The Archbishop and the Lazy Journalist

'Muslim Laws Must Come to Britain', was the front-page headline on the Daily Express on Friday. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, had apparantly said something so controversial that neither Madeleine McCann nor Princess Diana made it to the front page.

However it would seem the 'World's Greatest Paper' (correct use of quotation marks) does not even know basic punctuation. Not only is this not a direct quote from Archbishop Rowan Williams, it's not even a paraphrase of what he was saying at a speech at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday. In the speech titled Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective, he discussed how overlapping authorities might be used in cases involving certain religous issues or parties. At no point did he say Muslim or Sharia law must come to Britain.

What he did say in the six thousand word lecture was '... if what we want socially is a pattern of relations in which ... groups of serious and profound conviction are not systematically faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty, it seems unavoidable'. In short, if we don't want people to feel separated from society because of the laws they hold themselves to, then a system of overlapping religous and civil authorities should be introduced. He was not only talking about Sharia law either, but also Orthodox Judaism. His speech was intelligently written and argued and based on a number of scholar and acedemics from the religious and secular world.

Though I highlighted The Express earlier in the blog, that was just a snapshot of the terrible reporting of the story. It seemed every media group was doing their upmost to report the story in the most simplistic, lazy and unintelligent way possible. I wonder how many of those reporting the story actually read the speech for themselves rather than taking much reported soundbites out of context. If they had they would have found it was quite a dull and complicated speech that was only ever addressing things like marital law, financial law and conflict resolution. Despite what many caught up the frenzy might have thought he was not sanctioning the chopping of hands or anything else so Draconian. He himself said any new system would have to 'not collude with unexamined systems that have oppressive effect or allow shared public liberties to be decisively taken away by a supplementary jurisdiction'. Unfortunately this section of the lecture was buried towards the middle and doesn't make a great headline.

This is not the first time we've seen a talk on religious issues jumped opon by the media looking for an easy story. A similar incident occured in 2006 when the Pope quoted a controversial text in a speech trying to encourage more thought into religious issues, which as was proved by the reaction to the case, is greatly needed, not least by the media.

I am currently training to become a journalist and it's seeing stories like this that inspire me to want to work in the media. Such poor reporting of a story aggrevate me so much to want to do a better job myself. Its a high hope, but i think i'm entitled to such ideals at this stage of my career.

I don't necessarily agree with the Archbishop. What i don't agree with is the way the media and therefore the public have reacted to the speech. I was most disgusted today to see someone shouting at him to resign as he left a service in Cambridge.

With such critisism thrown at Dr Rowan Williams from many directions, he's been forced to defend his speech by reiterating what he actually origanally said. Whether or not this gets the message across or saves him from having to resign remains to be seen.