The Politically Correct class have the time of their lives at Christmas, none more so than those parading as journalists

In its Thursday edition, The Age includes a television program guide called the Green Guide. The TV programming is supported by critical comments and stories on what's happening in TV land. There is a bevy of cub and seasoned TV reporters assigned to spice up the guide with all manner of cute, mocking and sneering commentaries. On each program page the reader will find a brief comment on one the day's programs in this style under the rubric of TURN ON, TURN OFF.

Barbara Hooks is a member of this bevy of cutesy sneerers but she is hardly a cub reporter. She been hacking around the Green Guide for years. One thing should be said immediately about Ms Hooks: she could never be accused of contravening PC dogma. Indeed, passing her in the corridors of the new Age building (pun unintended) at Tullamarine, one would probably see her wearing a jacket with five or six well-deserved stripes. In the Green Guide edition of Thursday, 19 December, she provided a piece that was worthy of those well-earned stripes.

She was offering brief comment on a ABC program about the origins of Christmas. It was titled: 'Where Christmas began'. She opens up her commentary thus:

As historical reporters, the apostles [the Gospel writers] never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

One can just see the mood in which this mindless sentence was written. She was most likely talking to colleagues, having a cigarette, eating her lunch or putting on her make-up when this thought rose from the subconscious to put itself on its own accord onto the monitor screen. With a yawn and a drag on the fag she was then probably on her way. Before I go any further let me offer a counter to this mindless assertion:

Journalists never let the facts get in the way of a string of lies, distortions, misrepresentations, ignorant claims, and slanders that will attract a readership.

I have hitherto offered a mass of argument to give more credibility to my claim than Ms Hooks – obviously ignorant of the history of the Christianity, let alone Christianity as religious belief – can provide for her claim above.

The program she was commenting on was in fact a BBC production which she calls at the start of her critical comments 'provocative'. When someone like Ms Hooks begins with a word like 'provocative', 'challenging', 'threatening' and so on to describe a TV program about any aspect of Christianity we know that its substance will be diametrically opposed to what orthodox Christians (i.e. those who actually follow the religious belief of Christianity) believe and understand about their faith.

As we read on we see that we are not deceived in our expectation. Ms Hooks goes on to give an approving uncritical account of what the program claims on the basis of 'historical, astronomical and archaeological scholarship'. It's all contrary to what a genuine Christian thinks and believes about the major doctrines and historical events of Christianity. It is just the sort of program the PC programmers of the TV networks love to throw around at Christmas time.

She reels all this off as if it is unthinkable that there could possibly be an opposing account based in similarly rigorous scholarship – assuming the program is based on genuine scholarship and not thrown together by a bunch of PC atheists who thought it may be good fodder for the demographic of anti-Christian bigots who always salivate at this sort of thing.

It would probably not matter to Ms Hooks and those like her, but the reality is that there is another story to the unchallenged claims of the BBC production. A fair-minded intelligent journalist may think it worth the trouble to take the time to see what it entails – and to learn that people just as intelligent and well-educated as the alleged 'experts' of the BBC program accept that story.