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Christians in minority at BBC: Survey

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) employs more atheists and non-believers than Christians, an internal survey has found.

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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) employs more atheists and non-believers than Christians, an internal survey has found.

This is the first time that the religious beliefs of the BBC staff have been revealed after the organisation carried out an audit to comply with the 2010 Equality Act.

The survey found that just 22.5% of people are Christians, and 23.5 percent atheists and those who had no faith.
 
The remaining proportion of the workforce followed Islam, Hinduism or Judaism.

About 40% of staff, however, failed to respond to the questionnaire, The Daily Mail reports.

But the BBC said the figures provided ‘a good indication of our employees’ comparative religious identity profile, although it does not represent the entire staff of the BBC’.

“Nearly 60% of BBC staff have been asked about their religion or belief and, of those, Christianity was by far the largest faith. That said, when it comes to recruitment the BBC hires staff based on skills and experience alone. As the majority faith of the UK, Christian programming is the cornerstone of our religious output,” a BBC spokesperson said.

“There is an inbuilt but unconscious bias against religion, fuelled by the fact staff are not representative of the public. It is not a conspiracy but it needs a correction,” former BBC Radio 4’s religious current affairs programme anchor Roger Bolton said.
 
Scotland’s Roman Catholic Church spokesperson Peter Kearney said the data indicated that the BBC is ‘institutionally incapable of reflecting the society it serves since BBC staff are not representative of the audience they broadcast to’.
 
The Christian Broadcasting Council report had earlier said it was ‘concerned’ that Christians were not fairly represented in the organization.

The criticisms come in the wake of complaints that the BBC has reduced religious programmes.

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