The BBC and religion

It is to David Lammy’s credit that he hasn’t deleted what my Spectator colleague, Hugo Rifkind, describes as his new all-time favourite tweet. For those who haven’t come across it yet, this is how the Tottenham MP responded to the BBC’s coverage of the papal election where it mentioned “white smoke”:

This tweet from the BBC is crass and unnecessary. Do we really need silly innuendo about the race of the next Pope? twitter.com/DavidLammy/sta…

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) March 12, 2013

There were more solid grounds for criticising the BBC that day: the corporation again showed its problems understanding religion. It managed to find a translator for the Vatican election who didn’t know the Lord’s Prayer. As Pope Francis hit his knees, and the crowd joined him in unison, the translator was desperately trying to work out what was going on:

‘Our father who are in the Heaven, be your name blessed… be your will done as in earth so above….deliver