Interrupting the Distraction: the Archbishop of Canterbury and Broadcast Media

First off, if you would like to know what the Archbishop of Canterbury said last week in relation to Sharia law and British law, please - I beg of you - read it yourself. Too many have proven themselves too quick to believe the farfetched or scandalous and denounce the Archbishop in light of that, rather than actually engaging with what he has said. Moreover, the broadcast media - not least the (otherwise) eminently balanced and thoughtful BBC4 - have not been entirely clear or fair in their presentation of the Archbishop's remarks.

In addition, showing the seriousness of the matter and the anguished conscience of the nation, the Sun posted two prostitutes page 3 girls outside of Lambeth Palace calling for the Archbishop's resignation. Who says the tabloids aren't serious journalism?

Just as oddly, Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone has chided Archbishop Williams for saying such a thing when relations between Christians and Muslims were not on particularly strong ground. My question is, 'as opposed to when during the last 1350 years?'

But strangest of all, I think - and again, most odd that it was broadcast on BBC4, closer to a paragon of careful and thoughtful engagement than nearly any other contemporary media outlet - was the report on this morning's Broadcasting House, a weekly radio newsmagazine on the media. (You can listen again, at least for now, on the programme's homepage.) At one point the presenter Paddy O'Connell said 'Realistically, how much time is the modern media willing to devote to complex, challenging, and contentious religious argument?'

I would think that the answer to this question would be: enough time to understand the argument and accurately depict its significance for the listening public.

He went on to interview a former press secretary for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, as well as an Anglican vicar who formerly worked as an ad exec, but now is curate at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. The latter of the two said 'Where he's got it wrong, I think, is that he's fallen victim to the required pithiness of the media, the sort of 24-7 soundbite culture. in that he attempted to summarise something very complex in a very short and pithy way and in doing so I think has fallen victim to a brevity that required a greater fullness.' There were some good remarks later on in the interview, but it seems to me that the gist of the beginning of the interview was this: the media and its audience cannot be expected to take the time and mental effort to understand something complex or nuanced, and so it was the archbishop's own fault that he was misunderstood.

It seems to me an appalling lack of any kind of introspection to say that when someone else is damaged by one's own shortcomings it is entirely their problem for failing to take such into account. The problem is not our short attention span or our unwillingness to expend a little energy understanding a complex argument and issue; the problem is not the media's seeming inability to inform in proper depth and give people any genuine insight into their world (as opposed to trivia, bullet-point factoids and water-cooler conversation starters); no, the problem is someone trying to think aloud publicly and present a nuanced and complex perspective.

To the extent that this is a reasonable characterisation of what has happened, then let us be clear what it is: blaming the victim. And that is pathological.

For some sensible writing in the blogosphere on the furore surrounding the archbishop's remarks, Maggi Dawn is a good place to start, and she links to others.


Photo courtesy of The Archbishop of Canterbury's website.