Thought for the Day explicitly excludes non-religious contributors.
The BBC should move away from biased religious programming. That should begin with a rethink of Thought for the Day.
The BBC has a long history of pro-religion bias in its output, which is typified by Thought for the Day.
Thought for the Day is a daily slot on BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme, Today. For nearly three minutes, religious leaders offer "reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news". Nonreligious people and leaders of less popular religions, no matter how well-respected their views, are not allowed to contribute.
Despite being within such a prominent discussion slot, Thought for the Day is outside the programme's editorial control. This means there is no right to reply when the slot is used for political or religious proselytising.
- Fewer than one in five British people think BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day should exclusively feature religious content.
- Religious radio programmes are the least popular and least well received according to the BBC's own research.
Public apathy towards Thought for the Day is even shared by Today's former presenter, John Humphrys, who described the slot as "inappropriate" and "deeply, deeply boring" in 2017. His colleague Justin Webb has also criticised it.
Reforming Thought for the Day to include speakers of any religion or belief would improve overall quality, make it relevant to Today's audience and remove the unjustifiable discrimination. Contributors should be picked without reference to their religious or non-religious identity.
There is a place for high quality, critical religion and belief programming on the BBC – but not one-sided promotion of religion.
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Latest updates
New BBC consultation ‘an opportunity to challenge Thought For The Day’
Posted: Fri, 5 Dec 2014 11:17
The BBC has launched a new consultation asking listeners what they like and dislike about its speech radio output. The NSS is calling on its supporters to use the opportunity to again raise the contentious issue of Thought For The Day. The consultation can be completed online here.
Although the BBC is considering editorial standards and impartiality "out of the scope of the review", its Consultation asks listeners for their views on the corporation's "news and current affairs and its documentaries and factual programming".
The National Secular Society is calling on the listening public to use the consultation to challenge the appropriateness of Radio 4's Thought For The Day – a daily slot for religious-only views, broadcast each Monday to Saturday morning during the station's flagship news and current affairs Today programme.
NSS campaigns manager, Stephen Evans, said: "It's important that as many people as possible take this opportunity to tell the BBC that discriminating against the non-religious, and thus giving the impression of promoting religion as the only source of ethics is simply not acceptable in this day in age.
"Offering a privileged platform during its news and current affairs output for religious-only views to be aired without any analysis, criticism or comeback is completely against the founding principles of the BBC. Fairness, balance and impartiality are impossible if only one side of the debate is aired.
"The slot should either be opened up to secular perspectives or scrapped."
The National Secular Society has campaigned against the discriminatory nature of Thought For The Day since the programme started. The Society first lodged a complaint against the programme's predecessor, Lift up your Hearts, in 1962.
In 2009 the BBC Trust rejected a complaint from the National Secular Society, when the society had argued that the programme was "exclusive and discriminatory."
In 2013 the BBC Executive said that "it did not propose to revisit the issue of atheists or humanists" taking part in Thought For The Day, after opting to leave it out of the scope of an "impartiality review of the breadth of opinion".
*Please note that the consultation has now closed.*
Big changes for religious reporting
Posted: Thu, 15 May 2014 12:55
The BBC has announced that it is replacing its present religious affairs correspondent, Robert Pigott, with Caroline Wyatt who is currently its defence correspondent.
Pigott has been covering the BBC's religion mandate for ten years and from July joins the pool of general reporters. He will cover the General Synod debate on women bishops as his last assignment in the job.
Caroline Wyatt has been BBC defence correspondent since 2007. She also covered the 2003 invasion ofIraq, joining British troops on the ground there. She has also been the BBC'sMoscowcorrespondent.
Ms Wyatt has been told to be "ambitious" in her new brief, "covering religion, faith and ethics at home and abroad".
She told the BBC's in-house magazine Ariel: "I'm really looking forward to exploring the religious faultlines around the globe, looking at the challenges posed at home and abroad by religious extremism, and covering the beliefs and ethics of the billions of people of different faiths around the world.
"I'm also keen to explore the scientific debate over religion and the nature of belief, and reflect on what religion means to people in the UK and elsewhere."
She told the magazine that she wanted to show religion in all its aspects – positive and negative – "how it can be harnessed for great good, but also be used to divide nations and communities, sometimes with terrible consequences".
Wyatt will hold the same religious affairs correspondent title as Pigott, rather than that of religious affairs editor - a title that would carry more authority. The Church of England called for such a position in 2010, when it said there was a need for "a recognised expert to bring greater co-ordination and depth to the corporation's religious output across all channels". The BBC has resisted that demand.
Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said: "This is welcome news. It sounds as though Caroline Wyatt will have a much more balanced approach to religion than Robert Pigott and is likely to be far more realistic about it."
Mr Sanderson said that over the years Robert Pigott had produced some of the most unbalanced reports he had seen on the BBC news. "Look at the last one over the recent 'Britain-is-a-Christian-nation" debate which is totally skewed, giving any opposition only a passing reference and almost all the time to making Christian propaganda."
Mr Sanderson said that Pigott had managed to report the NSS's council prayers court case without including any spokesperson from the NSS in his TV news packages.
On a similar theme, The Times has scrapped the post of religious affairs correspondent, ending the 27-year long tenure of Ruth Gledhill. The Times was the last national newspaper to have a reporter dedicated solely to religious matters.
Commenting in the Catholic magazine, The Tablet, Clifford Longley, who is a former religious affairs correspondent for both The Times and The Daily Telegraph, said: "In the case of newspapers, they will continue to report on religion though less of it. In a subject of considerable complexity rife with public misunderstanding, expertise is no longer, by and large, thought necessary. That is itself an insidious kind of secular judgement - that making a mess of the coverage of religion is now a risk the media is prepared to run because the subject doesn't matter any more."
