BBC's head of religion, Aaqil Ahmed "Church of England is 'living in the past', says BBC's head of religion," by Jonathan Wynne-Jones in the
Telegraph, February 6, 2010
The BBC's head of religion has accused the Church of England of "living in the past" and said that the corporation should not give Christianity preferential treatment. Aaqil Ahmed, a controversial executive whose appointment last year prompted more than 100 complaints, said: "I think all the faiths should be treated in the same way. I don't believe in treating any faith differently."
He dismissed claims that the BBC was marginalising religion as overly simplistic and argued that Christianity, in particular, was already covered well on television....There has been growing concern at top levels of the Church over the corporation's approach to religion, with warnings that it must not ignore its Christian audience....Bishops, clergy and lay members of the General Synod will vote this week on a motion calling on the state broadcaster to explain why its television coverage of Christianity has declined so steeply in recent years.
Output has fallen from 177 hours of religious programming on BBC television in 1987/88 to 155 hours in 2007/08 - a period during which the overall volume of programming has doubled. However, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph,
Mr Ahmed, an award-winning programme-maker, said that the Church's criticisms were too simplistic. "I don't believe that we should be basing the debate on 20-year-old figures, the conversation is far more complicated than that," he said.
"It's very easy to live in the past, but we live in the present. In a few years' time the way we're going to view television will change radically, so the conversation will become even more redundant. "We'll listen to what they say, but we're clear that we know what we're doing and we'll stick to that."...
Mr Ahmed - the first Muslim to hold his post - revealed that BBC One will air two explicitly Christian documentaries during Holy Week....
Mr Ahmed's comment that Christianity should not receive preferential treatment comes despite nearly three-quarters of the population describing themselves as Christian in the last census....
The Telegraph 
