BBC gave the Pope an easy ride, says Archbishop of Canterbury's spokesman (Contribution)

The Times’s paywall is mysteriously down, so I nipped behind it and found a blog post from my former colleague the Rev George Pitcher, now the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Secretary for Public Affairs. 

Writes George:

I confess to having been bemused by the media treatment of the Pope here in October [sic]. If British society is post-Christian you could have fooled me. He enjoyed comprehensive and largely unmediated and uncritical reportage in the British media.

The BBC was especially reverential – wall-to-wall coverage, with little or no challenge in the studio from the usual pundits and antagonists.

There may be good reason for that; the Beeb will have been conscious of Roman Catholicism’s minority status in the UK and its responsibilities to religious diversity.

More cynically, it was any easy hit – the BBC may feel it can have a go at the Pope in future and point to the free ride it gave him when he visited, should anyone claim undue victimisation.

But the point still holds: The Pope’s visit was recorded as an unqualified success.

Is that what Dr Williams thinks, too, George?

SIC: TC/UK