BBC Confesses Bias on Religion and Politics

WORLDNETDAILY, Oct. 23 — An internal British Broadcasting Corporation memo revealed senior figures admitted the national news agency was guilty of promoting anti-Christian sentiment, reported WorldNetDaily.

The admissions of bias were made at a recent “impartiality” summit the BBC held. Most executives admitted the corporation’s representation of homosexuals and ethnic minorities was unbalanced and disproportionate. At the summit, executives were given a fictitious scenario in which they were asked to make a judgment. In the illustration, Jewish comedian Sasha Baron Cohen would participate in a studio program in which guests were allowed to symbolically throw in a garbage bin things they hated.

What would you do, the executives were asked, if Cohen decided to throw kosher food, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Bible and the Koran in the trash. Everything would be allowed, the executives said, except for the Koran, for fear of offending the British Muslim community.

A senior BBC executive admitted to the British paper Daily Express, “There was a widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness. Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC’s culture, that it is very hard to change it.”

Church Leaders: Stop Taking God’s Name in Vain

REUTERS, Oct. 23 — Ecuador’s Church leaders said Alvaro Noboa and Rafael Correa, rivals in the race to become Ecuador’s eighth president in a decade, should stop using God for political purposes, Reuters reported.

Both Catholic candidates flash Bibles and pose for photographs in churches during their campaign stops. Noboa has invoked God to heal sick voters.

“I don’t care which candidate is doing it more; nobody is authorized to use the name of God for political purposes,” Bishop Nestor Herrera said.

Since the men won the right last week to move to a runoff on Nov. 26 for the presidency, the Church — Ecuador’s most trusted institution — has held news conferences and issued statements urging them to stop mentioning God and using religious symbols in their campaigns.

Noboa often addresses supporters wearing a fist-size cross dangling from a silver necklace and waves a Bible while praying on stage. On tours of shantytowns, the businessman hands out wheelchairs and calls on God to cure potential voters. Correa, who is pro-life and for traditional marriage, has not made as much of a show about his faith but likes to be photographed praying in churches and calls himself a “leftist Christian.”

As Europe Gets Grayer, France Devises a Baby Boom

THE WASHINGTON POST, Oct. 18 — While falling birthrates threaten to undermine economies and social stability across much of an aging Europe, French fertility rates are increasing, the Post reported.

France now has the second-highest fertility rate in Europe — 1.94 children born per woman, exceeded slightly by Ireland’s rate of 1.99. The U.S. fertility rate is 2.01 children. But the propensity of women in France to have more babies has little to do with notions of French romance or the population’s formerly strong religious ties to the Catholic Church.

France heavily subsidizes children and families from pregnancy to young adulthood with liberal maternity leaves and part-time work laws for women. The government also covers some child-care costs of toddlers up to 3 years old and offers free child-care centers from age 3 to kindergarten, in addition to tax breaks and discounts on transportation, cultural events and shopping.

France Prioux, director of research for France’s National Institute of Demographic Studies, said, “Politicians realized they had to encourage people to have more babies if they didn’t want to live in a country of old people.”