LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corp.- BBC — is regarded globally as one of the world's most objective and accurate broadcasting organizations. But recently it has come under fire from Catholic bishops in Britain, who have accused it of anti-Church bias.

Established in 1922, the BBC has grown into a global broadcasting giant. And it has an unrivalled reputation for impartiality, most notably with the BBC World Service, which broadcasts in a variety of languages. This reputation is partly due to the fact that, unlike major American networks, the BBC is publicly funded and therefore does not require advertising revenue.

But last Sept. 29, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham issued a stinging public criticism of the BBC's handling of an exposé of abuse allegations in his archdiocese. According to a public statement from the archbishop, during the previous nine months he had received various reports from priests of the Archdiocese of Birmingham of unsolicited and strange approaches from people saying they were working for the BBC.

Then in September, Archbishop Nichols received a letter from a BBC producer working on a program called “Kenyon Confronts” seeking to interview him on questions of child abuse and the Catholic Church.

“With subsequent telephone conversations I was told … that a team of investigators had been working in the Archdiocese of Birmingham on its contents for a number of months,” the archbishop said.

A reporter then approached a presbytery in the diocese and requested personal information about parishioners who used to live there while refusing to identify the reason for his questions.

“He refused to reveal his role in the program even when my press secretary, Peter Jennings, telephoned him on Sept. 15,” Archbishop Nichols said. “A short time later, the producer of the program reluctantly confirmed that this man was, in fact, the associate producer of the program.”

“I had not heard of ‘Kenyon Confronts,’ but I have since found out about some of its recent investigative programs,” the archbishop continued. “They have been into fraudsters who fake their own deaths, dog fixing and doping, therapy fraudsters, drug dealers and dealers in bogus marriages. That this program is considered by the BBC managers as a suitable way to engage the Catholic Church is absolutely offensive. It is offensive to every Catholic in this country, and I believe to many other people, too.”

Archbishop Nichols said he had told the program he was quite willing to be interviewed in connection with the program's subject material, which centered on old allegations of child abuse by diocesan priests — all of which had occurred at least 20 years ago and have been investigated by police with full cooperation from the archdiocese.

But when the archbishop insisted the interview be aired live by “Kenyon Confronts,” he was told this was not possible for “technical reasons.”

Replying in a public statement to Archbishop Nichols' criticisms, the BBC said: “We recognize the archbishop has concerns about the program. We believe it is an issue of serious public interest that will be fairly examined and reported.”

“We take great care to reflect all faiths in the U.K. and plan to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Pope John Paul II across radio, television and online,” the statement added. “We will also mark the beatification of Mother Teresa for our audiences at home and abroad.”

But, in fact, the BBC coverage of those events was criticized in February by Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, who accused the BBC of encouraging a “tabloid culture” that shows “gross insensitivity” to the Church. This culture, Archbishop Conti said in a letter published Feb. 4 by the Glasgow Herald, was unworthy of “the world's most distinguished broadcasting organization.”

Archbishop Conti noted the BBC chose to mark the Pope's 25th anniversary and Mother Teresa's beatification in October by broadcasting a documentary, “Sex and the Holy City,” that attacked the Church's opposition to using condoms against AIDS.

“Such scheduling showed gross insensitivity to the spiritual and historical significance of these moments,” Archbishop Conti said. “I mention also the corporation's plans to broadcast the ‘Popetown’ cartoon, which satirizes the Pope as a childish pensioner whose every fickle whim must be indulged.”

“A prudent use of license-payers' resources, I wonder?” Archbishop Conti asked. “There was the hounding of the archbishop of Westminster [Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor] last year, once more by the ‘Today’ program and ‘Newsnight,’ a process that seemed to owe more to the desire to claim an eminent scalp than to objective reporting of fact. And, closer to home, ‘Newsnight Scotland’ just carried a sneering and aggressive interview on the Church's position on shared campus schools, failing to distinguish tabloid fictions from fact.”

Others are also questioning the BBC's objectivity and accuracy. The recent report of the Hutton Enquiry, which set out to examine the suicide of a British weapons expert following the invasion of Iraq last year, was scathing in its criticisms of the BBC's reporting on the affair and led to the resignation of the BBC's chairman and director general.

Don Maclean, the Catholic presenter of the BBC Radio 2 religious magazine program “Good Morning Sunday,” believes a strong anti-Christian bias permeates the BBC.

“There's a bit of a plot to secularize our country,” Maclean said. “There are people in the BBC who see themselves as not only the natural opposition to the government but also as the natural opposition to the Church.”

“There are people at the BBC who dismiss you because you believe in God,” he said. “They believe you are not worth talking to.”

Non-Catholic Joan Bakewell, who has presented a number of programs on BBC TV and radio, thinks the broadcaster's original ideals have been lost.

“The Latin quotation standing proudly in the foyer of Broadcasting House in London tells how the first governors dedicated ‘this temple of the arts and muses to Almighty God’ and prayed that ‘good seed sown may bring forth good harvest,’” Bakewell said.

But today, Bakewell said, Christianity is seen by the BBC as a hobby, albeit one that goes to the root of people's lives.

“There is a liberal, secular agenda in the media,” she said. “It's unavoidable.”

Greg Watts writes from London.