Rowan's Sharia remarks: a BBC set-up

In line with the way that I was reading the media but opening up the matter to more concerning scrutiny, Wardman Wire does a fairly in-depth examination of what happened. And it contains many implied caveats for all of us news consumers. Here's the nub of the allegations.

1. The story was trailed at the top of the news programme with the headline: The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the adoption of Sharia Law in some parts of Britain is inevitable. (No he didn’t, or not in the way that your headline was inevitably going to make people think.)
2. The BBC was running an article before it broadcast the interview under the heading: Sharia law in UK is ‘unavoidable’, with the first paragraph: The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is “unavoidable”. (ditto)
3. The BBC website is a key source of news for ALL the media, and has 13 million unique visitors per week.
4. Reactions from bloggers to the headlines were coming in before the 9 minute interview had even finished .
5. As far as I can tell, most of the initial abusive reaction and vitriol (from “idiotic” to “bonkers” through various less gentle insults) has been linked to this story on the BBC website.
6. “Sharia” in this country is as much a “red-rag to a blood-blind-bull” as is “paedophile”. It excites similar extreme and irrational “shoot from the hip” reactions.

Of course commentators were going to react to the headline, not the interview - especially as speed of response is such a differentiator. The reality is that the way the BBC handled this story guaranteed that the furore would happen.

We are then treated to a careful deconstruction of the 'official' line from the BBC on what happened. It ain't pretty but it is important for anyone interested in commenting on news to read.