Britain: The Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, has attacked the BBC over a television programme it is making on clerical abuse.
Archbishop Nichols said yesterday that Catholics in England and Wales were "fed up seeing a public service broadcaster using the licence fee to pay unscrupulous reporters trying to re-circulate old news and to broadcast programmes that are so biased and hostile. Enough is enough."
Referring to the Kenyon Confronts investigative programme, which is currently looking at clerical sex abuse in the archdiocese, he said: "This programme is considered by the BBC managers as a suitable way to engage with the Catholic Church is absolutely offensive."
Over the past nine months, he had received reports from priests of the archdiocese about " unsolicited and strange approaches from people saying they were working for the BBC. Their questions were about events long ago and their manner was often troubling."
He gave details of these approaches, describing their manner as "totally unacceptable behaviour". The reporters' actions brought discredit to the good name and reputation of the BBC, he said.
Archbishop Nichols said he had written to the BBC director general, Mr Greg Dyke, and the director of news, Mr Richard Sambrook, "asking for their comments on four of these matters over a week ago, but I have had no more than a holding acknowledgement".
He had offered to give an interview to the programme as long as it was live and broadcast at the same time as the film, but this was unacceptable to the programme-makers for "technical reasons", he said. He was unwilling to pre-record an interview.
"All the cases to be dealt with in the programme happened many years ago," he said.
He believed "the likely claim that the programme is in the public interest is dubious" and "that most people who have suffered the effects of child abuse are not helped, in the least, by this kind of sensationalist publicity".
He also said that as far as he could ascertain, plans by the BBC to celebrate the Pope's silver jubilee and the beatification of Mother Teresa next month "consist of the screening of a Panorama programme called Sex and the Holy City."
A satirical sketch based on the Pope, Popetown, was due to be broadcast. "These are offensive initiatives," he said.