Onward Christian spammers
Adrian Warnock, an evangelical blogger who took part in the anti-JS:TO email campaign and a great believer in the “power of the blog”, wrote in his pre-transmission complaint to Ofcom
As a psychiatrist I am particularly concerned at the present time about the effects that watching this programme might have on someone with a belief in the real existence of hell who is currently greiving
Without wishing to denigrate the grieving (and leaving aside his ethically dubious use of the tsunami disaster to make his point), I have to say that his concern about the psychological effects of a TV show upon people with a belief in the “real existence of hell” brings to mind the image of an open stable door and a bolting horse.
In addition to this, he gets quite worked up about what he saw as a “cynical stock response” from the BBC to his complaint – one of around 45,000, a large number of which were no doubt cynical stock complaints. But he doesn’t mention that. Instead, without even a hint of irony, he exhorts his readers: “Let’s bombard them with the following email:
I heard from www.adrian.warnock.info that you are replying to complaints about the Jerry Springer Opera with a standard e-mail. Consider yourself Blog swarmed.
Blog swarmed? A self-regarding Christian soldier drunk on the “power of blog” might like to think of himself as a “blog swarmer”.To those of us in the reality-based community he’s just another damned spammer.
5.1 The Corporation shall do all it can to secure that all programmes broadcast or transmitted by or on behalf of or under licence from the Corporation as part of the Home Services:-
…(e) do not involve improper exploitation of any susceptibilities of those watching or listening to its religious programmes or any abusive treatment of the religious views and beliefs of those belonging to a particular religion or religious denomination
You can find the charter and the charter agreement here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/charter/
[…] itled to protection the sacred belief is. If, as seems to be the case, the BBC did indeed breach their charter by broadcasting JS:TO, the charter almost certainly has to be changed. […]