wrangles over Thought For The Day, i.e. if the Beeb should allow non-religious contributors. Interesting update here, as Ekklesia’s Jonathan Bartley, always an engaging and provocative Anglican voice, was barred from the TFTD line-up after suggesting just that on Radio 4’s Today programme, which hosts TFTD.
Time For Religious To Kick The Broadcasting Habit gives a potted history of the programme, which flatly contradicts the Beeb’s claims of a fair-minded, non-evangelical stance.
As outlined in their press release:
“The new paper traces how the origins of TFTD came in a context of BBC religious broadcasting which was originally viewed as 'evangelistic and missionary'.
TFTD began as Lift Up Your Hearts, an innovation of extending religious programmes beyond Sunday into the working week. The original contributors were overwhelmingly Christian and Anglican. The slot's rebranding in 1965 to the more nominally neutral Ten to Eight was designed to reflect the changing beliefs of the listenership. But it was opposed by some in the Anglican Church as part of a general withdrawal of the BBC from its position as a central broadcaster in a 'Christian country'.
The paper also highlights how a number of other BBC radio stations, in particular regional programmes, have output which is similar to TFTD. But these successfully include contributions from the non- religious, as well as 'minority' religions, raising further questions about why TFTD has not followed suit.”
The Ekklesia paper can be found at http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/research/thought_for_the_day. And on that comment about regional radio, I should of course point out that Manx Radio is amongst the regionals with an open door for the non-religious, and I've done Thought For The Day slots myself as both an Amnesty International speaker and an Isle of Man Freethinker.
In fact, Manx Radio's only obstacle is a lack of willing speakers, not religious objections, and I suspect this might be the case on many a regional station. If you have one in your area, give it a shot. They'll probably bite your hand off!

Media studies for beginners

Absolutely everything that’s wrong with the Manx media is typified by a front page item in this week’s Examiner.
Apparently:
"Manx Radio has revealed a new logo in what it describes as its ‘biggest image change in its 45-year history.’"
If nobody up at Radio Cowshed has worked out yet that radio is not actually a visual medium that explains the crap that they pass off as 'programming'.
On the other hand, that the local newspaper puts this on the front page suggests they have a few problems with the concept of newsgathering too.

Dunthinking

I was on Manx Radio doing a Thought For The Day last week.
At least I think I was – they buggered up the online replay and repeated someone else’s talk on two consecutive days, and as they never tell you which day of the week you're on there's no way I was listening to Radio Cowshed at 7 AM all week just to check how I sounded .
Actually I was hamstrung and bored this time anyway as the Freethinkers laid down a party line. We were all supposed to ‘celebrate’ Darwin and the theory of evolution.
What’s to celebrate? Evolution happens, just keep up or die.
Usually I just go in with the twin aims of bending the format and saying something funny. No sense in upsetting religionists or you don’t get asked back, so charm them and try to knock a stereotype off-balance instead.
A fellow regular and I used to have a bit of a private competition – who can slip in the most outrageous comment and make the engineer laugh. In the great days of Andy Arnold that was OK. Now he’s gone and we’re being recorded by a proper clergyman I’m supposed to take it seriously.
Take an excuse for a radio sermon seriously? Moi? Get real!!
So I’m thinking of giving it a miss in future. I was in on the groundbreaking first local ‘secular alternatives’, and I’ve pushed it far enough to get Amnesty International in there too. In theory membership and ‘interested others’ of the Freethinkers number 30-50, so if there’s genuine interest time someone else stepped up.
Unless………
maybe it should be a stipulation of Thought For The Day that you’re off your trolley when recording.
That would brighten things up in the morning. If they can come out with fairy stories when they’re stone cold sober, just imagine the topics when sozzled clergy start telling folk what they REALLY think.

Comedy Hour

I've been slow to alert folk to a fun event on Manx Radio last Thursday.
My good mate Andrew Dixon, Vice-Chair of Isle of Man Freethinkers, was called into the studio for a debate nominally over the atheist bus adverts. In the faith corner to tell us all why it was a sin and we will go to hell in a handbasket was Peter Murcott.
You can hear the results at http://www.manxradio.com/audiovault/HeadsTHURS-1.wma.
For the benefit of off-island readers (and possibly on-island readers too) I should explain that Murcott is the local equivalent of Christian Voice's Stephen Green. He's a veteran of local campaigns going back to Keep Sunday Special and was even, I believe, the leader of a Manx chapter of Mary Whitehouse's old Festival of Light gang.
As you'll hear, he likes to present himself as a legal authority, though he's never practiced law. He did recently retire from teaching O & A level law at the local 'tech. Also to his credit, while his biblical arguments against Sunday trading fell on deaf political ears, his arguments on behalf of shop and other workers got them a fair deal when the Manx law was amended.
That said, it's hard to take anyone seriously when he mixes quotations from Genesis with legal judgements and has the most prolific whiskers since Biggles Flies Undone.
Debating Murcott is almost a rite of passage for Freethinkers, and by accident he always sounds off about subjects he knows nothing of when his opponent is, coincidentally, there because they take an informed interest.
Previously, for example, on assisted suicide he drew Jeff Garland, who, being a modest bloke who rarely uses his doctor title, Murcott didn't know was a retired clinical psychologist with not just extensive experience counselling the terminally ill but a couple of books out on the topic. So when Murcott fumed that the ill and elderly would feel terrorised into taking the tablets Jeff amicably flattened him.
This time was as funny. Poor old Peter was not to know that, long before a current stable of businesses, Andrew was a post-grad student on a project led by Richard Dawkins. Thus not the best person to tell 'authoritively' that evolution is poor science.
Listen, laugh and learn!

Radio Four and Against

So, as anyone who joined the fun this week knows, Mark 'Turd Of The Day' Damazer, the Radio 4 boss, isn't about to let anyone rational interrupt his daily two minutes of hocus pocus any time soon. I suspect he's taking instructions on the matter from one Andrew Graystone , the BBC producer responsible for the 'challenging' (that's mediaspeak for 'shite no-one watches') film prominently advertised before broadcast last Easter.
Graystone is an Evangelical Alliance stooge who Joel Edwards managed to get on to a statutory body which 'advises' the BBC on religious programming, even though he's absolutely incapable of objectivity as not only a spookchasing flake but the BBC employee who would get the work should one of his employers take his advice. After all, the EA must also pay him well for media work such as a website he does for them.
On the other hand another wing of Radio 4 is showing more taste. A month ago I ran something on the ridiculous plans to change prostitution laws, based mainly on evangelical advocacy campaigns which falsely paint all immigrant women as potential victims of mythical traffiking gangs
(see http://clingingtoarock.blogspot.com/2008/12/pimps-parsons-police-prostitution.html for more).
An article by Ruth Alexander at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7819984.stm politely but decisively trashes the trumped up evidence, and handily reveals the true source of the false stats evangelicals are waving about. It's also revealed that not only are they a decade old but that even the researcher who gathered them thinks they're badly flawed, being based on a vague survey that rang a few suspects almost at random and took a stab at what the overall picture ought to be.
Well worth a look to balance the hype due to appear unchecked throughout UK media in the next month or two.

Bye Andy, and thanks for making history

Andy Arnold - Lay Reader at Ballaugh Church, and the kingpin for Manx Radio's version of Thought For The Day - died suddenly on September 30th.
It may suprise folk to know I'm gutted, but few know that Andy and his predecessor, Judith Ley, helped the non-religious to make history and show the BBC up as a weak, pathetic institution.
Unlike the BBC, the Manx Radio version of TFTD has non-religious contributors, and listeners. It was only when e-mailing him to set up spots for Amnesty International around Human Rights Day in December that I found out from his widow that Andy had died.
Judith Ley agreed at once when approached by Isle of Man Freethinkers about doing some 'thoughts' a couple of years back. As a Catholic, she knew all about Manx 'Christianity' and its sick sectarianism and anti-semitism, and was only too ready to have less bigoted voices on air. When Judith had to step down for family reasons Andy, similarly, helped me get Amnesty and other secular groups on there too. He was one of that fast vanishing species - Anglican but liberal , witty and worldly wise from an RAF career, and not about to take crap from any toytown priest or politico.
You knew where you were with them both. If you made a positive point - something to get people thinking in the morning, great. If you made them laugh, better. But slag others off and your tape mysteriously 'got lost'. It was the same rules for all, so fair enough.
Now Andy's gone I can reveal how little he thought of some evangelical snoremongers who tried to monopolise the spot. It was also Andy who quietly took godbothering retired senior army officers aside after the last 'Veterans Day' fiasco. He 'advised' them that if next year's also includes five hymns, prayers and responses and a sermon from the Bishop then interviews with angry vets would be the only radio coverage they'd get.
Great guy, who will be missed. Every time someone like Andy dies this island gets greyer.

Ditch Dobson!

The Chicago based Museum of Broadcast Communications is about to induct into their Radio Hall of Fame an evangelical muppet who thinks Spongebob Squarepants promotes homosexuality.
James Dobson, best known as Chairman of Focus on the Family, also runs the biggest 'ex gay' ministry in the the US, supports intelligent design and even led the ousting of Rev. Richard Cizik, a fellow fundie, from the National Assocation of Evangelicals because Cizik had the temerity to suggest Christians should take global warming seriously.
Thankfully, the US gay community aren't about to let this fully fledged wingnut get his 'honour' without a fight.
'Dump Dobson!'is a joint campaign between the Gay Liberation Network and Truth Wins Out, which has exposed much of the twaddle behind Dobson's 'Love Won Out' scam. They're asking people to e-mail the Museum Director and sign up to a letter asking the Museum to think again. If that doesn't work they'll be amongst numerous Chicago groups who might make the awards dinner on November 8th just a tad unpalatable. Go to http://www.dumpdobson.com/ to find out more and get stuck in.