By Julia Bicknell
“I see you’ve done religion…is that ALL you can do?”
The question from a senior manager interviewing me for my first producer’s job on BBC World Service some years ago. Considering over the previous six months I’d produced a weekly news and current affairs programme for the UK’s national radio station, Radio 4, reporting everything from the assassinations of a number of Iranian Muslim converts-become-church-leaders to the aftermath of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, which was accelerating liberation theology from a Latin American local phenomenon into a global movement, this seemed a somewhat strange comment.
Plus, in complete contrast to global news, I had pioneered and launched – with a senior mentor - a weekly programme for the youth audience of Radio 1, Talkabout, discussing ‘touchy-feely’ topics such as bereavement (the death of mum, dad, sibling, grandparent, best friend, teacher…), parental divorce and unemployment (it was the early/mid-80s). The Radio 1 bosses had come to the ‘Religion’ department to request this content because they trusted it to create it properly and sensitively.
I’d also produced a 30-minute documentary on how politicians across the UK political spectrum could all trace their (vastly different!) ideological positions on everything from the environment to immigration back to their Christian beliefs and their reading of the Bible’s teachings.
Yet it seemed that the ‘R’ word meant such content was seen as lightweight, somehow not quite as ‘weighty’ as if I’d produced it outside that particular BBC department, known today as Religion and Ethics.
Fast forward over 40 years, and I’ve just researched the output of my former department for an overview of how the UK’s Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs, mainstream ‘legacy’ media) are faring, two years after the Media Act 2024 came into law.
For the first time, the Act does not specify ‘religion’ output, nor the number of hours to be committed to it by the PSBs. However, it’s notable that under its present Charter agreement with the UK government – much discussed now, ahead of its 2027 renewal - the BBC in 2025 mostly exceeded the number of hours of Religion and Ethics output to which it committed. The BBC also points out that it has a dedicated Religion Editor in BBC News and that its coverage of religious issues is not confined to ‘Religion and Ethics’ but also appears in drama, comedy etc and even programmes such as ‘Race across the World’.
Call for media to improve coverage of religion
And yet… and yet… recently the UK’s Archbishop of York, the second most senior Church of England leader, called for the protection of the place of religion in the media in the digital age.
ITV and Channel 4, the UK’s two other main PSBs, only managed an hour each of original ‘religion’ output over the whole year. ITV’s was the televising of the Princess of Wales’ Westminster Abbey carol concert celebrating individuals and communities.
Since Archbishop Stephen Cottrell gave his keynote speech at the annual Festival of the Religion Media Centre (RMC) in London on 29 June, Sky announced its takeover of ITV’s media and entertainment business.
The UK’s Channel 5, owned by Paramount Global, has no religion content at all, though in 2024 its Senior Communications Manager told me that the early morning children’s slot Milkshake “included… religious festivals such as Eid, Ramadan, Hannukah and more”.
A “lack of understanding”
Milkshake notwithstanding, Archbishop Cottrell told his audience: “We will never understand the world around us, let alone our own nation’s history, culture, literature and law, unless we understand faith.”
He went on to elaborate that the values which so many parents want for their children “arise out of and are held by the narratives, beliefs and practices which make up the Christian life, and for that matter the life, ethos and values of all the great religions that are now part of our diverse, multifaith society…giving people purpose, belonging and identity”.
Decline in religious content
Yet, there’s been a dramatic decline in content of this kind on UK mainstream media over the past decades.
In 2011-13, peak-time TV viewers could see about 30 hours a year of original UK content featuring “Religious faith and inspiration” and 20 hours a year about “Religious life experience”, featuring moral, ethical and spiritual issues.
In 2025, these two categories of output were combined by OFCOM, the body which monitors PSB content. Peak-time TV viewers got six hours across the whole of 2025 of first-run original content, and only three hours of religious services/worship original content.
This comes at a time when the government will finally consider the introduction of Religious Education into English schools’ National Curriculum. The UK Education Secretary said: “With so much focus on what divides us – and race and religion so often at the heart of that division – equipping young people with the knowledge, understanding and values that religious education teaches could hardly be more important.”
However, UK think-tank Theos this week reported the number of Theology and Religious Studies providers (universities/colleges) in England and Wales has roughly halved from, again, 20 years ago when there were over 40.
So where will all the teachers come from? Or are non-experts again expected to teach the next generation?
Social cohesion
Given the loss of ‘religion’ provision in both mainstream media and education, it’s perhaps not surprising that a recent survey, produced by the UK’s first Anti-Extremism Commissioner stated: “There are real fractures buffeting a number of communities and their relations towards each other today and we have a turbulent time ahead unless the government gets really serious about the depth of the problems.”
The field is wide open for initiatives such as what the Media Diversity Institute has done in, for example, Sri Lanka, which brought together content creators from diverse backgrounds and regions of the country, fostering collaboration and collective action against hate speech online.
As ever, the issue is funding – whether for the BBC, production companies, podcasts, universities, or NGOs. There are one or two media initiatives which give cause for optimism, such as the US-based Religion News Service (part of the Global Religion Journalism Initiative) and the UK-based Religion Media Centre, but they depend on philanthropic funding, which can suddenly stop.
Then there are projects like the ‘Faith in the Media Initiative’ (FAMI) which published its 2026 Faith and Entertainment Index, again funded by philanthropy. This found that 92 per cent of US viewers sampled were open to authentic portrayals of people of faith in TV storylines, when done well; this was the same even if viewers were agnostic or atheist.
FAMI’s Executive Director commented: “Audiences respond to portrayals that feel honest, emotionally grounded, and with humour done well. What they reject is content that’s preachy or mocking.”
Given around 80 per cent of the global population say religion is important or very important to them, perhaps it’s time to re-examine how to tackle religious illiteracy in the UK’s mainstream media, particularly as BBC global audiences have reached 500 million for the first time ever.
Julia Bicknell is a former-BBC producer/journalist, who since 2012 has focused on religion in reporting. In 2019, she and her colleague were runners-up in the US-based Religion News Association’s Awards for Multi-media Analysis, beating CNN and the Washington Post.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Media Diversity Institute. Any questions or comments should be addressed to the editor at [email protected] of the Media Diversity Institute.
