Dan Walker’s creationism shouldn’t disqualify him from breakfast TV

According to the Times, Dan Walker, the new BBC Breakfast presenter, is ‘a creationist’. A ‘senior BBC figure’ is quoted as saying that this ‘nutty’ belief would make life difficult for Walker if, say, he had to present a story about a 75,000-year-old fossil. How could he if he thinks the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Rupert Myers goes further in the Telegraph: ‘Creationists cannot be trusted to report objectively,’ Myers claims, ‘or to interact reasonably with their interviewees and with the public’.

Before jumping to conclusions, it’s worth saying that Dan Walker’s beliefs aren’t publicly known. Anyone who thinks God made the world is a ‘creationist’ in some sense. If Walker thinks the earth is less than 10,000 years old, that is more noteworthy: but then we only have the word of that ‘senior BBC figure’ to go on.

I badgered his spokeswoman, but she would only say that ‘Dan is a Christian who believes that God is behind creation’.