A very engaging piece appeared in yesterday’s Church Times, taken from the BBC´s Edward Stourton’s Sir Tony Baldry Lecture, delivered in Winchester Cathedral on 28th February, as part of the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature.
With a lifetime’s broadcasting experience, shaped by the culture when he started at the BBC in the 1970s, where honesty and trust were taken as a given, he reflects on how our attitude to truth has changed, following his visit to a victory party given by Republicans in Atlanta, Georgia in November 2024.
“The concept of truth-telling has become hugely controversial”, he says, “and it really does appear that many people — people of weight and importance — don’t think truth really exists”. But he acknowledges that “truth isn’t a lump of gold that we simply pick up and pass on to you. We gather information and we do things to it before we offer it to you. We mine the gold, we shape it, and polish it.” And technology has added complexity: “If we’re offered several versions of the truth, it is only natural to prefer the version which best fits our views and prejudices, and that’s a real challenge facing us in what’s sometimes called the mainstream media.”
His conclusion is that, as the BBC, they need to be continually alert to the danger of “allowing values to slip into prejudices, because, if we do that, we will rightly forfeit your trust.” And the best way to do that, he says, quoting American thinker, Timothy Snyder, is that in order to “resist the few big lies we will need to produce millions of little truths”.
Truth is a big deal for us Christians. Our God is a God of ‘Spirit and of Truth’, in fact the source of all truth. Part of our Christian mission is to confront lies and prejudice with the light of honesty, to ensure the presence of our God is known and valued within our world.
Read the full piece at the Church Times here.