To Lambeth Palace for the Sandford St Martin Trust. I was one of the judges for the tv awards. My working hours mean that apart from the weekly 'musts' of Have I Got News and Outnumbered, I rarely have time to watch television. So it was with unadulterated pleasure that I sat down to watch the shortlisted entries. After tense debate, Howard Jacobson's programme in The Bible: A History was our winner and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity the runner up. MacCulloch's programme won the Radio Times Readers' Award, presented by a former colleague at The Times, Ben Preston, who now edits the Radio Times. Entries have fallen and I was sad to see none from Sky, which has made a number of potential contenders especially for Sky Arts. Nor were there any from Sky or Channel 5. Entries were down from 45 to 27 and I suspect this is because few know about them in an industry now dominated by independent companies and with a proliferation of award opportunities. But as a result the Sandford awards are in danger of becoming the BBC awards so we were pleased that our winner was a Channel 4 programme, made under the leadership of Aaqil Ahmed, now at the BBC. He's not been replaced at Channel 4. Roger Bolton, the chair of our panel and former presenter of BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme, called in his speech for the BBC to appoint a religion editor for news, as it already has for other specialisms, to transform the corporation's coverage of religion in the way that Robert Peston has for business. The BBC, he feared, was "in the hands of the secular and sceptical." A religion editor, he said, would be able "to interpret the latest religious story at home and abroad, but more importantly to bring a religious perspective to the vast range of areas such as foreign affairs and medical dilemmas where that perspective is so often, and so bafflingly, absent, both on air and behind the scenes in internal editorial discussions." Sad to say I don't believe there is a hope of this happening. Christians are not being persecuted in Britain in the way they are in other countries, but all religion is being sidelined. Is this necessarily a bad thing? When I was growing up religion was considered private, in the way sexuality was, and also an individual's personal political views. Now it is all out there in the public domain, picked and pored over. I'm not urging a return to unhealthy secrecy but can't help wonder if it wouldn't help a little for the benefits of discretion in such areas to be re-evaluated in an attempt to restore a little balance to public discourse of the private. If The Times paywall contributes in a small way to bringing that about, I'm all for it.
5/10
