Radio 4 likes its trails – too much, some say. Usually they are just left to the gaps between the programmes, but over the Easter weekend one of them made it on to the news bulletins & was picked up by other media outlets.
The Archbishop of Canterbury had ‘claimed’ to a BBC interviewer that the Catholic Church in Ireland had ‘lost all credibility’ over the child abuse scandal.
Dr Williams soon offered an apology. But if he didn’t mean it, why did he say it – to quote one caller to an Irish radio phone in.
Well he said it near the beginning of a pre-recorded special Easter Monday edition of Start The Week, a programme lasting 45 minutes which is usually described as a discussion rather than an interview. We have not been told when it was recorded, so we do not know why it suddenly became newsworthy at the weekend, before the programme had been broadcast.
The other participants were David Baddiel, atheist, whose new film 'The Infidel' is a comedy about a man who was raised as a Muslim but finds out that he had been born to Jewish parents; Philip Pullman, atheist, whose new book is called 'The Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ’; & Mona Siddiqi who, among her other duties is assisting the World Economic Forum consider new ethical approaches for business in a world of globalised risk.
This could have been a very shouty programme, but under the intelligent chairmanship of Andrew Marr it was serious & polite, perhaps overly so, but none the less illuminating for that. It was recorded in Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop’s official residence in London.
Dr Williams was talking about the tension between religion – a belief system belonging to the people - & the institution needed to organise & to spread the word. Like all institutions the Church had to guard constantly against the temptation & the tendency to bureaucracy, hierarchy & self-protective secrecy. It was in this context that he said that the crisis is ‘not just a problem for the Church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland.’
A commentator on RTE who had listened to Start The Week explained this to Irish listeners, and indeed this theme has cropped up in the many discussions I have been hearing. One lady made the same distinction between the religion of the Church & of the people as did Dr Williams but she went on to say that the people too bore responsibility for the crisis of child abuse; for years they had been dumping on to the Church all the social problems of which they were ashamed or did not want to deal with, & just leaving them there. But from another point of view another lady said: ‘We thought it was just us, we thought it was just an Irish problem, but it is everywhere, so it is really a problem of hierarchy.’
Just one sentence, but how the Archbishop must be regretting that little word ‘all’ – without that, it seems unlikely that there could have been all this fuss.
It is not the first time that the BBC has got its headline from Dr Williams – two years ago it was Sharia law.
Ironically, the final item on Easter Monday’s Today programme – just before Start The Week began – was an interview between James Naughtie & Michael Heseltine. The seasoned campaigner was on his guard: ‘I know what you’re trying to do Jim, but you won’t make me say it, I’m not going to give you your headline.’ Then, just as the pips pressed, asked whether he would be out campaigning for the Cameron Conservatives he said not, because at 77 he was past it. To the sounds of laughter Naughtie said ‘That’s it, I’ve got my headline.’
It takes experience to pull that off. Experience that many BBC journalists who happen to be women have not yet been able to acquire, as Ceri Thomas kindly explained on Feedback. But even a tough male BBC Today editor can be hurt by all ‘All this heat, hyperbole and wild alliteration I unleashed in the space of a few minutes.’
If you cannot stand the heat stay away from BBC interviews. Otherwise you will find, as did Ceri Thomas, that “on some occasions, one imperfect phrase can be ripped out of the fabric of an interview and turned into a canvas onto which critics project prejudices and preconceptions.”
As, of course, did the Archbishop. But the Archbishop apologised for any upset that he had caused; the Today editor, who has the thick skin required of all those who work on the programme, took 772 words on a BBC blog to explain why his critics were wrong.
