CCTV launches BBC Charter review campaign
Those whacky Christians at CCTV have sent an mail shot to their subscribers urging them to email, write, and fill in web forms to ensure that the BBC’s new Charter (due 2006) “accountable to the 71.6% of the population” who ticked the Christian box in the last national census.
If you are angered by the BBC’s substitution of Christian moral values, such as honour, respect, heroism and fidelity, for pornography, violence, and ‘alternative lifestyles’ in the name of artistic merit, then make sure you have your say.
We like the way they claim honour, respect, heroism and fidelity to themselves. We love the way they misuse the word “substitution” so that the sentence means the exact opposite of what they meant to say. They clearly don’t put too high a value on literacy.
You can see the whole thing here.
Mediawatchwatch has already written to the Government expressing hope that they will not be unduly influenced by unrepresentative campaign groups. The proposals in the Green paper seem quite reasonable on the whole.
CCTV are not claiming that Christians have a monopoly on these values. They are claiming two things:
(1) these are Christian (as opposed to exclusively Christian) values, considered by Christians to be good things.
(2) Such are different to, even sometimes opposed to, much of what the BBC puts out.
(3) What the BBC does put out includes plenty that Christians (and presumably also others over and above the 71%, or whatever the true figure is) can see to be not merely neutral but actually negative.
(4) To this extent, the BBC is unrepresentative.
Of course, if they only put out christian broadcasting or cuntspotter-friendly broadcasting, then they would be far more unrepresentative.
Pre-watershed is for those of a faint constitution or those with kids, thereafter the BBC broadcasts some programmes which may offend the easily offended self-righteous squawking minority who make up ChristianVoice, mediawatch, CCTV etc.
As someone who IS a Christian, I always feel amazed that groups such as Mediawitchunt, etc feel that they are somehow representative of all UK Christians. Was there an election? Why wasn’t I allowed to vote? Was it in case I, and other Christians, prefer to live and let live, and leave the judgements to God?
Live and let live is a creed for the apathetic, Alan. I can live and let live by doing nothing but sitting in front of the tv. But that aint the Christian way, it’s the modern western way which infiltrates the church as all cultures do. I may be wrong – in which case you can demonstrate this from the New Testament.
I see the great Christians as coworking with God rather than sitting back and waiting for God to do his thing.
So therefore you’re denying that only God has the right to Judge? I missed that bit in the Bible where it says that the self-righteous may do the work of the Almighty, could you tell me where it is?
No-one is judging anyone. We are stating that certain things are right and others are wrong.
(1) You have not shown that ‘live and let live’ was how the New Testament Christians operated. (2) There is a difference between judging, which focusses on people, and which we should not do, and stating certain facts, which focusses on issues.
If you read the words of radical Christians carefully, you will see that the majority of the time they are focussing on issues and not on personalities. (Note: I said the majority…)
The BBC should be able to cater for those people who ARE NOT in any way religious too, swearing and sex and all. To say that all BBC programmes have got to conform to repressive and censorious so called “Christian” values, all the time is, quite frankly completely and utterly selfish, simply bonkers, and an anathema to freedom. It makes it even worse when not all self professed Christian people actually want such repression, but the fundamentalists are going to try and get it imposed on them, anyway, whether they like it, or not.
Surely by judging actions you are implicitly judging the actors.
Also, who are you to state that “certain things are right and others wrong” any more than the rest of us?
Finally, you are constantly focussing on what we should not do (well, according to you at any rate), therefore, by your own admission, you are judging people.
Your (and your CV friends’) judgmental behaviour would only be appropriate if (a) god existed and everyone accepted this and (b) you actually were his colleague (appointed either through some divine process or through the faux divinity of cardinals or the prime minister or equivalent for whichever sect you’re a member)
Wow Shaun you’d think that every time someone said the precious, distinguished and erudite word **** (not to mention ***** and %£$)”) they were striking a blow for freedom and enlightenment. It’s clear that the places where such words proliferate (the building site, the dockyard, the playground, the pub) are the heights of human enlightenment and culture.
Or is it???
Tom – If you dont agree that ‘certain things are right and others wrong’, then Hitler could have been right. Is this what you believe? Relativism is self-refuting. It needs to be argued for, not just assumed.
Certain things are dehumanising whether 1000 gods exist or whether no god exists.
Well Dr. Shell, I would suggest, that there’s more common sense spoken in a dockyard, playground, and CERTAINLY the pub, than in most churches where one is simply fed a load of dogmatic rubbish, which is rarely questions by the “faithful”, and at one time dare not be questioned at all.
I suggest you come down from your pulpit for a while, and go and speak to some of those people people you are clearly demeaning here. You may find to your surprise, after a visit to the dockyards, or the pub that the people to be found there are more articulate, and culturally aware than someone like you would give them credit for… It is a disgrace how you debase some people, and clearly obvious to me, you’ve never taken any kind of steps to learn anything whatsoever about them.
Shaun – You are absolutely right that the said places may be sources of common sense and indeed wisdom.
But wherever the common sense and wisdom resides, it is certainly not in the swearwords.
None of the swearwords used contribute an iota to the said common sense or wisdom.
They merely serve to show the poverty of the person’s vocab – and poor vocab signifies poor life, just as rich vocab signifies rich life.
‘Dr’ Shell (for a doctor, you seem to spend an awful lot of time missing the point) – I didn’t say that I didn’t believe that certain things are right and others wrong, I asked
because you stated in #6
My conjecture is that minority pressure groups should not be the ones who decide what is right or wrong and to force their views down the throats of others, particularly those who vehemently disagree with them.
Your vision of a pure television, free of swearing or anything sexual or violent is a vision of a TV that does not represent a country that I recognise.
I don’t believe that swearing or blaspheming is fundamentally wrong. I am not a relativist any more than is anyone who disagrees with you.
And as for the swearing – we’ve already established that not swearing has to diminish your vocab by however many words you choose not to use. It’s not exactly rocket science, is it?
Of course. But swearers are not known for their vast vocabs in my experience.
Im not clear how you propose we decide what is right and wrong. You clearly dont like minorities, therefore perhaps you believe the majority is generally right (or perhaps you dont – just tell me what you do believe about this.)
I guess we need to be aware that the majority
(a) may not be informed about all the issues and factors;
(b) may get a lot of their information from the media, who (i) often deal in soundbites rather than much depth, and (ii) to a large extent represent a particular category of people with a particular background – i.e. are unrepresentative of Britain as a whole
(c) elect a government who then make decisions to some extent not on the basis of what is right but on the basis of what will win them votes.
Decisions have to be made somehow. I believe they should be made by experts on the basis of debate and argument (i.e. meritocracy). It’s not obvious (for the above-stated reasons) that the democratic view is better.
If it wins them votes, then it’s what the public at large wants.
Since we’re talking about what is allowed to be broadcast by TV or shown in cinemas, namely making things available that people can choose to watch or not, I’d say that the policy about what should or should not be shown should be entirely based on what the public votes for, ‘cos that’s what we want to have available, even if we are not interested in seeing any particular TV show or film.
After the government has made the policy, then a committee should review individual films, and it’s right that the committee should be appointed by the government to carry out the policy and do the details.
In your plan, where ‘experts’ debate the merits of free speech, who would be the experts? Church leaders, who have, by their position at god’s feet shown themselves to be experts in all possible things? Human rights lawyers who can debate the technical details of the acts which guarantee our freedoms? Self-appointed religious spokespersons, publicity hungry bullies and vainglorious fools?
If you really think that there’s a majority of public opinion who think that this is such an important issue, why not form a political party and put it to the test? I’ll lay pounds to pennies that you’d lose your deposit.
I know that you think this is some kind of fundamental wrong that should never be permitted, but you’re in a tiny minority, so why should your dislike of it stop other people having access to it?
Oh, and your line about me not liking minorities is ridiculous. First you accuse me of being a relativist and imply that I could support Hitler, then you accuse me of disliking minorities with all that that implies. It’s you who is the prejudiced bigot, not I.
I very much doubt that you (or I) would ever support Hitler. You dont strike me as a ‘far-right’ individual. My use of Hitler was in an example.
Im surprised that you take the public to be a good guide to what is beneficial or permissible. (1) How many of the public are informed about such matters?
(2) Of those that are informed, how many get their ‘information’ from an unrepresentative media?
A variety of experts can debate things. The point is that experts do exist. If one wants one’s car mended one goes to the expert. If one wants one’s hair cut one goes to the expert. And so on.
Re your use of ‘unrepresentative’:
(1) Most bodies are unrepresentative. The media are unrepresentative, being ‘biased’ (if you want to put it that way) towards educated liberal whites in their 20s-60s. The government are not fully representative – they represent the preference of 30-40% of over-18s, who can only choose the particular candidate that is put up in their own constituency.
(2) A grouping (Christians) that can claim 70+% of the population is more representative than most. How many groupings would claim more than this 70%?
Christian Voice and other evangelical pressure groups do not and cannot be said to represent 70% of the country.
The vast majority of those who describe themselves as chrisitan do engage in any regular act of worship, nor indeed tend to live their lives by any particularly christian code. If you go down to a shopping mall on a sunday and ask people their religion the majority would say christian, yet they are clearly requiring people to work on the day of rest, the lord’s day, the sabbath. how is that christian? how are such people represented by groups such as christian voice et al?
The public at large are not informed about swearing or supposedly immoral issues via the media, it is something that one does or encounters in one’s day-today life. Anyway, if you want ‘experts’ in broadcasting morality, the present system has them, with OFCOM, the ASA, the BBFC and the BBC governors (although most of them are hardly experts in broadcaasting and are merely appointed to represent the establishment).
As for representation, the print media, at least, has it’s fair share of illiberal commentators. I hardly feel that Richard Littlejohn, for example, could be called liberal by anyone to the left of Goebbels
LOL – though of course columnists are chosen for their immediate ability to communicate rather than because they are necessarily experts. Journalists are trusted less than any other profession for their regard for truth (ranking even lower than politicians apparently). Teh danger comes because more people read unexpert journalists, and have their opinions formed by them, than read real experts on any topic.
[…] recalls the work of the CCTV: The CCTV has been providing us here at MWW with pleasingly whacky Christian fodder since its inception in March 2005. But they really showed their hateful side with […]