URGENT ACTION ALERT! B.B.C.

Admin Thu 28 Mar 2013, 10:15 pm

ACTION ALERT: Contact the BBC about provocative Good Friday TV programme

Click here to fill in the BBC's online complaint form and request a follow-up programme or call on 03700 100 222.

The BBC is set to broadcast a controversial programme tomorrow about Mary Magdalene which is expected to suggest that she was married to Jesus Christ.

You can watch the programme on BBC1 at 12noon tomorrow (Good Friday) or on the BBC's iPlayer service shortly after. Please contact the BBC to voice your concerns and to ask that it broadcasts a follow-up programme based on more accurate scholarship.

Melvyn Bragg is presenting the programme. Based on his discussion of it in the Telegraph, we believe the BBC's decision to show it is offensive because:

in a broadcast at the precise time Christians are remembering his death on the cross, this programme questions the purity of Jesus;
the claims about Jesus are based on dubious scholarship;
it makes indefensible claims about the nature of the Bible (e.g. the process by which the books of the Bible came to be recognised and collated);
it feeds on Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' hypothesis rather than taking account of sensible scholarship.

The programme is being billed as a major contribution to the BBC's Easter programming. The timing of it is highly inappropriate and inflammatory.

Please contact the BBC to ask for a further programme to set the record straight.

The BBC's response will depend on what level of feedback it receives - your comments will make a difference. So, please contact the BBC as soon as possible after 12noon.

The BBC's online complaint form only takes a few minutes to complete. You can also call the BBC to make your complaint on 03700 100 222.

Contacting the BBC does make a difference. Following Comic Relief, the BBC took down Rowan Atkinson's impersonation of the Archbishop of Canterbury from iPlayer after it received a number of complaints.